Covering the spreads

Reason, Oct, 1998 by Michael W. Lynch

It was clear that Kesler gave an off-the-shelf speech, a patchwork of previous scholarly lectures. It was very asymmetrical: The college lecture portion on the history of conservatism and liberalism was long, while its engagement with conservatism's current problems was short. In the question period, he evaded policy and operational issues - like, What does this mean here in Washington? - with disclaimers, jokes, and quips. He didn't even mention Chris Caldwell's article in the June Atlantic Monthly, "The Southern Captivity of the GOP," which, it seems to me, frames the issue well. Nor did this article come up in questions, which is interesting.

In terms of refreshments, I ignored the cheese and crackers but had a half glass of white wine and a glass of beer. I then returned home for the evening.

Subj: Bork v. Bork

Date: Fri, Jun 19, 1998 3:58 PM EDT

From: mlynch@reasondc.org

On June 18, 1998, the American Enterprise Institute hosted a debate on U.S. v. Microsoft in which all participants agreed on one thing: The definitive work on antitrust as applied to this case was written by the man whose last name is now a verb: Robert Bork. That was all they agreed upon, with one side citing Bork's The Antitrust Paradox to prove that the government ought to take on Microsoft and the other pulling passages to prove exactly the opposite. What made it most interesting, however, was that Robert Bork was one of the debaters.

After being accused of betraying his own work by George Priest, who teaches law and economics at Yale Law School, the very place where Bork developed his thoughts on antitrust, Bork replied: "George, I wish you would read pages 344, 345, and 346 of The Antitrust Paradox, where you will see that I have not changed my mind in the last 20 years." Knowing how this must have sounded, Bork quickly followed up: "That's a hell of a confession to make - that I have not changed my mind in 20 years - but it's true."

Priest responded: "I prefer, Bob, as you know, pages 308 to 309, where you say, 'never in history has it happened or is it possible for a firm to use exclusive dealings or other requirements to gain market power'; pages 192 to 193, where you say, 'any size a company achieves by internal growth is the most efficient size'; and especially the seminal sentence on page 157: 'The real danger for the law is less that predation will be missed, but that normal competitive behavior will be wrongly classified as predatory and suppressed.'"

REASON Contributing Editor Thomas Hazlett, both the largest and loudest participant, pointed Bork to yet another of his sentences. After ranting, "I want to know where the price increases are. I want to know where the quality declines are. I want to know where the lack of innovation is," Hazlett read a passage from page 137 of Bork's Antitrust Paradox: "The problem is to show what exclusion is improper. All business activity excludes. A sale excludes rivals from that piece of business. Any firm that operates excludes rivals from some share of the market. Superior efficiency forecloses... indeed, exclusion or foreclosure is the mechanism by which competition confers its benefits upon society."