I think that it’s going to rain next year, and maybe there will be some sunny days aswell. I live in Sweden, and based on some weather data I have, it will probably snow during the winter. Oh wait, I’m not keeping with the thread, I’m supposed to make predctions using some random data not at all related to my prediction!
“There is nothing in economics that tells us ahead of time what the size of businesses will be in a free market.”
“There is nothing in economics that can tell us that businesses would be larger in a free-market than in a regulated market.”
“We know that State regulations tends to raise the bar to entry to any market which will, predictably, reduce the number of competitors in the market and increase their average size.”
You make three good points. One tells us what we can know about regulated markets; two tell us what we can not know about a free-market. This makes sense in that a regulated market has been all that we have known, so we can make empirical observations about it and know things about it. The free-market has never existed so we can not make empirical observations, only speculation.