Final Jeopardy answer: “PC Jr.”

Please state your response in the form of a question. (cue theme music)

As you might expect, there was not a single case in which the defendants had cornered the market and then raised prices. Not a single defendant was actually guilty of the very thing anti-trust was supposedly created to protect against. This didn’t matter, however, because the theory was put forth that legal action can and should be taken against a company before they execute that final step of ripping off the customers as a precaution.

In fact, as I recall, there were two major schools of thought on this, one coming from Chicago one from Harvard and they were named accordingly. The Chicago theory was that we should wait until after an injury has occured to sue. The Harvard theory was that if a business met a profile of a monopolist, then it could be sued right away, because the occurance of a future injury could be assumed on the basis of the profile. The Harvard theory won the day.

Coyote Blog looks at the origin of Microsoft’s anit-trust troubles.

Charging for products and services (Microsoft’s new security suite) is bad because Microsoft should be providing those services as part of the core OS. Since Microsoft is a monopoly they can sell deficient products and force consumers to pay more. Nevermind this is the exact practice that brought the original MS anti-trust suits.

Anti-success advocates have a theory for how every business practice is anti-competitve. Charging too little is anti-competitive. Charging too much is gouging. Charging the same as everyone else is collusion. Success is bad, central planning is the only answer.