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The Antitrust lawsan unenforceable, uncompliable, unjudicable mess of contradictionshave for decades kept American businessmen under a silent, growing reign of terror. Yet these laws were created and, to this day, are upheld by the conservatives, as a grim monument to their lack of political philosophy, of economic knowledge and of any concern with principles. Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful intent to monopolize; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for unfair competition or restraint of trade; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for collusion or conspiracy. There is only one difference in the legal treatment accorded to a criminal or to a businessman: the criminals rights are protected much more securely and objectively than the businessmans.

Choose Your Issues,
The Objectivist Newsletter, Jan. 1962, 1

The alleged purpose of the Antitrust laws was to protect competition; that purpose was based on the socialistic fallacy that a free, unregulated market will inevitably lead to the establishment of coercive monopolies. But, in fact, no coercive monopoly has ever been or ever can be established by means of free trade on a free market. Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action. (For a full demonstration of this fact, I refer you to the works of the best economists.) The Antitrust laws were the classic example of a moral inversion prevalent in the history of capitalism: an example of the victims, the businessmen, taking the blame for the evils caused by the government, and the government using its own guilt as a justification for acquiring wider powers, on the pretext of correcting the evils.

Free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.

Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason,
The Objectivist Newsletter, Feb. 1962, 1

[There is only one] meaning and purpose these laws could have, whether their authors intended it or not: the penalizing of ability for being ability, the penalizing of success for being success, and the sacrifice of productive genius to the demands of envious mediocrity.

Americas Persecuted Minority: Big Business,
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 57

Acknowledgments

Excerpts from The Ominous Parallels, by Leonard Peikoff. Copyright 1982 by Leonard Peikoff. Reprinted with permission of Stein and Day Publishers. Excerpts from The Romantic Manifesto, by Ayn Rand. Copyright 1971, by The Objectivist. Reprinted with permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Excerpts from Atlas Shrugged, copyright 1957 by Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, copyright 1943 by Ayn Rand, and For the New Intellectual, copyright 1961 by Ayn Rand. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Ayn Rand. Excerpts from Philosophy: Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand. Copyright 1982 by Leonard Peikoff, Executor, Estate of Ayn Rand. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Ayn Rand. Excerpts from The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series. Copyright 1976 by Leonard Peikoff. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Alvin Tofflers interview with Ayn Rand, which first appeared in Playboy magazine. Copyright 1964. Reprinted by permission of Alvin Toffler. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.