Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 428 of my former GMU Econ colleagues Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s and Jack C. High’s excellent July 1988 Economic Inquiry paper, “Antitrust and Competition, Historically Considered“:

The theory of perfect competition judges efficiency by the equality of marginal cost and price. Under the assumptions of the model, this standard is unassailable. But where the most efficient production techniques are not given and known, where consumer tastes are not fixed and readily apparent, where costs are not easily computed and measured in advance of production, enterprise serves to discover efficient methods of production and organization. The competitive process rewards efficient producers and penalizes inefficient ones. Without this process, there is less assurance that efficient firms will emerge and survive.

DBx: Yes. And antitrust, which is premised on the notion that government officials, judges, and juries can somehow divine what are the optimal organizational arrangements and contractual and commercial practices, obstructs this competitive process of trial, error, and discovery.