Category: Interventionism

Interventionism covers possible ways in which a government can intervene in the market place and the effects of this intervention.

The Great Depression – Now and Then

The public, these days, is cheering on a government that is repeating the mistakes of 1929 one by one.

It is thus necessary to outline the parallels between 1921-1933 and 2001-2008:

The Inflationary Periods

1921-1929:

  • A sharp recession occurs during 1920 which liquidates the previous inflation from World War 1
  • The 1920s boom is kicked off: The Federal Reserve Bank, established in 1913, inflates the money supply via credit expansion from July 1921 through December 1928 at an average annual rate of 7.7% by printing money to purchase acceptances, commercial paper, government securities, silver certificates, and foreign bonds
  • Motivations of this inflationary policy were mostly:
    • Facilitate speedy recovery of the 1920 recession
    • Support for the government of Great Britain and German states and municipalities via foreign loans
    • Support for export lobbyists in the US by making more US$ available to foreigners
  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average soars from 63.90 in 1921 to 381.17 in October 1929
  • President Coolidge, in office until March of 1929, calls the American prosperity “absolutely sound”, stocks “cheap at current prices”; secretary Treasury Mellon announces “There is an abundant supply of easy money which should take care of any contingencies that might arise.”; both announce a “new era” of permanent prosperity (Ralph W. Robey, “The Capadores of Wall Street”)
  • In October 1929, a liquidation of unsound investments is kicked off by the crash of October 1929

2001-2007:

The Depression

1929 – 1933:

  • In March of 1929 President Herbert Hoover takes office
  • In October 1929, immediately after the crash, the Federal Reserve doubles its holdings of government securities, adding over $150 million in reserves, and discounts about $200 million for member banks, thus postponing necessary liquidations on the stock market and enabling NYC banks to take over brokers’ loans which other non-banks would otherwise have liquidated
  • The money supply expands by nearly 10% in one week
  • The Federal Reserve lowers the rediscount rate from 6% at the time of the crash to 4.5% by mid November
  • Secretary Treasury Mellon periodically assures the public that there is “plenty of credit available”
  • However, toward the end of 1929 all these measures prove futile and the money supply drops back to pre-crash levels
  • During November 1929 Hoover calls in White House conferences with industry leaders, getting them to pledge that wage rates will be maintained and not adjusted as lower prices for goods sold would mandate, thus postponing the necessary correction and prolonging the depression
  • On November 24th 1929 the Dept. of Commerce establishes a definite organization to join with the states in expanding public works programs
  • Hoover grants more subsidies to ship construction through the Federal Shipping Board
  • The Federal Farm Board
    • In June 1929, the Agricultural Marketing Act is passed, establishing the Federal Farm Board (FFB), furnished with $500 million by the Treasury to make all-purpose loans to farm cooperatives at low interest rates and to establish price stabilization corporations with the objective to artificially keep up farm prices
    • On October 26th 1929 the newly established FFB launches a program to lend $150 million to wheat coops and establishes the Farmers’ National Grain Corporation with $10 million capital; as farm prices continue to fall, the Farmers’ National itself begins to buy up wheat to keep up prices; the inevitable fall of prices is thus postponed as farmers are encouraged to keep producing surpluses; in 1930 prices continue to fall as the FFB keeps accumulating wheat surpluses
    • In spring of 1930 Hoover acquires from Congress an added $100 million in order for the FFB to continue lending and buying and establishes the Grain Stabilization Corporation (GSC) to replace Farmers’ National and redouble price stabilization efforts
    • By June 30 1930 the GSC has accumulated over 65 million bushels of wheat held off the market; prices continue to fall
    • On November 15, the GSC is authorized to purchase as much wheat as necessary to stop any further decline in wheat prices and buys up another 200 million bushels until mid 1931; prices continue to fall
    • The FFB finally decides to dump the excess stock abroad and prices fall even more drastically, the entire operation significantly postponed the necessary correction and prolonged the depression
    • By the end of the Hoover administration the FFB has incurred cotton and wheat losses of over $300 million
    • Other programs launched by the FFB that either failed in the same manner or proved impractical from the outset: Cotton Stabilization Corporation, National Wool Marketing Corporation, National Livestock Marketing Association, California Grape Control Board
  • July 3rd 1930: Congress approves the expenditure of a giant $915 million public works program
  • Throughout 1930 the New York Federal Reserve lowers the rediscount rate from 4.5% to 2%; the money supply remains stagnant
  • In mid 1930 the Smoot-Hawley Tariff is signed into law, raising import tariffs to record highs, and spreading protectionism all over the world – consumers and exporters suffer from the ensuing decline of international trade
  • October 1930: Hoover threatens federal regulation of the New York Stock Exchange, unless it bans the practice of short-selling, which would speed up the market correction
  • By December 1930 factory employment has fallen by 16%, manufacturing production by 20%
  • Government expenses rise from 14.3% of Gross Private Product (GPP) in 1929 to 18.2% in 1930
  • May 1931: The crisis spreads to Europe with the run on the Austrian Boden-Kredit Anstalt – the Bank of England, the Austrian government, Rothschild, the Bank of International Settlements, and the New York Fed grant millions of dollars to it
  • In 1931 unemployment in the United States rises to 16%
  • Government expenses rise from 18.2% of GPP in 1930 to 24.3% in 1931
  • The Bacon-Davis act is passed in 1931, requiring a maximum 8 hr work day and payment of at least a prevailing wage on public works projects, thus increasing unemployment
  • By fall of 1931 all agitation to preserve wage rates proves futile and wages begin to fall
  • In fall of 1931 Stock Exchange authorities restrict short selling, prolonging the necessary adjustment of prices
  • In 1931, upon Hoover threatening Federal legislation, the largest US banks establish the National Credit Corporation which quickly moves to bail out failing banks, loaning $153 over a three month period, thus prolonging the misallocation of resources
  • In 1932 sales taxes are imposed on gasoline and other articles, new taxes are levied on bank checks, bond transfers, telephone, telegraph, and radio messages, income taxes are raised from a 1.5% – 5 % range to a 4%-8% range, the corporate income tax is raised from 12% to 13.75%, the gift tax of 33.33% is reinstated
  • Government intrusion increases from 24.3% of GPP in 1931 to 28.9% in 1932
  • In January of 1932 Congress hurriedly establishes the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), equipped with $500 million of taxpayer money, and empowered to issue further debentures of up to $1.5 billion
  • During the first 5 months of operation the RFC makes $1 billion worth of loans of which about 60% are lent to banks, and 20% to railroads whose securities are held by a lot of savings banks
  • In July 1932 the Emergency Relief and Construction Act increases the RFC’s authorized capital from $2 billion to $3.8 billion
  • Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York establishes the first governmental unemployment relief authority: the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, equipped with $25 million; other states quickly follow
  • In February 1932 the Glass-Steagall act is passed which greatly broadens the assets that the Federal Reserve Bank can purchase and permits it to use government bonds as collateral for its notes, in addition to commercial paper
  • Throughout 1932, the Federal Reserve increases its reserves by another $660 million to $2.51 billion, an unprecedented increase in history; the money supply keeps falling regardless, because commercial banks begin accumulating excess reserves; excess reserves rise from 2.4% in the first quarter of 1932 to 10.7% in the second
  • In July of 1932 the Federal Home Loan Bank Act establishes 12 district banks, equipped with $125 million of taxpayer money, and the authority to purchase mortgages at as low as 50% of value
  • In the beginning of 1933 many states impose compulsory debt moratoria, debt liquidations are halted
  • In 1933, bank failures rise to 4,000 from 1,453 in 1932
  • In 1933, as a response to increasing bank runs, states impose bank holidays, allowing banks not to redeem deposits
  • In March 1933 Hoover leaves office; as a result of his unprecedented government intervention, by now production has fallen by more than half from 1929, unemployment is at 25%, and GNP has fallen almost in half; the country is in the depths of the Great Depression
  • President Roosevelt continues Hoovers failed New Deal policies of massive government intervention. The US economy remains in a miserable state with above double digit unemployment until 1938 and with a horrible war lasting from then through 1945 during which people are forced to ration consumption and pay up to 90% taxes. The Depression comes to an end after WW2 when malinvestments are liquidated, taxes are but by 1/3 and government spending is cut by 2/3
  • Bottom Line: A recession that was the correction of a boom caused by government intervention in the money and credit market, was prolonged and turned into a decade long depression, again due to government intervention as a result of an unwillingness to let the correction occur clean and quickly.

2007 – 2008:

  • From 2000-2008 the percentage of government intrusion into the private sector increases steadily
  • Throughout 2007 and 2008 the Federal Reserve Bank lowers the federal funds rate from 5.25% in September 2006 to 1% by October 2008
  • Stock and Home Prices keep falling continuously
  • In December 2007 the Federal Reserve Bank introduces the Term Auction Facility (TAF) in order to purchase short term debt from troubled banks who need funds; so far it has injected about $400 billion under this program
  • On January 11, 2008, Bank of America announces that it plans to purchase the troubled bank Countrywide Financial for $4.1 billion in stock
  • In March 2008 the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provides an emergency loan to the troubled bank Bear Stearns; the measure proves useless and the bank is sold to JP Morgan Chase at $10 per share
  • In March 2008 the Federal Reserve announces that it will inject another $200 billion to battle the problems that banks are having with unsound investments
  • On September 7th 2008 the troubled semi-public banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are taken over by the federal government; the banks own or guarantee about half of the U.S.’s $12 trillion mortgage market
  • In September 2008 the SEC imposes a temporary ban on short-selling
  • On September 16 2008, creates an $85 billion credit facility in order to support the troubled insurer AIG at the cost to AIG of the issuance of a stock warrant to the the Federal Reserve Bank for 79.9% of the equity of AIG
  • On October 3rd 2008 the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 establishes the Office of Financial Stability, equipped with up to $700 billion in order to buy worthless securities with the objective of stabilizing their prices, home prices continue to fall
  • So far, the combined total of all government actions taken in order to battle the depression have amounted up to $8 trillion – aggravating the crisis significantly
  • From November 07 to November 08 the Federal Reserve Bank more than doubles the amount of assets on its balance sheet by $1.2 trillion to now $2 trillion, but banks build up excess reserves and thus the effect on the money supply is minimal
  • As these lines are written the crisis spreads to the job market. All across the country people are beginning to lose their jobs and production/consumption figures are beginning to slow down significantly; due to the misguided government policy these numbers will, however, turn much worse as the crisis progresses
  • The new government, taking office in January 2009 will enact further measures of government intrusion, including public works programs, raise taxes, and increase the national debt, repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression
  • As things have played out so far 1929 has roughly resembled 2007 and 1930 has resembled 2008; 2009, 2010, and 2011 will most likely resemble 1931, 1932, and 1933

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Government Intervention and The Great Depression

I liked today’s email newsletter statement from Andrew Davis, the Libertarian Party’s Director of Communications:

“The 1930s recession became the Great Depression because policymakers didn’t take the necessary actions,” said Democratic economic adviser Jared Bernstein in a recent Washington Post article. “Nobody wants to make that mistake this time around.”

This comment from Bernstein summarizes the prevailing mood of the Obama administration as it looks to take over the reins in January.  So, what does this mean for you, the taxpayer?

Unfortunately, more government spending.

Obama has just recently announced plans to spend at least $700 billion in order to stimulate the economy. This figure includes New Deal-styled programs that will explode the size of government, and dramatically add to the national debt—money that will be owed by generations to come.

Talk about redistributing the wealth!

Despite the obvious problems with government spending even more money when it should be cutting spending, Obama is projected to sign into law a new “Raw Deal” for the taxpayers within days of becoming president—if not even on the day he is inaugurated.

The justifications you will hear for this new spending all revolve around the “New Deal” policies of the Great Depression, so we thought you should know the truth about Obama’s “Raw Deal” and the myths behind what really pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression.

Here’s a hint: It wasn’t FDR.

Like Democrats, “many people are looking back to the Great Depression and the New Deal for answers to our problems,” says George Mason University Economics Professor Tyler Cowen. “But while we can learn important lessons from this period, they’re not always the ones taught in school.”

What Cowen means is that the conventional wisdom of the Great Depression is absolutely wrong: Government spending did not save the economy.  “In short, expansionary monetary policy and wartime orders from Europe, not the well-known policies of the New Deal, did the most to make the American economy climb out of the Depression.”

Harold L. Cole, an economist at UCLA, agrees with Cowen:

“The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes. Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”

This is the danger we face with Obama and his “Raw Deal” for taxpayers.  Instead of staying out of the economy and letting it work itself out, Obama is continuing the same policies as those of FDR and the Bush administration and spending taxpayer money that will have no positive results.

And it’s not just the spending we have to be worried about under an Obama administration; it is the regulatory policy that may come as a result of using capitalism as a scapegoat for the recent economic crisis.

“There is a familiar urge to restrict those who got us into this mess, but regulation is a nasty business—nasty because the law of unintended consequences is always there to show us how we got it wrong,” says Thomas F. Cooley, the Richard R. West Dean Of New York University’s Stern School Of Business, and Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA. “The danger we face at this fork in the road is the conventional wisdom that associates more regulation with better regulation and more restrictive policies with less risk. History teaches us that the opposite is usually true and that the costs of getting it wrong can last for decades.”

If Obama is to learn anything about the economy from the lessons of the Great Depression, let it be that government intervention is like sending a car mechanic to perform open-heart surgery.  The complications that arise will have long-term, catastrophic effects.

What better example of this than Fannie Mae—a product of the New Deal that is now at the heart of today’s economic problems.

The Libertarian Party and our members have been saying this from Day 1 of the economic crisis (and for many, many years before): Government is not the answer.

Our solution? Less is more.  That is, less government is more economic prosperity.

Essentially, get government out of the way so that the market can adjust.  This path will not be without its bumps and hardships, but it’s best for the long-term economic stability of the nation. What would have taken three or four years to fix through the market will now take at least a decade because of government intervention.

In the coming days of financial woe, and the coming years of the Obama administration, remember the lessons of history and challenge those around you to avoid continuing the myths of government effectiveness, especially when it comes to economic policy.

Live free,
Andrew Davis
Director of Communications
Libertarian Party

Amen to that.

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Citigroup Agony Prolonged

The associated press writes in “Government unveils bold plan to rescue Citigroup”:

The government unveiled a bold plan Sunday to rescue Citigroup, injecting a fresh $20 billion into the troubled firm as well as guaranteeing hundreds of billions of dollars in risky assets.

There is nothing bold about injecting $20 billion and guaranteeing hundreds of billions. It’s what we have been doing, keep doing, and will be doing until we’re broke.

The action, announced jointly by the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., is aimed at shoring up a huge financial institution whose collapse would wreak havoc on the already crippled financial system and the U.S. economy.

Its collapse would wreak havoc? Like the havoc that we have been seeing since we started to bail out one failing business after another with billions of dollars?

The sweeping plan is geared to stemming a crisis of confidence in the company, whose stock has been hammered in the past week on worries about its financial health.

There is nothing sweeping about this plan. The stock has been hammered because the company isn’t worth a dime

“With these transactions, the U.S. government is taking the actions necessary to strengthen the financial system and protect U.S. taxpayers and the U.S. economy,” the three agencies said in a statement issued late Sunday night. “We will continue to use all of our resources to preserve the strength of our banking institutions, and promote the process of repair and recovery and to manage risks.”

How are we protecting the U.S. taxpayer by taking their money and throwing at failed business operations. This is so far from reality, if it wasn’t so sad I would say it’s laughable.

The Citigroup rescue came after a weekend of marathon discussions led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who is being tapped by President-elect Barack Obama as his Treasury chief also participated.

This gives us a preview of the “Change” that Mr. Obama is about to bring: The person who will lead the bailout scams will have a different name. That’s about it.

Vikram S. Pandit, Citi’s chief executive officer, welcomed the action. “We appreciate the tremendous effort by the government to assure market stability,” he said in a statement.

Of course he does. Who doesn’t like getting rewarded handsomely for being a miserable failure.

The $20 billion cash injection by the Treasury Department will come from the $700 billion financial bailout package. The capital infusion follows an earlier one — of $25 billion — in Citigroup in which the government also received an ownership stake.

…and which of course didn’t resolve anything at all. The new $20 billion will accomplish just as much.

As part of the plan, Treasury and the FDIC will guarantee against the “possibility of unusually large losses” on up to $306 billion of risky loans and securities backed by commercial and residential mortgages.

These number are insane. Yet, they don’t match the insanity going on at Citi. This bank has $1.1 trillion in off-balance sheet assets alone. That is only on top of all the defaulting loans already on their balance sheet. $306 billion will be of help for a few months to a year. They will do nothing but postpone judgment day.

As a condition of the rescue, Citigroup is barred from paying quarterly dividends to shareholders of more than 1 cent a share for three years unless the company obtains consent from the three federal agencies. The bank is currently paying a dividend of 16 cents, halved from a 32-cent payout in the previous quarter. The agreement also places restrictions on executive compensation, including bonuses.

Among all the nonsense I am surprised to actually find something that makes sense.

Specifically, Citigroup will modify mortgages to help people avoid foreclosure along the lines of an FDIC plan that was put into effect at IndyMac Bank, a major failed savings and loan based in Pasadena, Calif.

…which of course means that the underlying mortgages will have to be adjusted on the books (as they should). More write downs ahead…

Citigroup is such a large, interconnected player in the financial system that it is seen by Washington policymakers as too big to fail. The company has operations stretching around the globe in more than 100 countries.

…and that’s precisely why we should NOT bail them out as I explained in The Economics of Coporate Bailouts.

Citigroup was especially hard hit by the meltdown in risky, subprime mortgages made to people with tarnished credit or low incomes. Foreclosures on those mortgages spiked, leaving Citi and other financial companies wracking up huge losses on the soured investments. The company has failed to turn a profit during the past four quarters and has announced plans to slash thousands of jobs.

…but what they are not telling us is that Citi will pretty soon be writing down massive amounts of simple consumer credit, credit card debt. This appears to be an issue that the media and government don’t even want to hint at.

Again: Citi is a lost cause. Stop throwing more bodies onto the pile. It won’t work.

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The Economics of Corporate Bailouts

The objectives of economic policy are to continuously improve the well-being of the largest possible number of people in society by making sure that the scarce resources available on earth are utilized so that every one’s most urgent needs are satisfied before less urgent ones are addressed.

When a business squanders factors of production which, from the consumers‘ point of view, would satisfy more urgent and/or ample needs in other lines of production, it operates at a loss. This sends a signal to the entrepreneur running the business to do one of the following, lest his operation contribute to a deterioration of the welfare of society:

– find a better use for the factors of production employed (produce different, more demanded goods)
– find more effective ways to employ them (increase the output of the factors employed)
– abort the operation, make the factors available to entrepreneurs who plan to employ them in more urgent lines of production, thus releasing them from their current occupation (declare bankruptcy)

Those are the choices he has under a capitalistic system on a market where the consumer, the common man, is supreme, a market based upon voluntary action. Any of these steps would swiftly remedy the misallocation of the resources and align them to the benefit of the common people, the consumers.

(Whether the workers employed in the business are paid market or union wages, they will easily be able to find a new, profitable, occupation at wages that are equal to or below the ones they are currently being paid. Overall, the consumers that the new employer sells to will benefit to the extent that the new workers contribute to a larger supply of valued and demanded goods. True, the individual worker may not be happy about the fact that he has to adjust and/or start off at a level that is slightly below his previous one. However, the people he produces for are workers, too. For the majority of the products produced in a capitalist society are produced for the common man. Everyone is now consumer, now producer, and would like to be favored in both roles. But there can be no other means of reconciling these conflicting interests than making sure that at any given point in time as many workers and other resources as possible are, from the consumers’ point of view, employed in the most urgent lines of production. The greatest harm is inflicted upon society as a whole if resources are withdrawn from these most urgent uses and occupied in less urgent, wasteful, operations.)

In an interventionist system, however, the entrepreneur who operates at a loss has another choice: He can petition with the government for a bailout. Under this arrangement, the government obtains additional tax money from the people under its governance territory and uses it in order to cover the losses generated by the business. It hence forces the people to restrict their consumption in order to keep up an operation that, from the their own point of view contributes to a lowering of their standard of living. It relieves the entrepreneur from the responsibility for this damage and lets the taxpayer, the consumers, shoulder it.

Alternatively the government can obtain the money by having the central bank produce it and make it available to it in a credit transaction. This would of course result in inflation and credit expansion, which again the consumer pays for in the form of prices that are higher than they would have been without the intervention (this could be rising prices, but it could also just mean prices that are dropping more slowly).

The government could also borrow the money in a credit transaction on the market, along with the implicit commitment to tax people in the future, meaning to forcefully take their money, in order to repay this debt. All this does is to shift the burden of restricted consumption into the future, while in the present withdrawing resources that capitalists may have employed for factors of production in profitable, and thus urgently demanded, operations, instead of loaning it to an entity that can simply repay by stealing it from others, and thus has no incentive to address consumer demands. This can be vividly witnessed in the fact that the money is made available to largely unprofitable businesses in a corporate bailout.

If unprofitable, in other words wasteful and less-urgently needed operations are subsidized while proper conduct is taxed and thus punished, it is only to be expected that more undesired behavior will be encouraged. Irresponsibility, short-sightedness, and imprudent conduct in business will the the inevitable outcomes over time.

Either way, such a policy of course necessitates a well planned and thought out propaganda and fear campaign before public approval will be granted.

The management style of the business will then in no way be a profit oriented one. If not already bureaucratic, it will become an inherently bureaucratic operation. But the bureaucratic style is precisely the opposite of what it needs. It needs to stop withdrawing resources from occupations where they could fulfill more urgent and ample needs from the consumers’ point of view.

But even from the business’s point of view there is no long term help for its employees and managers if its failed operation is bailed out. The bureaucracy and inherent lack of innovation will ultimately maneuver the business toward a devastating collapse which can no longer be justifiably funded out of tax money. All employees will lose their occupation. But since the failed operation went on for much longer than necessary, the bulk of the employees will be trained in ineffective, outdated, and unprofitable procedures. Now it will be even harder for them to adjust to the conditions on the market.

This holds true for any type of business, no matter what products and services it provides. Whether it builds cars or brokers credit transactions, the consumers’ judgment tells the entrepreneur whether they are supplied with the most urgently demanded goods or not.

The more resources the business employs, the more suppliers it purchases from, and the larger the loss, the more will the standard of living of the common people, the consumers, deteriorate, if the bailout intervention continues. Every single dollar appropriated would be better employed by the consumer it is forcefully taken from. Every dollar used to obliterate the loss is misspent. The larger the business that is being bailed out, the more immediate harm is inflicted upon the common man.

Thus, there is nothing that could be farther from the truth than the argument that some corporations are too big to fail. It is hard to find a more sinister and callous consumer scam perpetrated upon the populace than the corporate bailout. It adversely affects the standard of living of the common man, who is consumer, taxpayer and worker at the same time, and on top of that leaves the employees of the business poorly trained and inflexible once the inevitable collapse occurs.

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Antitrust and Monopolies

The Objectives of Antitrust Intervention

Public opinion believes that the societal apparatus of compulsion and coercion, the government, should protect individuals from monopolies: Monopolies restrict the supply of products and harm the welfare of the common man. The government has to step in and put and end to this injustice. Its intervention is supposed to foster free enterprise and fair competition and protect the poor and hapless from powerful corporations.

The term monopoly needs to be defined more precisely here. There are two types of monopolies which have completely different implications.

The supporter of antitrust enforcement by the government does not make a distinction between the two and hence arrives at flawed conclusions.

There are the Coercive Monopoly and the Market Monopoly.

The Coercive Monopoly is a business which is protected from competition by the government. It is not the monopoly that needs to be discussed here. It is, indeed, a monopoly that harms the consumers and benefits those who are protected. All that would need to happen to end this type of monopoly would be for the government to withdraw itself.

The type of monopoly in question is the ‘Market Monopoly’: Antitrust proponents claim that an unhampered free market produces market monopolies and that it is the government’s job to prevent this from happening.

The Market Monopoly

The market monopoly is a business that operates on a voluntary market. A business in that environment is comprised of a group of people that jointly works towards withdrawing factors of production (raw materials, labor, etc.) from the market in voluntary contracts, and combines them in lines of production where they create goods that are, from the consumer‘s point of view, worth more than where the factors were employed prior to withdrawal, aiming for an entrepreneurial profit.

This in itself is nothing but the schoolbook definition of a business on the free market, seeking to make a profit. The particular thing about a business that holds a market monopoly is that there is no other one that sells the same good.

But this does not change the fact that, based upon the law of marginal value preference, the market monopoly business has to set its price based upon consumer response. It cannot charge an infinite price for its goods. It also does not change the fact that it has to produce a useful product that satisfies a consumer demand. It also does not change the fact that this whole process is completely voluntary and peaceful on the part of the seller, as well as on the part of the buyer. It also does not change the fact that capitalists always stand ready to provide capital to entrepreneurs who are completely free at any time to identify cheaper processes and sell at cheaper prices and/or better quality, outstripping the previous monopoly, and ultimately reaping a profit to satisfy the profit-seeking capitalists, while at the same time improving the consumer’s situation.

Yet, for the sake of the antitrust proponents’ argument, we shall pass in silence all these facts and inquire as to what effects the government’s antitrust intervention will have regardless.

The Antitrust Intervention

What antitrust proponents now ultimately suggest is that the government decree a maximum number of goods to be sold by this monopoly business, and step in with police force if the business dares to satisfy more consumers than allowed by its decree. The fact that the business, as well as the consumers, are merely acting voluntarily towards what they consider to be their best choice, does not interest the antitrust proponents: In their minds, the fact that the people, in their role as consumers with every penny and every dollar, are casting a conscious vote, by choosing to purchase the product they seek, is a mere expression of the ignorance and the gullibility on the part of the public. The government is omniscient, its will supreme. Its decree has to be followed and enforced when violated. How dare the consumers make the decision who to buy from!

The government employs market share statistics, based on the revenue generated from the products in question. It decrees, for example, that company XYZ, is not allowed to sell more than the equivalent of 40% market share worth of its, say, operating system software ABC. Why exactly 40%? Why not 39.95% Why not 40.1%? The approach is, without the slightest doubt, completely arbitrary.

The Consequences of Antitrust Intervention

After the government steps in and limits the supply of the goods in question, who ultimately suffers? The marginal consumers, who would have purchased the additional unit of the product whose supply has been cut off. The objective of protecting the average consumer from overpriced or bad products obviously fails. In fact, the policy attains the exact opposite.

After the government has intervened, sooner or later a new entrepreneur will step in and fill the gap with a similar good. However, he will not be under any pressure from from the previous market monopoly company. He merely stepped in to fill the gap, because the police intervened and outlawed by aggression any more sales from the market monopoly business. At this point, his position is not threatened at all. Due to his inexperience and lack of competitive pressure, his goods will most likely be inferior and more expensive than the previous market monopoly’s goods. It will take him much longer to get to a point where his product can measure up to the previous market monopoly business’s product. Economies of scale will set in at a much later stage for this entrepreneur, so as he increases production, his prices will not drop as fast as previously. Marginal consumers will have to do with his inferior, higher priced product.

The fact that a new entrepreneur steps in to fill the gap will not in the slightest make the market more competitive or fair. Quite the opposite: The coercive intervention creates a less competitive environment with less competitive pressure for the new business, since it doesn’t have to fear competition from the previous market monopoly business, and the consumers ultimately suffer.

The intervention sends out the message that as an entrepreneur you shouldn’t strive for perfection when selling to consumers. For if your product becomes too popular your output might be restricted by the government.

Furthermore, it encourages the entrepreneur to attain a good standing in government, and thus to allocate funds toward bribing the politically connected in the form of campaign contributions, rather than invest in factors of production that would increase the output of consumer goods in the future.

Thus the policy doesn’t help the consumer at all and is bound to fail at attaining the stated objective.

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