According to Hannah Cox, “Are we about to enter a new era of antitrust? If enemies of tech companies get their way, maybe. It’s been decades since the government brought a successful case against a company, and a look back at the history of antitrust indicates it probably never should have tried to begin with. “
This reminds us of Ayn Rand’s excellent identification of the nature of antitrust:
“The alleged purpose of the Antitrust laws was to protect competition; that purpose was based on the socialistic fallacy that a free, unregulated market will inevitably lead to the establishment of coercive monopolies. But, in fact, no coercive monopoly has ever been or ever can be established by means of free trade on a free market. Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action. (For a full demonstration of this fact, I refer you to the works of the best economists.) The Antitrust laws were the classic example of a moral inversion prevalent in the history of capitalism: an example of the victims, the businessmen, taking the blame for the evils caused by the government, and the government using its own guilt as a justification for acquiring wider powers, on the pretext of “correcting” the evils.”
“Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.” [“Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason,” The Objectivist Newsletter, Feb. 1962, 1]