In the absence of such public protection, even in industries where only one firm survives there is no presumption that its behaviour will be monopolistic. Hence the very notions of 'dominant position' and even more so 'its abuse' so beloved of competition and anti-trust lawyers are meaningless. Similarly, the theoretical benchmark of perfect competition, which is usually used to justify 'competition' and anti-trust laws, besides being Utopian is also misleading about the nature of competition in a real world economy. Efficient economic performance does not only depend upon the imitative competition emphasised by perfect competition, where a large number of firms produce and supply identical goods. It also depends upon the innovative competition, particularly of the creatively destructive type, emphasised by Schumpeter.
Most innovations are like a race in which the 'winner takes all'.
The existence of patents and other devices to prevent imitative competition allows the winners in innovative competition to secure a big payoff for their innovative effort. Given the incommensurability of these different dimensions of competition, in an efficient dynamic economy there can be no single measure of competitiveness such as market concentration to judge its efficiency. Nor will 'rate of return' or 'price cap' regulations so beloved of the anti-trust industry ensure competition at large. For, if besides imitative, there is also innovative competition, actual competition will always have some elements of a contest in which some economic agents win and others lose. It would be inappropriate to judge the intensity of competition of such a contest by the ex post rate of return to the winner.