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… is from page 424 of Robert Bork’s masterful 1978 book, The Antitrust Paradox [2]:
[I]ntellectuals who speak to the subject regularly commit the logical fallacy of praising the antitrust laws as the economic counterpart of the First Amendment, designed to keep economic markets free even as the First Amendment keeps the market for speech and ideas free. The analogy, of course, reverses the true relationship of the two laws in a way compatible with intellectual class tastes. The First Amendment has become a severe limitation on the power of government to intervene in the competition of speech and ideas…. The antitrust laws, on the other hand, do not curb government; they are themselves governmental interventions in a marketplace, justified on the theory that competition is not to be trusted there, as it is to be trusted in the speech market. Thus, the First Amendment and the antitrust laws stand in philosophic opposition to one another.
DBx: This point is deep and important.
In liberal societies, all but today’s woke Progressives (and the snowflakes who increasingly populate college campuses), correctly understand that the best ‘cure’ for misinformation and misunderstanding is the better information and superior speech that emerge when speech is free. This understanding is not premised on any claim that freedom of speech will ensure instantaneous or ‘perfect’ responses to ‘bad’ speech. Instead, this understanding is premised on the realization that there is no better means of detecting and ‘curing’ misinformation and misunderstanding than freedom of speech. Put another way, the wisest support for freedom of speech is premised on the realization that government officials are neither sufficiently informed nor trustworthy to impose ‘truth,’ or even to use the coercive powers at their disposal to proscribe what people peacefully say regarding it.
It’s too bad that a similar liberal understanding isn’t more widespread and deep regarding non-coercive activity – industry and commerce – in the economy. The case against antitrust is not that markets are or will ever be perfect. Instead, the case against antitrust is that the most reliable means of detecting and curing market imperfections is the profit motive that incites entrepreneurs to discover and ‘correct’ market failures in ways that improve the performance of markets (meaning: improve markets’ service to consumers). Put another way, the wisest support for “freedom of markets” – and, thus, for abolishing antitrust – is premised on the realization that government officials are neither sufficiently informed nor trustworthy to impose ‘competitive outcomes,’ or even to use the coercive powers at their disposal to proscribe the peaceful ways with which businesses experiment to increase their market shares, to decrease their costs of operation, or both.