It's not either-or. The problem is that the current interpretation only looks at consumer impact, and ignores a lot of anti-competitive behavior that makes the market less free overall. In practice, this still hurts consumers, it's just that much harder to prove because of indirect effects - and so monopolies get away with it more often than they used to.

>>In practice, this still hurts consumers.

I Don't agree with this view. It surely has the potential to hurt the consumers in the future but IF and WHEN it does consumer impact at that time can be used to fight it (break up etc). No need to actually hurt the consumer NOW for the fear that they might be hurt in the future.

>so we are ok with removing the only thing we as people have going for us

The way that the 'consumer welfare' protection is currently implemented has no teeth.

Consider the Comcast/TWC mergers. The companies involved pay 'experts' (Of their choice) to spin fairy tales about how they project that costs to customers will go down. Five years down the road, when they don't (Or, customers suffer because other intangibles degrade, due to lack of competition), nobody actually holds them accountable, after the fact.