Anti-Trust Insanity

Independent booksellers have asked the Justice Department to investigate Wal-Mart and Amazon for possible anti-trust violatons as a result of their price war in best-selling books.

Recently, Wal-Mart's website has slashed the price of best-sellers in an attempt to attract customers to its internet operations, and Amazon has matched the price reductions to stay competitive.

This is good news for customers, as businesses battle to win customer loyalty by aggressively cutting prices.

So how could other book retailers have an anti-trust case?

That's because anti-trust law produces crazy and outrageous results. Literally, every action by a business could potentially be deemed a violation of anti-trust law. Here are various violations of anti-trust law:

• Predatory pricing means a competitor lowers prices in an attempt to increase market share.

• Collusion in pricing means competitors charge the same price as one another.

• Monopolistic pricing means a competitor charges highers prices as a result of its leading market share.

So a price that is lower than competitors, the same as competitors, or higher than competitors can all be violations of anti-trust law - and since that covers the entire range of prices possible, literally all business behavior is at risk of violating anti-trust law.

Further, the Wal-Mart/Amazon matter illustrates that anti-trust law is often used by one business to seek an advantage over another by running to the government to seek protection from competition in the marketplace.

All of this makes anti-trust law one of the most unjust laws in the land.