"Calling Deirdre McCloskey"

Professor Don Boudreaux points out to yet another Liberal that government-in-practice, here antitrust, usually doesn't resemble government-in-theory.

I mention only in passing Mr. Rukerow’s naive triple assumption that (1) fine-sounding government statutes and agencies actually do what their fine-sounding names suggest that they do; (2) the ostensible missions of these statutes and agencies are pursued in ways that are worth whatever costs and consequences are entailed in the actual pursuit; and (3) the problems that these statutes and agencies were ostensibly created to address were in fact real.

Comments

[kyle8]

Let me say that although I agree that regulatory capture is one of the unseen consequences of regulation. I am not as anti-anti trust as others.

Although anti-trust statutes can be abused, if our laws had been followed during the 80's and 90's we would not have had a few large banks gobbling up all their regional competitors and thus no "too big to fail".