Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Yes, that is correct, Harry, in textbooks but not in the view of the Department of Justice generally. The real-world take on monopoly is that monopoly is bad. A good example is the breakup of AT&T when it provided nearly all of the telephone service in the United States. Everyone agreed that the service was good, and pricing was set by government agencies. The compelled breakup occurred because there was a shift in thinking regarding monopolization: it went from a good monopoly is OK to monopoly is inherently bad.
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Actually, that's not quite true. It is true that some people equate monopoly as bad and that there have been times when those people run the DOJ, but it's true that all people think this, or that the DOJ has been monolithic in going after monopolies. I think that prior to the current DOJ, the last time the DOJ had a major anti-trust suit was when they went after Microsoft on behalf of Netscape during the browser wars.