Domination of this type is just as harmful to the industry, the economy and the consumer as the more widely understood horizontal monopoly. Having vertical control over a field allows companies to distort the market in many ways. The parent company is able to make many decisions which affect market choices and prices for consumers as well as for others in a particular field. When Sony's video cassettes get the contract for Columbia's video releases, smaller cassette manufacturers lose out and, perhaps, die out. In this way, the vertical concentration spreads horizontally and dominant companies continue to grow larger and more powerful.
Corporate mergers strengthen corporate control and power.
When these mergers occur in the communications industry, they strengthen corporate control over the flow of ideas and culture. Such media mergers are on the rise. Neither Caesar nor Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt nor any Pope, has commanded as much power to shape the information on which so many people depend to make decisions about everything from whom to vote for to what to eat. This kind of concentration is taking place in other industries as well. The Reagan administration loosened the regulations in 1982 and 1984 and proposed relaxing anti-merger law radically.