Creeping Tentacles Of The Antitrust Octopus

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 is a major milestone at the beginning of our long road to Statism.  It gave our government a big hammer to pound private corporations into submission.  In effect it makes it illegal for corporations to set their prices lower than, higher than, or the same as the competition.  Lower than means it is eliminating competition in order to establish a monopoly.  Higher than means it is gouging the public by taking advantage of its monopolistic status.  The same as means collusion with its competitors to fix prices.  Thus, any corporation is vulnerable to arbitrary government edict at any time.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Fascism, one of the three forms of Collectivism, is characterized by private ownership of property but with governmental control over that private property–where government becomes a “partner of industry.”  We have moved steadily in this direction since the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the Statists (Liberals) have convinced most of the American public that government regulations are necessary to prevent private corporations from taking advantage of their “power.”  This fallacy is only made superficially plausible by the equivocation of “economic power” (the power of creative ability) with the power of physical force (governmental force), but that is another essay.  Suffice to say for now that governmental regulations are strangling private businesses in America to clear the path for the government to take over not only private businesses but all aspects of our lives.

History demonstrates that people suffer and are impoverished under any form of totalitarian government.  This explains our current recession.  For America to become prosperous again we must drastically reduce regulations and governmental control over our economy.  This is not rocket science.  A nation’s prosperity is proportional to its freedom.

http://capitalism.aynrand.org/creeping-tentacles-of-the-antitrust-octopus/