Huh?

Matthew Yglesias refers to the:

...near-universal belief that there aren't important economies of scale to be reaped by expanding beyond a single metro area,

Come again? Who believes that? Safeway? Wal-Mart? Costco? Starbucks? Home Depot?

I have read both the underlying post, which seems to ask why monopoly capitalism has not succeeded in creating essentially one large firm,

But the sort of semi-national chain store patchwork we see in the supermarket and drugstore businesses seems to lack a rationale.

and one response.

I am still puzzled by Yglesias question. Lack a rationale? Our economy is filled with firms of various sizes. In many business, say law firms or restaurants, there appears to be a fairly smooth curve of the size of enterprise i.e. there is everything from the single-stand/one lawyer shop to McDonalds/Starbucks and global mega-firms with a thousand lawyers. Some businesses, say refining oil, do not lend themselves to small operations because of capital, technological and regulatory barriers.

The ultimate answer to the question is that there are limits to growth such as human talent, ambition and even commonsense, which allow people to be happy with say, only $25 million net worth.

And I wouldn't be so sure that so many of those small chaims will in fact survive. I just read about one Washington State grocery chain which is downsizing because of, in the words of its chief executive, Wal-Mart. So the regional chaims may in fact be on the way out.