Abolition of Antitrust

The Abolition of Antitrust asserts that antitrust laws--on economic, legal, and moral grounds--are bad, and provides convincing evidence supporting arguments for their total abolition. Every year, new antitrust prosecutions arise in the U.S. courts; Gary Hull and the contributing authors look at some of these cases--as well as the very Antitrust Act itself--and conclude that they are based on an erroneous interpretation of the history of American business, premised on bad economics. For Hull, antitrust prosecutions are based on a horrible moral inversion: that it is acceptable to sacrifice America's best producers. The contributors explain how key antitrust ideas, for instance, "monopoly," restraint of trade," and "anticompetitive behavior," have been used to justify prosecution, and then make clear why those ideas are false. They sketch the historical, legal, economic, and moral reasoning that gave rise to the passage and growth of antitrust legislation. This dynamic and accessible work, now available in paperback, is not simply a polemical argument for a particular policy position. On publication, Adam Mossof at Michigan State University commented, "The essays in this book present a sustained economic, historical, moral, and legal broadside against the various federal statutes known as antitrust doctrine. They explode the cherished myths underling the antitrust laws, and expose their intellectual fountainhead in a morality of self-sacrifice that is incompatible with individual rights, free enterprise, and objective law. With the publication of this text, businessmen, lawyers, economists, policymakers, legislators, and judges finally have access to a systemic critique of the antitrustlaws. From here on, if antitrust continues to violate the rights of businessmen and to ravage the American economy, it is not for lack of knowing how and why."Hull, Gary is the author of 'Abolition of Antitrust ', published 2005 under ISBN 9781412805025 and ISBN 1412805023.