John Kenneth Galbraith in The New Industrial State argued that U.S. anti-trust legislation is a result of outdated arguments about the need to preserve free enterprise and the competitive market. Galbraith stated, that large corporations in modern economies may need to limit competition in order to achieve efficiency and compete with foreign imports in the new global economy. I agree with this statement. When a corporation becomes big and starts to grow and expand they will soon gain control of their market. Once a company has gained control of their market, within their nation, they can focus their attention on competing in the global market for their product. More effort can now be directed towards, achieving efficiency, and the improvement of their particular product. And since their only competition is foreign competition they can spend less money on advertising and other cost consuming practices of competition. A monopoly is a market situation in which there is only one seller of a particular good or service. When companies exercise monopoly power they act as if they were monopolies. Government regulation of big business/monopoly power arose because of the following accusations: monopolies raise prices, monopolies reduce output and living standards, monopolies are inefficient and wasteful, monopolies are intensive to consumer demand, monopolies engage in unfair competition, monopolies help bring on recessions and they threaten our political system. The current antitrust laws were written without respect to the foreign market. When these laws were created the foreign market was not as big as it is today, nor was the USs involvement in it. The USs economy was just starting to develop and to boom. The antitrust laws were needed to nurture and to boost the growing economy. Now that our economy is flourishing, and no longer needs to be nurtur...
