There are other arguments that opponents of cartels use in decrying cartel action. One thesis asserts that there is something wicked about formerly competing firms now uniting, e.g., “restricting competition” or “restraining trade.” Such restriction is supposed to injure the consumers’ freedom of choice. As Hutt phrased it in his previously cited article: “Consumers are free ... and consumers’ sovereignty is realizable, only to the extent to which the power of substitution exists.”

The myth of the evil cartel has been greatly bolstered by the nightmare image of “one big cartel.” “This is all very well,” one may say, “but suppose that all the firms in the country amalgamated or cartelized into One Big Cartel. What of the horrors then?”

WE HAVE SEEN THAT IN the free market economy people will tend to produce those goods most demanded by the consumers.1 Some economists have termed this system “consumers’ sovereignty.” Yet there is no compulsion about this.

The metaphorical shibboleth of “consumers’ sovereignty” has misled even the best economists. Many writers have used it as an ideal with which to contrast the allegedly imperfect free-market system. An example is Professor W.H.

“Fascism” has become a term of general derision and rebuke. It is tossed casually in the direction of anything a critic happens to dislike. Even libertarians—themselves the epitome of anti-fascism— have been called fascists from time to time. But fascism is a real concept, not a stick with wh...

The explanation of the free economic system constitutes a great architectural edifice. Starting from human action and its implications, proceeding to individual value scales and a money economy, we have demonstrated that the quantity of goods produced, the prices of consumers’ goods, the prices of productive factors, the interest rate, profits and losses, all can be explained by the same deductive apparatus.

Ever since the days of early classical economics, many writers have discussed “distribution theory” as if it were completely separate and isolated from production theory.69 Yet we have seen that “distribution” theory is simply production theory.

One very popular subdivision of economics has been “international trade.” In a purely free market, such as we are analyzing in the bulk of this work, there can be no such thing as an “international trade” problem. For nations might then possibly continue as cultural expressions, but not as economically meaningful units. Since there would be neither trade nor other barriers between nations nor currency differences, “international trade” would become a mere appendage to a general study of interspatial trade.