Antitrust policy looks like it's becoming anti-consumer. Smith, executive director of Consumer Alert, appeared at a briefing sponsored by the Independent Institute, which presented a letter to the President signed by 240 economists who decried current antitrust actions. Increasingly, too, satisfying the demands of competitors, at the expense of consumers, seems to be a principal factor governing antitrust suits. She said that underlying many of Justice's recent antitrust complaints is DOJ's overall assumption and rationale that the future of high-tech markets is determined by present trends.
Antitrust advocates claim to be protecting consumers from anticompetitive practices.
Yet consumers are the ones who benefit from creative institutional and technological change and are far more likely to be injured by political restrictions on such change, especially when those restrictions favor competitors. According to Consumer Alert, consumers are the ones who benefit from the vibrant competition that exists in these innovative industries. They are the ones who would suffer if the government disrupts that market through antitrust action to mold its own view of the future. The nature and speed of institutional and technological change is misunderstood.