I just saw this article about how Vivendi games will buy a majority stake in Activision. So these two companies have come together and voluntarily decided that they’d like to merge. The sentence that struck me was, “Providing regulators and Activision shareholders agree on the deal, Vivendi will own 52 per cent of the entity…”

Say what? Providing regulators agree on the deal? Why do regulators even have a say in a voluntary transaction between consenting parties? Isn’t it annoying that we have to ask permission from government bureaucrats? It’s just another indication that we ain’t as free as we think we are.