I just don't understand why you would expect there to be any honest companies left to deal with. Any honest company has an insurmountable disadvantage in a competitive economy where the winners fund the policymakers. The honest business will always, eventually, become the prey of vulture hedge funds and predatory mergers seeking market capture. Even if it's a privately owned business, the monopolies will just drive down prices to force it out of the market, and then once market dominance is achieved, the price rises commensurate to recoup that lost profit. Even if this ploy isn't actually profitable in practice, the financing for such corporations that employ these methods is assured, through the stock market and big banks loan practices. Monopoly is really the only game left in town, they just have to make it look enough like a "free market" to keep people from trying to make it illegal. This is rather simply accomplished by having multiple different companies all owned by the same wealthy shareholders or mutual funds. But, I'm sure you can see all this for yourself, you just can't figure out a better system.