There’s an episode of 30 Rock from many years ago where Jack, played by Alec Baldwin, explains vertical integration to Liz, played by Tina Fey. He asks her to imagine if a corn chip manufacturer also sold diarrhea medication. When Liz quickly realizes there would be the temptation to put stuff in the corn chips to give you diarrhea, she gasps and says, “That should not be allowed to happen!”

Jack simply replies, “It's my job to make sure that it does happen.”

A little bit of vertical integration can be good for consumers, but too much and it becomes exploitative and monopolistic. A place where we have all seen this, whether we realize it or not, is with auto maintenance.

When your car breaks down, you should be able to decide who fixes it. When a farmer’s tractor stops working during harvest, that farmer should have the same choice. In the days before mass vertical integration, people just fixed their own car themselves.

But increasingly, Americans don’t have that choice and certainly can’t fix it themselves.

Repairing equipment and technology today often requires access to diagnostic data, software, computer codes,........

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