"The notion that price fixing and monopolistic predation is an inherent, and indeed virtuous, element of a free market strikes me as somewhat akin to the notion that fraud is a competitive virtue."
I never said fraud was a virtue. That would be stealing. I am talking about being able to sell your property at whatever levels someone else agrees to purchase them. Or to give them away if you wish. Why is this so controversial?
"The Sherman, Clayton, and Robinson-Patman Acts have been rather successful in maintaining a competitive marketplace for the last century."
They have been a bludgeon used by the less successful businesses to get a piece of what they feel they are entitled to.
"There are thresholds of human connivance that we have, as a society, declared inviolable."
That doesn't make it moral.
And market manipulation (for example, down-swing predatory pricing to eliminate competition, followed by shorting a cornered market and concomitant up-swing predatory pricing) differs from fraud principally in scale.
I am talking about being able to sell your property at whatever levels someone else agrees to purchase them. Or to give them away if you wish. Why is this so controversial?
It's not controversial. What's controversial is manipulation of the market place. You seem to be under the impression that markets are somehow self-immunized from connivance. They're not. You also seem to be applying microscopic market aphorisms to macroscopic market realities.
They [anti-trust regulations] have been a bludgeon used by the less successful businesses to get a piece of what they feel they are entitled to.
Curious view. Perhaps you have some examples in mind?
We tend to forget that our particular brand of capitalism is, on the whole, a fictional legal construct to begin with. Corporations and securities markets do not exist in nature. We created those legal fictions (and many more) to facilitate relatively pain-free failure and thereby encourage risk-taking.
The corporate and securities fictions are, however, also subject to abusive and manipulative practices by the unscrupulous. These manipulations have the unfortunate effect of truncating, and in many instances eliminating, the very behavior the fictional constructs were intended to facilitate (market risk-taking, innovation, and entrepreneurialism).
Regulation of corporate and securities practices is necessary to prevent these manipulations and abuses. In short, we created a pretty good fictional economic beast, and we put it on measured leash to keep it from eating us.
I said: "There are thresholds of human connivance that we have, as a society, declared inviolable."
You said: "That doesn't make it moral."
I don't understand. Doesn't make what moral?