I tend to think that the principle is flawed. What difference does it make to the guys in town making beer for local distribution if Budweiser and Miller are being made by one company? The concept that monopolies are bad was created by the competitors of Standard Oil who wanted to get in on the oil business without doing the work that the folks at Standard Oil had done. The reality is that if Bud and Miller are one company and making crap beer, someone else will start making and selling good beer. Nothing B&M can do about it except make better beer. Win, win. The explosion of "good beer" in recent years is a perfect example of the lack of power of the big companies to stop it. We have eight or nine small breweries just in our one county of 350,000 people, all of which seem to be doing just fine, in spite of the fact that there are only three companies making most of the cheap beer available. So what it if becomes "only two".
One more argument that monopolies aren't as bad as the government would have you believe? How many choices do you have for garbage pickup, cable TV, electricity, and water in your town? Government run monopolies. Apparently it is OK if the government does it but not if the free market does it. But we are supposed to believe that if the folks at Bud and Miller can make more money by merging this is death to the American beer market. I don't buy it.