"Is MSFT anticompetitive? ...Let's see about getting the DOJ into investigating MSFT for antitrust violations. If we look to antitrust cases, like Standard Oil...a case to break up MSFT certainly could be made."
A more compelling question and one worth much more study is...are the antitrust laws themselves anticompetitive and unjust, and should we make a case to the government for their repeal.
The notion of having government intervention into the free-market in order to protect the free-market is an inherently inconsistent arguement. This coupled with the fact that the laws are excessively vague, and undefined...which gives government an incredible power over business. And finally that the laws, historically have been used to attack and destroy the best industrial concerns and industrialists (Standard Oil, JP Morgan, James Hill, ALCOA, IBM, Microsoft...) makes a good arguement that all is not right with antitrust.
As stated by Alan Greenspan in his article Antitrust as printed in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, "...and they came to the grotesque contradiction of attempting to preserve the freedom of the market by government controls, i.e., to preserve the benefits of laissez-faire by abrogating it.", and further, "ALCOA is being condemned for being too successful, too efficient, and too good a competitor. Whatever damage the antitrust laws may have done to our economy, whatever distortions of the structure of the nation's capital they may have created, these are less disastrous than the fact that the effective purpose, the hidden intent, and the actual practice of the antitrust laws in the United States have led to the condemnation of the productive and efficient members of our society because they are productive and efficient."
The time has come to rethink Antitrust.
Kirk Byers |
