Amazon and Apple have an illegal price-fixing conspiracy
[SPOILER ALERT!] The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
A class action law firm has filed a suit against Apple and Amazon, accusing the companies of price-fixing Ios devices through an agreement that blocks third-party sellers from Amazon unless they’re authorized by Apple. The suit should be a slam-dunk — but even more, the conduct it accuses Apple and Amazon of should never have been permitted in the first place.
40 years ago, antitrust law underwent a revolution. The pro-monopoly “scholars” of the Chicago School of Economics, led by the Nixonite criminal Robert Bork, argued that antitrust enforcement should limit itself to punishing companies that used market power to raise prices.
Proponents of this “consumer welfare” standard claimed that they just wanted to bring some “objectivity” to the question of monopoly. They said that asking the courts to tame corporate power led to an inconsistent, chaotic world where you couldn’t…
