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Anti-Antitrust

In a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal, antitrust attorney and scholar Edwin Rockefeller correctly criticizes antitrust by pointing out that it “is a religion carried on by a cult of professionals.  It gives government officials the power to interfere whimsically with freedom of contract, frequently on behalf of losers.”

I suggest one small correction to his otherwise superb letter.

Rockefeller mistakenly (but forgivably) identifies Microsoft Corp. as “the foremost victim of antitrust in our time.”  In fact, however, the foremost victims of antitrust, in our time and in times past, are consumers – the hundreds of millions of politically hapless men and women who are robbed of the lower prices and innovative products that they would have enjoyed had antitrust’s “cult of professionals” not interfered in the dynamic market process in order to protect politically vocal producer groups from competition.

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