There are so many laws within the United States that business can use to make sure that they provide a fair, balanced and competitive business. These laws protect everyone not just the seller and the buyer but the people as well. The legislator passes these Antitrust laws such as the FTC of 1914, The Clayton Act of 1914, and The Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 so that companies will be regulated. Once these laws are passed the judiciary will make sure that these laws are enforced properly so that the companies will have a fair and competitive type of atmosphere and an equal opportunity to market share. They have put antitrust laws in effect to protect the public so that they don’t get treated unfairly by big corporations. These laws are very affective in my opinion because they keep a lot of companies from fixing prices and it also allows these companies to be able to purchase goods at reasonable prices. There is an act called the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 that was put in place to make sure that there was no price discrimination between companies. What I noticed is that this Act is not...
Unfortunately, these monopolies allowed companies to raise prices without consequence, as there was no other source of product for consumers to buy for cheaper. The more competition, the more a company is forced to appeal to the consumer, but monopolies allowed corporations to treat consumers awfully and still receive their business. Trusts were bad for both the consumers and the workers, but without proper representation, they could do nothing. However, with petitions, citizens got the first anti-trust law passed by the not entirely corrupt Congress, called the Sherman Act of 1890. It prevented companies from trade cooperation of any kind, whether good or bad. Most corporate lawyers were able to find loopholes in the law, and it was largely ineffective. Over time, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, and the previously passed Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which regulated railroad rates, grew more slightly effective, but it would take more to cripple powerful
Since this debate still rages on, many people argue both sides of the story of the pros and cons. Many would argue that not breaking up monopolies actually increase the competition of companies that are attempting to break into some of the market share that the monopoly already has, more so than the free market that exists now. Proponents of the Sherman Anti-Trust act argue that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Martin, 1996) as originally quoted by Baron Acton. The idea that no competition within the business world establishes no risk and reward that is all part of the entrepreneur spirit of the U.S. spirit.
Apart from Antitrust laws, there are several other laws that promote fair business practices. The Robinson-Patman Act prohibits price discrimination. This act ...
I am interested in how corporate and finance laws are implemented and how much government is involved in business. This case involves with monopolies in the motion pictures industry. As learned in APUSH, the motion pictures industry was extremely popular during the twentieth century and there was a lot of news surrounding that area of American life. I had originally had chosen the court case Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), which also had to do with monopolies, but there wasn’t any antitrust laws during that time period to research. That was the first time monopolies were challenged in court. Over a hundred years later, the monopoly of the movie production industry was challenged through the same idea of antitrust. The topic of monopolies and trusts even plays an important role in society today as it shapes government regul...
The anti-trust laws were set in place to promote vigorous competition but also to protect the consumer from unfair mergers and business practices. The first antitrust law that was passed by Congress is called the Sherman Act and is a “comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade” according to www.FTC.gov . Later in 1914 Congress passed two more laws, one creating the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA) and then the Clayton Act, which now create the three core federal antitrust laws that are still active currently. Although they have changed over the last hundred years, they still have the same concept: “to protect the process of competition for the benefit of consumers, making sure there are strong incentives for businesses to operate efficiently, keep prices down, and keep quality up” as stated by the FTC.gov website on The Antitrust Laws.
Before the act, although monopolies were legal, it opened the door for federal investigations into good monopolies and bad monopolies. The act prevented the industries from obtaining too much power, however, the Sherman Antitrust Act was not completely efficient. The vague language used in the Sherman Antitrust Act proved it easy for companies to find legal loopholes, allowing them to engage in otherwise restricted business. The Clayton Antitrust Act was introduced in 1914 to clarify the principles the Sherman Antitrust Act set out to do. While the Sherman Antitrust Act said that monopolies were illegal, the Clayton Antitrust Act “defined as illegal certain business practices that are conducive to the formation of monopolies or that result from them. For example, specific forms of holding companies and interlocking directorates were forbidden.” (Britanica) This legislation was influential and was used to dissolve many monopolies in years to
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 are two things that work together to help explain and prohibit things that people believe are wrong in the world and definitely hurts peoples and the governments wallets.
Anti-trust laws are laws which prohibit anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Their purpose is to make sure that businesses and consumers cannot be abused by powerful firms that hold or wish to hold a monopoly in the market. They also take into account certain ethical standards, and therefore can be considered quite subjective. Many specific strategies are outlawed by anti-trust laws, including price fixing (agreement on prices of uniform goods or services), predatory pricing (setting a low price in order to knock off competitors), and vendor lock-in (virtually forcing a consumer to buy from a certain supplier).
Due to increasing consumer resentment towards ever-increasing monopolistic industries in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the government formulated antitrust laws to allow for a more competitive market. The legislations prohibit anticompetitive business practices such as price fixing, bid rigging, monopolization, and tying contracts.
As one commentator has explained, the Robinson-Patman Act “was designed to protect small businesses from larger, more efficient businesses. A necessary result is higher consumer prices.” Moreover, the Act ironically appears increasingly to be ineffective even in protecting small businesses. Over time, many businesses have found ways to comply with the Act by, for example, differentiating products, so they can sell somewhat different products to different purchasers at different prices. Such methods are likely to increase the seller’s costs—and thus increase costs to consumers—but do nothing to protect small businesses. The Act generally appears to have failed in achieving its main
In 1890 Congress passed the Sherman act with their first attempt at protecting businesses and consumers (FTC, 2008). This act was to touch down on monopolization and unreasonable trade. In order to protect consumers and businesses it was decided that monopolization; or the practice of controlling a single market, was an unfair act. Not only do monopolies have the ability to play with prices, but they can also decrease the quality of their products (Amadeo, 2013). For the consumer it could be unfortunate if, for example, the only supply of baby formula is controlled by a single company and the price increased by 40% after competition has been knocked out.
To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to opprress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
The competition and consumer act aims to discourage price discrimination in the business environment if the discrimination could substantially reduce competition. An example of price discrimination would be Apple with the distribution of IPhone 5c around the world, the prices vary from $500-$1,500(local currency). The IPhone 5c is less-profitable for Apple but still the price range has a big gap e.g., in Singapore the iPhone costs $948, but in the UK it costs $529 . There are three types of price discrimination (first degree, second degree and third degree) and they all discriminate differently. The price discrimination in business will increase revenue, they will attract more consumers and will enable companies to stay in business. The consequences for price discrimination is that the manufacture/business will get sued by consumers for price discrimination especially when paying higher prices, decline in consumer surplus, there may be administrative costs of separating the markets etc. However, Price discrimination has a lot of impacts on consumers and business owner 's around the world but most importantly it affects people that have been discriminated over the price for the same
The defendant is an Airlines Company that had 900 employees. The economic crisis followed with monetary crisis gave bad effects to the defendant. They should decrease the number of their airplanes form 9 to 2 airplanes. They also had to do the efficiency on their employees to 700. On the efficiency process, there was an agreement between the defendant and employees representation on October 30 1998. The agreement stated that they would bring Independent Public Accountant to analyze company financial condition. During the process, all side should work on their duty. The Defendant should pay employees’ wage. The agreement was not guarantee that didn’t mean the dispute process was over, but the negotiation still moved on. During the process, there was another agreement between the defendant and several employees. They agreed the finish the disputed process and the employees would get separation pay. Meanwhile, other employees, who were 153 people didn’t agree with that agreement. Because they didn’t agree each other, so the employees gave the case to the “Panitia Penyelesaian Perselisihan Perburuhan Pusat (P4P)”.
• Governments role: enforcing antitrust laws, preserving property rights, providing a stable fiscal and monetary environment and preserving political stability.