Every consolidation isn’t necessarily fundamentally bad. Sometimes consolidations result in cost reduction synergies that partially get passed back to consumers. Elimination of inefficiency is good for everyone including the consumer. Of course there’s downsides of consolidation but I think there are upsides too.

An example that comes to mind is Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity. Another is Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch or Google’s acquisition of YouTube (it seems prohibitive to run video streaming services sustainably/profitably without the infrastructure efficiencies of Amazon/Google).

I think that's exactly what the author meant

> consolidation > cost reduction > synergies > passed back to the consumer => second order

fucking up your competitors => first order

That's generally why you have to guess at the long term effect of any merger. "Will the consumer benefit only in the short term and the diminution of competition will end up hurting them in the long term?" is the question regulators should answer.