Editing United States antitrust law (section)

==Theory==
{{main|Antitrust law theory|Competition policy}}
The Supreme Court calls the Sherman Antitrust Act a "charter of freedom", designed to protect free enterprise in America.<ref>''[[Appalachian Coals, Inc. v. United States]]'', {{ussc|288|344|359|1933}} "As a charter of freedom, the act has a generality and adaptability comparable to that found to be desirable in constitutional provisions.".</ref> One view of the statutory purpose, urged for example by Justice Douglas, was that the goal was not only to protect consumers, but at least as importantly to prohibit the use of power to control the marketplace.<ref name=columbia>[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=334&page=495 ''United States v. Columbia Steel Co.''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130618024230/http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=334&page=495 |date=2013-06-18 }}, 334 U.S. 495, 535–36 (1948).</ref>

{{quote|We have here the problem of bigness. Its lesson should by now have been burned into our memory by Brandeis. The Curse of Bigness shows how size can become a menace--both industrial and social. It can be an industrial menace because it creates gross inequalities against existing or putative competitors. It can be a social menace ... In final analysis, size in steel is the measure of the power of a handful of men over our economy ... The philosophy of the Sherman Act is that it should not exist ... Industrial power should be decentralized. It should be scattered into many hands so that the fortunes of the people will not be dependent on the whim or caprice, the political prejudices, the emotional stability of a few self-appointed men ... That is the philosophy and the command of the Sherman Act. It is founded on a theory of hostility to the concentration in private hands of power so great that only a government of the people should have it.|source=Dissenting opinion of Justice Douglas in ''United States v. Columbia Steel Co.''<ref name=columbia/>}}

Contrary to this are efficiency arguments that antitrust legislation should be changed to primarily benefit consumers, and have no other purpose. [[Free market]] economist [[Milton Friedman]] states that he initially agreed with the underlying principles of antitrust laws (breaking up [[monopoly|monopolies]] and [[oligopoly|oligopolies]] and promoting more competition), but that he came to the conclusion that they do more harm than good.<ref name="friedman"/> [[Thomas Sowell]] argues that, even if a superior business drives out a competitor, it does not follow that competition has ended:

{{quote|In short, the financial demise of a competitor is not the same as getting rid of competition. The courts have long paid lip service to the distinction that economists make between competition—a set of economic conditions—and existing competitors, though it is hard to see how much difference that has made in judicial decisions. Too often, it seems, if you have hurt competitors, then you have hurt competition, as far as the judges are concerned.<ref name="www.forbes.com.546">{{cite magazine|title=KeepMedia: Purchase Item |url=https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0503/6309089a.html |access-date=2005-12-23 |magazine=Forbes |date=1999-03-05}}</ref>}}

[[Alan Greenspan]] argues that the very existence of antitrust laws discourages businessmen from some activities that might be socially useful out of fear that their business actions will be determined illegal and dismantled by government. In his essay entitled ''Antitrust,'' he says: "No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would otherwise have been possible." Those, like Greenspan, who oppose antitrust tend not to support competition as an end in itself but for its results—low prices. As long as a monopoly is not a [[coercive monopoly]] where a firm is securely insulated from ''potential'' competition, it is argued that the firm must keep prices low in order to discourage competition from arising. Hence, legal action is uncalled for and wrongly harms the firm and consumers.<ref name="www.polyconomics.com.547"/>

[[Thomas DiLorenzo]], an adherent of the [[Austrian School]] of economics, found that the "trusts" of the late 19th century were dropping their prices faster than the rest of the economy, and he holds that they were not monopolists at all.<ref>{{cite journal |last=DiLorenzo |first=Thomas J. |title=The Origins of Antitrust: An Interest-Group Perspective |journal=International Review of Law and Economics |volume=5 |issue=1 |year=1985 |pages=73–90 |doi=10.1016/0144-8188(85)90019-5 }}</ref> [[Ayn Rand]], the American writer, provides a moral argument against antitrust laws. She holds that these laws in principle criminalize any person engaged in making a business successful, and, thus, are gross violations of their individual expectations.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/antitrust_laws.html |title=Antitrust Laws — Ayn Rand Lexicon |publisher=Aynrandlexicon.com |date=2012-01-24 |access-date=2012-09-22 |archive-date=2012-10-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121003155233/http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/antitrust_laws.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Such laissez-faire advocates suggest that only a [[coercive monopoly]] should be broken up, that is the persistent, exclusive control of a vitally needed resource, good, or service such that the community is at the mercy of the controller, and where there are no suppliers of the same or substitute goods to which the consumer can turn. In such a monopoly, the monopolist is able to make pricing and production decisions without an eye on competitive market forces and is able to curtail production to [[price-gouge]] consumers. Laissez-faire advocates argue that such a monopoly can only come about through the use of physical coercion or fraudulent means by the corporation or by government intervention, and that there is no case of a coercive monopoly ever existing that was not the result of government policies.

Judge [[Robert Bork]]'s writings on antitrust law (particularly ''[[The Antitrust Paradox]]''), along with those of [[Richard Posner]] and other [[law and economics]] thinkers, were heavily influential in causing a shift in the U.S. Supreme Court's approach to antitrust laws since the 1970s, to be focused solely on what is best for the consumer rather than the company's practices.<ref name="'70s 327">{{Cite book|title= How We Got Here: The '70s|last= Frum|first= David|author-link= David Frum|year= 2000|publisher= Basic Books|location= New York, New York|isbn= 0-465-04195-7|page= [https://archive.org/details/howwegothere70sd00frum/page/327 327]|url= https://archive.org/details/howwegothere70sd00frum/page/327}}</ref>