Antitrust & Monopolies

As Ayn Rand explains, the antitrust laws are based on confusing two types of power: economic power (sometimes called “market power”) and political power. Only the latter is coercive.

The 1936 Robinson-Patman Act (RPA), once a lynchpin of antitrust enforcement actions, because the government almost always won under its convoluted terms, has been all-but abandoned for decades.

Is there muscle behind the growing push for censorship? Certainly there is. This reality is underscored by the Justice Department’s antitrust actions against Apple.

Mises’ words ring loud and true in the case of Apple, and it is a shame that those in Washington, like Senator Warren, can’t seem to grasp this fact.

As long as government secures and protects private property rights, enforces all contracts entered into voluntarily and through mutual agreement, and assures law and order under an impartial rule of law, “monopoly” as an economic or social problem is virtually non-existent. But introduce government intervention into the market system, and monopoly invariably becomes a social harm and an economic problem.

Antitrust laws, as being applied by Lina Khan, are truly anti-progress.

One of the DOJ’s main criticisms is how Google established itself early on as the default search engine for Apple and Android products, yet doing so was simply shrewd business strategy. Anyone with the opportunity to do so would have done the same.

I for one would be devastated if my cordless Dyson was never given the chance, and I wonder what other innovations or advancements may now be lost thanks to a true monopoly obstructing competition in the marketplace – the FTC.

Consumers will choose the best options, or only options, according to their interests and perceptions of value – and companies can either cater to existing needs and wants or create new ones. That is why capitalism is such a beautiful thing, and why the only time monopoly concerns should arise is when government cronyism is involved.

History provides very few actual examples of private firms that are unprotected by government-erected barriers to entry successfully colluding in ways that harm consumers.

The FTC is placing itself as the primary arbiter when it comes to business transactions, and it is conveying that it can predict what the future holds for innovations and acquisitions. This creates an environment of not only great uncertainty for business, especially now that previous transactions may be revisited and reconsidered, but also great risk for the competitiveness of US firms.

All too often, unscrupulous businesses weaponize the United States’ antitrust laws — which are only supposed to be utilized to protect consumers against higher prices and other consequences of monopoly power — for their own self-serving purposes.

In a true capitalist system or free market, there would be no antitrust laws.

So, whether it’s Lina Khan at the FTC or Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren in Congress, antitrust advocates should take a hard look in the mirror. The only true monopoly within the US marketplace is where these politicians are fulfilling their posts. 

What Robert Reich Gets Wrong about the Kroger-Albertson Merger and What He Misses Completely

The future of gaming won’t be determined by the Microsoft-Activision merger. But it could very well be undermined if the FTC succeeds in blocking the merger.

Amazon has made its platform so attractive to third-party merchants that large numbers of them willingly pay a premium in order to continue to use Amazon’s platform.

The aftereffects of antitrust have always been anti-producer, anti-consumer, and anti-progress. Ayn Rand rightly asserted that, “The Antitrust laws—an unenforceable, uncompliable, unjudicable mess of contradictions—have for decades kept American businessmen under a silent, growing reign of terror.”

Eleven professional golfers, including Phil Mickelson, have filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the Professional Golf Association (PGA).

Laffer pours ice cold water on Amy Klobuchar’s plans for a “hot antitrust summer.”

Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Alphabet (Google), and other Big Tech companies are not monopolies. They have achieved their dominance through competition. Success through competition is a part of competition.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would erode the consumer welfare standard and move our antitrust model closer to those seen in communist China and parts of Europe.

Antitrust blocks the competitive process. It does so by substituting the meager knowledge and imaginations of economists, lawyers, courts, bureaucrats, and politicians for the actual, creative head-to-head competition that occurs within markets.

George Orwell famously coined the term “newspeak” in his 1949 anti-utopian futuristic novel, 1984, in which commonsense words were reversed in their meaning. Biden’s latest executive order provides a modern illustration of “newspeak” in the 21st century.