Comments (7)

• Fed Up

  Consider this about anti-trust laws.

  If a 7-eleven outlet selling gas is selling below the regional price, he is accused of dumping.

  If he sells higher than the regional price, he is accused of price gouging.

  And if he sells at the same price than everybody else, he is accused of collusion, conspiracy, of forming a trust.

  Could we just please reinstate free market capitalism ?

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:29 AM

• Mushindo

  Damn - Fed Up beat me to it - this echoes an observation made by a commentator in the 1940s, who observed that the antitrust law makes it possible to prosecute any corporation for charging more than, less than, or the same as , the competition, and of course, also for having no competition. It was IIRC, cited by Michael Shermer in his 'the mind of the market'.

  
  Way I see it by analogy: What on earth is the point of a law that compels people to breathe? so it is with a free market.

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:49 AM

• Deefburger

  How about an anti-trust suit against the Federal Reserve? Seems like a pretty cut-and-dried case if you ask me!

  Published: November 24, 2009 11:16 AM

• Bob Roddis

  Just wondering.....Do the statists have any examples of alleged monopolies that don't involve IP? And isn't IP ulitimately the source of whatever monopolistic practices that are generally found?

  Published: November 24, 2009 2:22 PM

• Jacob Steelman

  The antitrust laws of the US are in fact used to create a utility-type of industrial structure through allocation of market territories, more rigid pricing and control of mergers and acquisitions. The affect of these laws is to create an informal or flexible cartelization of companies through the watchfull eye of government bureaucrats who determine if pricing is predatory, actions are anti-competitive, mergers & acquisitions are "good" or "bad". It is like a scene out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as all the political thugs attempt to loot the productive enterprises to reign them in.

  Published: November 24, 2009 2:31 PM

• David Parvo

  The way I look at it, Adam Smith wrote half a thesis, as we know on Capital, and interspersed throughout are questions that he asks regarding Labor, which are the questions Marx answered in his half thesis. Put the two together and one has a whole thesis. The real funny thing I find is that free-marketeers see fit to contradict a lot of what their so-called laissez faire Poo-bah himself asserted, my favorite points in fact being:

  “The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it [. . .] Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate.”

  “The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [the capitalist class], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”

  Published: November 28, 2009 6:46 PM

• newson

  to david parvo:
  you're on the wrong site! more smith-haters than lovers here. http://mises.org/resources/2691

  try the adam smith institute and see whether you get a rise.

  Published: November 28, 2009 8:47 PM