Monopoly and Competition

It's trendy to decry competition as socially destructive. The reverse is true, argues Tibor Machan.  

Despite the many illustrious forerunners in its six-hundred year prehistory, Carl Menger (1840-1921) was the true and sole founder of the Austrian school of economics proper. He merits this title if for no other reason than that he created the system of value and price theory that constitutes the core of Austrian economic theory. But Menger did more than this: he also originated and consistently applied the correct, praxeological method for pursuing theoretical research in economics. Thus in its method and core theory, Austrian economics always was and will forever remain Mengerian economics.

In The Constitution of Liberty Friedrich Hayek warned that the rule of law could evolve into the rule of despotism unless the rules that are enforced by the state are known, certain, and prospective rather than retrospective. Throughout history, a hallmark of governmental tyranny has been the opposite kind of behavior: random arrests and incarceration for breaking "laws" that the alleged lawbreakers had no way of knowing about; constantly shifting definitions of what is legal and what is not; and sudden announcements that behavior which was thought for years to be legal and proper was illegal.

Clinton's antitrust man calls for the creation of a global antitrust authority. But antitrust is never legitimate, says D.T. Armentano, especially not on a global level.  

The system has never worked but less now than ever. Gene Callahan calls for eliminating patent protection.

University students are going berserk again. No, they are not swallowing goldfish, going on panty raids or stuffing themselves into phone booths, the excesses of a bygone day (the first two are now politically incorrect, and what with modern technology there is nary a phone booth to be found). Nor are they taking over deans' offices and entire college campuses in the name of stopping their institutions from buying real estate in surrounding poor communities. Nor, yet, at the moment, are they protesting in favor of the environment, or bashing free trade, other favorite activities of theirs. What, then, you may ask, are they up to nowadays? They are insisting that the university logo t-shirts and baseball caps sold in campus stores not be manufactured under sweatshop conditions, nor with contributions from child labor.

Watching Joel Klein of the Antitrust Division on television, speaking about the dangers that Microsoft poses to the public, calls to mind a passage from Martin van Creveld's The Rise and Decline of the State: "Born in sin, the bastard offspring of declining autocracy and bureaucracy run amok, the state is a giant wielded by pygmies.

The leading victim of antitrust is cheering on an antitrust suit against AOL's "Instant Messenger," a product which is given away at no charge. Shawn Ritenour decries the hypocrisy. 

William Anderson answers an objection to his defense of Microsoft. 

It is time to refute claims of gas gouging and explain (once again) that not only were these price increases inevitable, but they have been specially packaged in Washington, D.C.