Monday, March 19, 2007

Competition "Law" is Not Really a Law

Today's edition of SCMP reported that:

"A cross-sector competition law is to be introduced to regulate seven anti-competitive practices, while exemptions will be given to parties with less than a 20 per cent market share, sources from the government and Democratic Party say.

Seven anti-competitive practices - price-fixing, bid-rigging, market allocation, sales and production quotas, joint boycotts, unfair or discriminatory standards, and abuse of dominant position - will be covered by the law."

Read more here.

Why I have put quotation marks on the word "law" above? Hayek has defined law in many occasions that it is a set of rules of conduct equally applicable to all. Apparently, such will not be the case for our, eh, competition "law"!

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