… is from page 31 of the late Fred McChesney’s 1995 essay “In Search of the Public-Interest Model of Antitrust,” which serves as the Introduction to Part One of the 1995 collection edited by Fred S. McChesney and William F. Shughart II, The Causes and Consequences of Antitrust (footnotes deleted):
In the long run, expected antitrust penalties just become costs of doing business. Prices will eventually increase to the extent that the conditions of demand and supply allow sellers to pass these higher costs on to consumers. The end result is fewer producers selling at higher prices – just the opposite of antitrust’s intended effect.
DBx: I offer this quotation on this, the 135th anniversary of the signing of the Sherman Antitrust Act – an event that, in my view, is unfortunate. Fred McChesney shared my view – or, more accurately, because I learned from him – I share Fred’s view. With his final few words above, Fred was being facetious, for he knew that the real intention behind the Sherman Act and other antitrust statutes is to protect politically powerful producer groups from the competition of producers that are more efficient or more entrepreneurial but less politically powerful.
It is unfortunate that the Trump administration is continuing the Biden administration’s economically harmful revival of active antitrust ‘enforcement.’
