In less enthusiastic eras than our own, other words besides “synergy” were commonly used to describe attempts to radically distort consumer offerings to benefit colluding owners; in the U.S., illegal trusts were combinations of companies that secretly agreed to fix prices while pretending to be competitive. And what else is a monopoly, after all, but synergy taken to the extreme? Markets that respond to the tyranny of size have always had a tendency toward monopoly. Which is why much of what has taken place in the entertainment industry during the last decade of merger mania would have been outlawed as recently as 1982, before President Ronald Reagan’s all-out assault on U.S. anti-trust laws.