Hewitt Pate, the head of the Bush administration’s Antitrust Division, is leaving his post next month, presumably to cash-in on his government experience with a partnership at a law firm in need of political connections. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales feted Pate in a press release, which I excerpt below with a few comments:
Under Pate’s leadership, the detection, prosecution and deterence of cartel offenses was the Division’s highest priority. Since he became Assistant Attorney General, more than $717 million in criminal fines were obtained against 31 corporations and 37 individuals as a result of criminal antitrust prosecutions.
Confiscating more than $700 million in privately-owned capital from the American economy—and converting it into a slush fund for government officials—does nothing to help market competition. And the “cartels” that Pate busted had, in reality, collapsed under their own weight long before the government intervened. For example, Pate’s most recent trophy—a $175 million confiscation from shareholders of Hynix Semiconductor Inc.—was retribution for an alleged cartel arrangement that had collapsed three years earlier.
Pate oversaw the Antitrust Division’s merger enforcement program which allowed procompetitive mergers to go forward while requiring divestitures in other transactions in order to protect competition.
The attorney general’s language could not be clearer—the government alone decides whether mergers may proceed. There are no property rights that allow such combinations to occur peaceably in the marketplace. Pate is thus a hero for having the divine wisdom to know—in advance—which mergers will help or harm consumers.
Pate advocated transparent, objective rules for evaluating unilateral conduct by businesses in order to protect competition without unintentionally harming it.
Gonzales doesn’t specify what these “objective rules” are. I’m not aware of any, so I’ll just dismiss this statement as false.
He also stressed the importance of international cooperation through the International Competition Network and competition advocacy and convergence efforts with antitrust enforcement authorities throughout the world.
International cooperation is such a high priority for the Antitrust Division that it’s willing to aid and abet economic dictatorships. Seventeen of the ICN’s members have economies that are categorized as “mostly unfree” or “repressed” by the most recent Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. Three of the 12 “repressed” economies—Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Venezuela—are proud ICN participants. They don’t recognize property rights or free markets, but they have antitrust regulators, and that’s good enough for the Gonzales and Pate.
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As long as people see the market economy as a necessary evil that must be restrained and squeezed in order to provide benefit, the above view will be accepted as the norm.
The interesting mirror is that left-wing types would accuse us of the same thing, except with regard to the government instead of the market.
They see the anti-trust regulators as serving the same purpose for the free market as we see the Constitution (etc…) for the government — wonderful restraints that stop the object from committing unspeakable horrors.
Which brings up the basic hypocrisy of regulation: Regulation is “good” because people are generally bad, but the people write, administer and enforce the regulations are generally good.
The socialist must hold these two contradictory thoughts at the same time, and believe both, in order to be a socialist.
I definitely know people like that. I also know people who honestly believe they know what’s best for others. They actually honestly believe that they are expert enough to decide for other people, and that it is even in their best interest.
I’m not sure which I find more disturbing, the doublethinkers you describe, or the ones who have such contempt for humanity.
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