their own agendas. Should smaller companies still exist, the larger firms are able to lower prices and absorb the loss from it where the other company would inevitably fail to compete with the low prices of the firm. Firms like Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil rightfully took advantage of the US free market at the time, but once word of their predatory practices became publically known, these companies received penalties from the federal government. In 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was the first
particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices" (Dictionary.com, 2008). Monopolies were quite common in the early days when businesses had no guidelines whatsoever. When the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into break up the Standard Oil business in the late 1800’s and enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 (Wikipedia 2001), it set forth precedent for many cases to be brought up against it for years to come. Such as the case of two major players in the entertainment community
Another important group in the fight against unjust societal institutions were the muckrakers, a new brand of investigative journalists who sought to expose issues including immigrant life and political corruption, among many others. Muckrakers were often encouraged to “terrify evil doers and arouse the consciousness.” In addition, many journalists regarded their craft to be the “guardian and nourisher of civic virtue.” By viewing their profession as an element of civic good, muckrakers gained a
recovering from the devastation dealt to the Southern aristocracy by Federal Reconstruction, and his father, an unsuccessful liquor salesman, was an alcoholic who often squandered the family's income. When he was ten, Sinclair's family moved to New York City, where they lived in numerous boardinghouses. Sinclair explains, "...one night I would be sleeping on a vermin-ridden sofa in a lodging house, and the next night under silken coverlets in a fashionable home. It all depended on whether my
Because the field of Business Law is so great, this paper will examine a single aspect of Business Law, that of antitrust action. Specifically, as it is applied to Microsoft, antitrust litigation is raising eyebrows in both the legal and business worlds. There is a hue and cry that antitrust laws as they exist today have outlived their usefulness when applied to cyber commodities and artificial intelligence. This paper will present those opposing viewpoints and attempt to answer the question: