Re: Antitrust Bill of Rights

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

  On Thu, 27 Nov 1997 11:29:11 +0000, antimonopoly@juno.com (Ralph
  Anspach)wrote:
  
  
  >      Affirmative action, environmental protection or labor unions are
  >hardly nostrums.  They are necessities brought about by externality
  >market failures (or unequal bargaining power in the case of labor - read
  >Adam Smith,  that labor radical  on that,  folks,   Wealth of Nations, 
  >Modern Library,  pp. 66-67)  which occur even in a competitive
  >environment.
  
  I didn't mean to imply, by terming affirmative action, environmental
  protection or labor unions nostrums, that they have no validity at
  all.  Though I'm not sure how you could term past discrimination to be
  a market failure: it seems more like a failure to let markets do their
  proper work.  In any case, Ralph is quite correct in saying the
  following:
  
  >       Still,  monopolists who can pass on cures for externalities or
  >split their monopoly profits with their labor certainly have an advantage
  >over competitors in this regard. So this is a real problem.  But isn't
  >the answer still found in either taxing away monopoly profits, 
  >regulating the monopolists  or getting rid of the monopolists and then
  >forcing all entrepreneurs,  large or small,  to incorporate their
  >externalities into their prices and in establishing rules for labor which
  >all have to comply with - including exporters from labor-bashing
  >countries?  
  
  So if we're agreed that both conventionally liberal and conservative
  jurists (among others) might have good reasons to subvert anti-trust
  legislation, then what chance does any country have of implementing an
  effective anti-turst regimen?  Surely, any program of this kind needs
  to have it's own entrenched interests and elites to defend it.  What
  kinds of powerful interests would find anti-trust to their liking?
  
  Bill Cooper
  wfcooper@tiac.com