At the time of the InBev acquisition I pondered if it could be one move in a conspiracy to crush or diminish the HB market.
Buy the big stores, help them grow resulting in the small LHBS whithering, then squeeze the life (and value) out of the big store while pointing to the failure of the small stores as evidence the the market is drying up.
Obviously this falls into the category of "conspiracy theory", but isn't it possible.
I'm not saying that is what is happening, but it is one reason we have anti-trust laws.
Problem is, our "hobby" market is probably too small to get the attention of regulators.
The defense to that tactic is the proliferation of other successful independent stores.
In that case the market changes but doesn't dry-up.