Antitrust and Equal Liberty

IF 4.1 2区社会学 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Politics & Society Pub Date : 2023-07-18 DOI:10.1177/00323292231183825

Kate Jackson

引用次数: 1

Abstract

As Robert Bork once asserted, “Antitrust policy cannot be made rational until we are able to give a firm answer to one question: What is the point of the law—what are its goals? Everything else follows from the answer we give.” The appropriate answer, however, is not, as Bork suggested, consumer welfare. Instead, antitrust should serve the equal liberties that citizens give themselves when they engage in economic activity. Given the complexity and interconnectivity of the economy, however, the deliberations in which citizens and policymakers engage will produce a messy cacophony. While leaving the precise content and scope of citizens’ equal liberties open, this article provides a cognitive framework that should nevertheless prove useful as they make sense of the noise. It explains that while business can claim associational freedoms, those freedoms challenge the autonomy of rights of corporate insiders and outsiders alike and should be constrained accordingly. Indeed, this is how citizens have historically understood antitrust—and they can and should do so again.

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反垄断和平等自由

正如Robert Bork曾经断言的那样，“除非我们能够对一个问题给出明确的答案，否则反垄断政策就不可能变得合理：法律的意义是什么——它的目标是什么？其他一切都源于我们给出的答案。”然而，合适的答案并不像Bork所建议的那样，是消费者福利。相反，反垄断应该为公民在从事经济活动时给予自己的平等自由服务。然而，考虑到经济的复杂性和相互关联性，公民和政策制定者参与的审议将产生混乱的不和谐声音。在保留公民平等自由的确切内容和范围的同时，这篇文章提供了一个认知框架，尽管如此，当他们理解噪音时，这个框架应该是有用的。它解释说，虽然企业可以要求结社自由，但这些自由挑战了企业内部人和外部人的权利自主权，应该受到相应的限制。事实上，这就是公民历史上对反垄断的理解——他们可以也应该再次这样做。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Politics & Society Multiple-

CiteScore

5.00

自引率

4.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： Politics & Society is a peer-reviewed journal. All submitted papers are read by a rotating editorial board member. If a paper is deemed potentially publishable, it is sent to another board member, who, if agreeing that it is potentially publishable, sends it to a third board member. If and only if all three agree, the paper is sent to the entire editorial board for consideration at board meetings. The editorial board meets three times a year, and the board members who are present (usually between 9 and 14) make decisions through a deliberative process that also considers written reports from absent members. Unlike many journals which rely on 1–3 individual blind referee reports and a single editor with final say, the peers who decide whether to accept submitted work are thus the full editorial board of the journal, comprised of scholars from various disciplines, who discuss papers openly, with author names known, at meetings. Editors are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest when evaluating manuscripts and to recuse themselves from voting if such a potential exists.