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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly?
MSFT 481.28-1.8%11:00 AM EST

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To: Michael L. Voorhees who wrote (63741)12/14/2001 12:21:39 AM
From: _scar_face_  Read Replies (4) of 74651
 
Dare to go back a few years before the attack on msft? Theres nothing wrong with defending one self in areas so grey as antitrust.

No Golden Era

Antitrust enthusiasts have never re-solved the massive economic irrationalities buried in the case law. Some belatedly admit that specific cases like Alcoa (1945) and Brown Shoe (1962) were a mistake. Rulings in those cases found companies guilty of monopolistic practices not because they raised prices but merely because they took ad-vantage of every opportunity to expand capacity and meet customer demands. The rulings were blatant attacks on economic efficiency.

Most antitrust supporters continue to believe in some golden age of enforcement when antitrust was magnificently pro-consumer. Yet a review of two of the most influential early cases in antitrust history, Standard Oil (1911) and American Tobacco (1911), reveals that neither of the accused firms monopolized or "restrained" trade; on the contrary, both firms expanded outputs enormously, innovated continuously, and generally lowered prices for consumers. Thus, the antitrust assault on successful firms like Microsoft is not a recent policy aberration. It is entirely endemic of the history of antitrust regulation.

Scholarly Support

Revisionist case analysis nicely corresponds with recent scholarship concerning the actual origins of antitrust law. The original rationale was that before the Sherman Act of 1890, monopolistic abuse laced the economy. Yet Thomas DiLorenzo, Thomas Hazlett, and others have shown that market outputs were expanding and prices falling relative to the rest of the economy in many of the "trust" industries prior to 1890. Thus, antitrust laws and antitrust cases are more accurately seen as special interest legislation designed to protect less efficient organizations and redistribute income.

Its pretty transparent.
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