Monpolies are the exact opposite of economic freedom and amount to a planned economy, except the plan is not even nominally for the good of everyone.
I'm tempted to write never, but there might have been that one historical event when it went right.
Also, I don't think the biggest problem with plans is self-enrichment by the plan makers, but inflexibility, the lack of good information, misaligned incentives and unintended consequences. And the biggest strength of a market economy is not the absence of any of these problems, but that they don't effect everything euqally and the companies that are affected the most just fail without dragging down everything.
This is exactly how it works under our system too. Instead of economic planning being set in motion by the nomenklatura, it's done by the heads of major banks.
Monopolies and planned economies are two sides of the over-sized/too-powerful government coin.
I'm all for stopping monopolies from forming, but the solution to that is not anti-trust style laws, but a focus on preventing the conditions that allow monopolies to continue.
> Saying that only "many players can ensure progress continues" and thus prohibiting companies to merge is interfering with economic freedom in the name of "I know better"
Sounds like you're advocating that all mergers should be allowed, even if they produce monopolies, and that not having many players would be OK.
The notion that regulation which disallows two billion-dollar companies with thousands of employees to merge because they'd afterwards dominate an important market has anything to do with "the right for people to work together" is somewhere between fundamentalist and disingenuous.
If you're upset with a company dominating a market, just create your own company to compete with it.
