We might also acknowledge that a pretty significant share of people do know that already and just shrug their shoulders to it, convinced that it's better to allow for that than do anything about it.

There's been a lot of work put into distilling "free market" into its most radical interpretation, and lots of people just aren't open to bringing much nuance or pragmatism to bear upon it any more. Many lessons learned painfully in late 19th and early 20th century have been forgotten and the counterweight and containment policies that they earned now tend to get ignored or dismantled.

And somehow instead of trying to make it better, there are never ending attempts to make it even worse somehow ( if some of the patents are to believed ). I honestly sometimes wonder if some of the stuff is not in place already only because public reaction if all those were plopped in place in one go.

Always has been.

Well, why don't the ethical non-predators open up shops in economically disadvantaged areas and offer non-predatory prices? The margins must be huge if they really are predators.

[dead]

Yeah. Why do I have to pay a plumber to install gas appliances? It's just a protectionist racket.

Point is, it's easy to screech "predation" or whatever but the problem is that every one of these things has some justification that can be used in the abstract.

It does legitimately cost more to run a store like Dollar General than Walmart so the same can of beans has to cost more on their shelf for the same margin.

How much more, how much is justified? I don't know.