Uh... what? I take this to mean that you assume that they could have gone from 64% back up to 88% or more?
Yes, that is what I meant.
Well, they have government to regulate their industry, and
keep competition from horning in on their business, don't they? They still suffer from diseconomies of scale, but with the competition kept out of the market, their inefficiency doesn't limit their size. If not for the regulations raising the barriers to entry, they could never expand beyond their "ideal" size.
This is your assumption, and I disagree because I have yet to see solid proof of this hypothesis.
Edit: wait, sorry, I'm not 100% sure whether I'm understanding you correctly. How are any of
these corporations not suffering from diseconomies of scale exactly? Or are you suggesting that they are?
Your personal incredulity of the science of economics does not mean that I am failing to debunk your fallacies, or even doing a poor job of it. It just indicates that you are unwilling to examine any other point of view.
Economy is a social science,
not an exact science, like many people seem to think. And since it is a social science, you should wonder whether we should call it 'science' at all. The father of modern science (=scientific method) will explain to you why this is the case, if you really care:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper#Philosophy_of_science.
As opposed to a growing number of scholars, I don't think economic 'science' is totally useless myself. But you need to apply it in a very different way than you do exact sciences. If you drop a ball in an enclosed environment, you will be able to measure the velocity it falls with, how long it will take to hit the ground, etc. Do it again, and the outcome will be
exactly the same. This is one of the main reasons the result will be scientific.
However, if you start a business, or fuel the economy of a country in some way, or anything like this, and it turns out to be a succes, that does not mean you can just do it again. There are way to many factors involved to be able to point out
what caused the succes with certainty. Maybe it was a specific aspect of the policy. Maybe it was some other aspect of the policy. Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was dumb luck. You can not know this for sure, and you can not repeat the experiment since the conditions will not be exactly the same.
The usefulness of social sciences (including economics) lies in the discussion itself. Someone will pose a hypothesis, and that hypothesis should be studied. On what basis did he/she draw these conclusions? What other possible causes may have influenced the result? Etc. On basis of this discussion, everybody should make up their own mind.
Nobody can prove anything in any scientific way, however.
I am willing to examine an other point of view. I have just done so yesterday, although I must admit I have not put hours and hours in it because it seems to be a waste of time. This is because your point of view seems extremely one sided; your argumentation is weak and relies on a handful of very shaky sources and cherry-picked data.