Re: Offtopic, inappropriate jokes?

[Matt Doughty <mdoughty@example.com>]

On Sat, Jun 09, 2001 at 07:09:39PM +0100, Simon Cozens wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 09, 2001 at 07:44:19PM +0900, Frank BENNETT (フランク　ベネット ) wrote:
> > Normally, yes.  That's why I hypothesized a law against entry or the
> > systematic kneecapping of competitors in my silly example: there have to be
> > high barriers to entry for monopolistic profiteering to work.
> 
> Right! So the only time anti-monopoly laws should come into play are
> when legislators have done something stupid. So it *is* to protect
> against legislation. Putting it another way, anti-monopoly laws reflect
> the legislature's inability to keep tabs on itself.
I also thought antitrust laws were there to prevent a couple other abuses
of success:
1. using excessive wealth, or profits in other areas to undercut competition
   without similar resources until they colapse finacially effectively 
   eliminating compentition.
2. Using dominance in one area to corner the market in another area
   (railroads and shipping, or OS and Browser)

In other words, I thought that the point of anti-trust laws was to prevent
a large corporation from creating an inherently unlevel playing field.
This really has little to do with incompetent legislation per se. 

//Matt