The Surge Continues
The Obama regime's "antitrust surge" continues:
The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether some of the nation's largest technology companies violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to two sources with knowledge of the review.
The review, which is said to be in its preliminary stages, is focused on the search engine giant Google; its competitor Yahoo; Apple, maker of the popular iPhone; and the biotech firm Genentech, among others, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Justice Department officials declined to comment about an investigation, as did officials from Google and Yahoo. Apple and Genentech could not be reached for comment.
The sources said the review includes other tech companies and is "industry-wide." By agreeing not to hire away top talent, the companies could be stifling competition and trying to maintain their market power unfairly, antitrust experts said.
While antitrust aggression is generally directed against property rights, in recent years there's been an increasing number of attacks against individual employees. For example, when the DOJ or FTC forces the sale of property in merger cases, the government will void employment contracts to "encourage" key employees to work for the new firms created by regulatory fiat. This also means that employment files and personal information about "key" employees pass through government hands with no privacy protections.
And, at the risk of repeating myself, let's also remember that this new "investigation" has nothing to do with genuine concern over the tech industry's employment practices. The antitrust oligarchy is simply trying to generate revenue, and they can only do that by forcing firms to divert capital away from production and towards antitrust lawyers and related "experts." In a free market, the demand for "antitrust services" would drop to zero.
Comments (1)
Alex
"In a free market, the demand for "antitrust services" would drop to zero."
Eh, not so sure about that. Antitrust may be stupid, even downright nonsensical, but so are a lot of things that exist on the free market. People pay good money for Kosher and Fair Trade food, cigarettes, etc. In a free market, antitrust could still exist as something along the lines of a "rating agency" like the ones that exist for Kosher and Fair Trade foods, and some people could very well make purchasing decisions based on a "competitive business practices rating" determined by the very same "experts". Of course this would be completely voluntary and nonviolent, but I still think it could fall under "antitrust services".
Published: June 3, 2009 10:00 PM