In the third market, prices are determined by competitive bidding. Sellers can restrain their enthusiasm for prevailing price levels so they meet in advance in order to escalate the bid price. At each meeting they determine which firm among them will win a particular bid. The other sellers submit fictitiously high prices with the understanding that they will receive a side-payment from the successful bidder or that they will be permitted to bid without genuine opposition on future bid solicitations. Economists recognize each of these collective strategies as a variation of cartel behavior.
Antitrust lawyers recognize each as being illegal per se under federal antitrust laws.
To begin bearing the burden, let me suggest the Bible's ninth commandment. When a company holds itself out to its customers as an independent center of initiative in the marketplace, yet buyers are never informed that the market has been parceled out, or that a floor price has been set, or that the bidding is phony, the firms in the cartel have born false witness. Antitrust laws that deter cartels are deterring the bearing of false witness. Jeffrey Tucker's critique of antitrust never specifically discusses antitrust's prohibition of cartels, but since he endorses no element of federal antitrust policy, I take his condemnation of antitrust to be a blanket one. That Tucker never discusses cartels is peculiar.