Of course, antitrust law pays little attention to such niceties as property rights. Instead, the reigning shibboleths are economic efficiency and consumer welfare. Thus, the questions for many conservatives are whether Microsoft has a monopoly and whether it's misusing its market power. Judge Jackson answered both questions affirmatively. Joined by a few conservative fellow-travelers, Jackson warns that Microsoft's market power makes it invulnerable to rival operating systems.
Investors know better.
Not all conservatives missed those obvious lessons. One free-market economist who hasn't lost his bearings is David S. Evans, of National Economic Research Associates. Writing in the current issue of Regulation, Evans criticizes Jackson's findings for their artificiality, emerging as they did from an unreal world that could exist only within the four walls of a courtroom. Another free market economist, George Priest, neatly dispatches the network effects argument advanced by many of the conservative backsliders. Ask yourself, he advises, whether consumers would be better off or worse off if their network were dismantled.