Richard Branson, Britain's Newest Welfare Queen

August 1, 2007 9:35 AM by S.M. Oliva | Other posts by S.M. Oliva | Comments (4)

Virgin Atlantic Airways received a huge subsidy from the U.S. and British governments today, as rival British Airways agreed to pay over $700 million to settle criminal "price fixing" charges. Of course, Virgin was part of the alleged price-fixing, but since they had the good sense to turn in British Airways to the antitrust authorities in London, they receive "amnesty" and don't have to pay any fines. Thus a subsidy was born.

If the point of antitrust, as its defenders maintain, is to protect and promote competition, how does selectively taxing one firm but not its competitor further that goal? (And let's not even bring up that nasty concept of "equal justice under law," which is so pre-9/11.) Customers won't receive better service because the U.S. and British treasuries extracted $700 million from the marketplace. If that were the case, it would be easier to simply remove all private capital from the market and let antitrust regulators decide what needs to be produced.