Edited by Gary Hull
The Abolition of Antitrust asserts that antitrust laws—on economic, legal, and moral grounds—are bad, and provides convincing evidence supporting arguments for their total abolition. The Sherman Antitrust Act and the body of case law that it has generated must be seen in the broader context of traditional concerns that government has always had with monopolies in the United States, from the nineteenth century onwards. Every year new antitrust prosecutions arise in the U.S. courts, as in the cases against 3M and Visa/MasterCard, as well as a number of ongoing antitrust cases, such as those involving Microsoft and college football's use of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Gary Hull and the contributing authors show that these cases—as well as the very Antitrust Act itself—are based on an erroneous interpretation of the history of American business, are premised on bad economics and equivocate between economic and political power—the power to produce versus the power to use physical force. They argue that antitrust prosecutions are based on a horrible moral inversion: that it is acceptable to sacrifice America's best producers.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: The Economics of Antitrust
1. Barriers to Entry
Dominick T. Armentano
2. The Philosophic Origins of Antitrust
John Ridpath
3. The False Profits of Antitrust
Richard M. Salsman
Part Two: The Legal History of Antitrust
4. Reversing Course: American Attitudes about Monopolies, 1607–1890
Eric Daniels
5. Antitrust: The War Against Contract
Tom Bowden
Part Three: The Morality of Antitrust
6. Antitrust:"Free Competition" at Gunpoint
Harry Binswanger
7. Antitrust Is Immoral
Gary Hull
Appendix: Major Antitrust Legislation
Notes on Contributors
Index
(Softcover; 195 pages)
