It ought to be a crime - the people v. Procter & Gamble; the people v. Gillette.

Procter & Gamble, which is headquartered in Cincinnati, reached an agreement to acquire the Boston-based Gillette Company in a stock transaction valued at about $56 billion. Wall Street is excited and so are top executives involved in the deal. "Strength plus strength equals success," crowed James M. Kilts, Gillette's chief executive, during a celebratory conference call with investors, the type made when top management gets ready to rake in the compensation packages that result from such a merger. With this one, Kilts's take is estimated at $153 million, according to the Wall Street Journal; vice chairman Edward DeGraan will get $41 million; Peter K. Hoffman, vice president of Blades and Razors, will get $16 million. And those are preliminary estimates, with lots of room for growth.

Even more outrageous than such eye-popping payouts is the overall resignation which greets deals like this. That's capitalism, everyone shrugs. Suggest that this is capitalism perverted and you are labeled a socialist - a bigger sin than overt, conscienceless greed, which chief executives like Kilts get to define as "success."

The companies are already mapping out their plan to "integrate," which really means consolidate and shrink the workforce, the definition of "success."

This deal is not a success for Massachusetts, which is losing another major employer to an out-of-state corporation. This one lacks even the veneer of promise to protect jobs and community investment. It is not a success for employees, generally; 6,000 workers, or 4 percent of the workforce, will lose their jobs as a result of this deal. Arguably, in the long run, the deal isn't a success for the free market either, just for the inner circle that runs corporate America and willingly sells out every asset they control for their own financial gain.

"The only way to preserve a free market is to have a regulated free market," says Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin. Unfettered, he says, "the free market will ultimately devour itself. The question becomes, 'how fast can we sell out everything?' "

Galvin plans to look into the stock transaction behind Procter & Gamble's acquisition of Gillette. But beyond his jurisdiction in Massachusetts is a bigger picture that demands federal attention. Galvin says it is time for the US Justice Department to step up. Everyone is talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the need to protect his Social Security legacy, says Galvin; what about the antitrust legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, who waged war against the corporate barons of the early 20th century?

Roosevelt promoted continuous regulation of giant corporations and, as president, he pushed such legislation through Congress. He wanted to balance the interests of workers and business people. When did Teddy Roosevelt-type balance become unAmerican? If Procter & Gamble and Gillette need to join forces to stand up to Wal-Mart pricecutting, isn't that proof it is time to reign in Wal-Mart? Today, regulators close their eyes to that reality, preferring to convince themselves that the combinations of big companies benefit consumers and shareholders and that is all that matters. Antitrust review currently boils down to a preordained economic analysis. Basically, all merger partners have to demonstrate now is that their marriage will reduce costs and produce efficiencies. That argument always wins and it is why everyone shrugs about the inevitable.

Yet if no one puts on the brakes, you don't have to be a business school graduate to see how this ends up. When corporate America is done devouring itself, it will be forced to look beyond American borders for merger partners. Then, the job loss and loss of decision-making clout will shift not only out of one state, but out of the United States.

It's time to start redefining "success" as it applies to a business deal. It's time to look beyond the shareholders and the executives who reward themselves to a larger universe of stakeholders - all the people affected in some way by a company's actions. That universe includes vendors, employees and their families, and the community at large. There is a middle ground between extreme socialism and extreme capitalism, and it is not that difficult to find.

Suppose the Procter & Gamble acquisition of Gillette was described like this to an average holder of Gillette stock: as a result of this merger, your 401(k) will increase in value by $300; but your cousin will lose his job.

Think of it like that and it is a crime.