Of all the messed-up policies in the neoliberal bag of tricks, antitrust has got to be the worst. If your business charges prices the government thinks are too low, you’re engaged in “predatory pricing”. If your prices are “too high”, that’s evidence of “monopoly power”. And if you charge the same prices as everybody else, you’re in a cartel.

Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than the absurd antitrust case being built against Amazon by the Federal Trade Commission and its chair, Lina Khan. At 34, a mere six years out of Yale Law (Harvard and Yale turn these types out by the truckload), Khan is a classic example of the political entrepreneur. Unlike business entrepreneurs, who look for opportunities to create wealth, political entrepreneurs look for opportunities to gain power.

Khan wrote a Yale Law Journal essay on Amazon and antitrust law that was clearly in the right place at the right time. Derided by opponents as “hipster antitrust”, it reanimated the cadaver of antiquated doctrines with new jargon, won also sorts of neoliberal intellectual awards, and got her on the fast track to a position at the FTC in the Biden administration.

Khan had plenty of Republican support, of course. Lots of Republicans don’t like Amazon, or Google, or Twitter/X, nor do a lot of their constituents. Like I said, Khan wrote the right piece at the right time.

Maybe I’m being too cynical. Let’s assume that if millions of us were left to ourselves to make peaceful, mutually beneficial economic decisions, that’s somehow not good enough. Let’s assume, no matter how it might offend our moral sensibilities, that if we just give these people the power to put their fellow citizens in jail, they’ll use that power to somehow make the economy better. How well does this hold up?

Doom and gloom predictions of merger after merger have crashed on the rocks of reality.

If we judge economies by how well they provide better and better products at lower and lower prices (in my view the only standard by which economies should be judged), then the free market has performed magnificently. It’s just that sometimes, to accomplish that goal, firms need to be large. And some people don’t like that.

Khan’s bottom line is that, despite Amazon’s empirical history of lowering prices while improving quality and service, Amazon’s market power can become anti-competitive (whatever that means) in the marketplace of online business. What she and other hipsters don’t seem to realize is that the very existence of an online marketplace is largely due to the efforts of entrepreneurs like Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos. Before Bezos, there was no online marketplace. He saw its potential and helped make it happen. That’s what wealth creators do.

It’s long been a cliche among the regulating class that markets aren’t perfect. And yes, it’s trivially true that the real world of business isn’t described by some idealized mathematical model of perfect competition. But here’s the thing: neither is government.

Do we really want Washington picking winners and losers, living in the illusion that federal law is some delicate scalpel they can wield? Some fine-tuning knob they can turn to tweak the world to their liking? Do we genuinely believe that the good intentions of smart Ivy Leaguers will always be enough to ensure antitrust laws will only be used in pure and holy ways? Never to be used by businesses or congressional delegations to achieve nefarious objectives?

I suggest not. Government should step into economic activity only when force or fraud is present.

Otherwise, leave us alone.

That won’t guarantee perfection. Just prosperity.

Barry Fagin is the senior fellow in Technology Policy at the Independence Institute in Denver, and the author of “The Radical Center.” His views are his alone. Readers can write Fagin at barry@faginfamily.net.

Barry Fagin