The only actual factor required for the existence of free competition is: the
unhampered, unobstructed operation of the mechanism of a free market. The only
action which a government can take to protect free competition is:
Laissez-faire!—which, in free translation, means: Hands off! But the
antitrust laws established exactly opposite conditions—and achieved the exact
opposite of the results they had been intended to achieve.
There is no way to legislate competition; there are no standards by which one
could define who should compete with whom, how many competitors should exist in
any given field, what should be their relative strength or their so-called
“relevant markets,” what prices they should charge, what methods of competition
are “fair” or “unfair.” None of these can be answered, because these
precisely are the questions that can be answered only by the mechanism of a
free market.