There is the Princeton oligarchy study and there is Thomas Picketty and now you really have to check out what Daniel Denvir has to say about Comcast, coming soon to the Time Warner Cable dominated market near you.

This is an amazing account of how Comcast took over Philadelphia, buying influence with both parties to secure its monopoly rights to the city, even to the extent that local politicians scoffed at a competitor's demands for access to the market, saying that he would not support tearing up streets so that rival RCN could lay its pipes and even suggesting that RCN moves its headquarters to Philly and get more involved with local politics.

Meanwhile, Comcast continues to receive low marks for its customer service, which seems not to matter much as it seeks regulatory approval to buy Time Warner Cable, itself no customer service stalwart.  The cable industry is a little weird since most customers experience dealing with a monopoly provider.  Territories were divvied up long ago and high barriers to entry (both regulatory and physical) almost completely mitigate competitive threats.  When companies respond to requests for customer service with 4-6 hour windows rather than the real, professional appointments the rest of us are expected to keep, and those companies are also profitable, it's a sure sign that they are understaffed.  But nobody forces them to do anything about that and the Federal government has seemingly taken the position that these local monopolies are acceptable.  The local governments don't interfere because they are bought and paid for.

We've reached an interesting point where some American eyes are actually gazing on ultra high net worth individuals.  But these ultra high net worth corporations are easily as much the problem.

It's at least hard to see any reason why the government should let Comcast expand its Philadelphia empire to even more markets.