In a takedown of the Obama adminstration’s apparent attempt to use its legal howitzer, anti-trust chief Christine Varley, to prevent the airline industry from doing mergers that would save it, keep it out of bankruptcy, preserve jobs, and allow it to continue to provide service for consumers, Holman Jenkins asks the question, Does Obama Want to Own the Airlines? While describing the Justice Department’s move to block mergers that would save troubled corporations, in the guise of protecting the public from evil monopolies, he makes this trenchant comment:
Even now, she has turned her attention from airlines to the mobile-phone business on the theory that any industry that hasn’t collapsed into government receivership must be doing something wrong.
It’s all worth reading.
And for background in the sorry history of anti-trust law, you might want to read this. Just remember a simple principle: whenever the government gets involved, prices go up, supply goes down, and the only winners are the bureaucrats and successful lobbyists who wangle exceptions for their companies… all the while pretending that they’re protecting the free market and competition.
For now, let’s just say this. If you’re too successful and capture a larger share of the market than your competitors, look out; the feds are coming for you. If you’re struggling, and need to merge with some of your competitors in order to stay in business, create economies of scale that allow more efficient operation, and provide a service or product that the public will buy at a price you can sell it, look out. The feds are coming for you, too.
Basically, it’s simple. The feds would rather own you than see you succeed.
Clear?
They have the only monopoly that matters, and they intend to keep it.
