Customer Reviews

Free the Market!: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive

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Gary Reback has written a book that reads like an extended love letter to antitrust law. In his world, antitrust seemingly has no costs, no downsides, no trade-offs. It is our salvation and he serves as its high prophet. Everything good that happened in the world of high-tech over the past few decades? Oh, you can thank Almighty Antitrust for that. Anything bad that happened? Well, then, clearly there just wasn't enough antitrust enforcement! That's this book in a nutshell.

There's no mention of the deadweight loss to society associated with years and years of legal wrangling that accompanies antitrust lawsuits. Reback just sweeps all that under the rug -- and why wouldn't he as an antitrust lawyer! But those costs on the economy and innovation are real. There's also no serious mention of how antitrust law has all too often been used as weapon by disgruntled marketplace competitors to hobble rivals using such legal tactics. Reback gives the same lip service to antitrust being about "protecting consumers" as many other defenders do, but all too often his book -- like antitrust law itself -- sounds more like a defense of certain companies, industry sectors, or old ways of doing business.

It sure would have been nice for him to address the other side of the story in a serious way.

You can read my complete review of the book at the Technology Liberation Front blog.

Free the Market! is a fascinating account that shows why Silicon Valley (and other) entrepreneurs and innovators need more than self-regulating markets to help them succeed. For the past three decades, monopolists have blocked or made life difficult for some great firms, and harmed consumers in the process by limiting their choices. There are many illuminating examples throughout the book - they include, among others, a riveting account of what happened to Netscape, and how the mega-mergers of AT&T/SBC and Verizon/MCI made all of us much poorer as a result of those mergers, literally as well as figuratively.

An excellent book, very well-written and clear, with entertaining vignettes along the way!

This book is thoughtful, well researched, and fluently written. Whether the reader agrees with his position on antitrust enforcement and Chicago School economics or not, Reback has clearly walked the walk throughout his long career as an antitrust practitioner. His viewpoint therefore deserves careful review and consideration by anyone involved in the antitrust field.

I really LOVED this book. I picked it up as soon as it came, and couldn't put it down. I found the book fascinating both from the standpoint of the history and the policy, and it was also a very good read.

Gary Reback has an engaging style as he leads the reader on a tour of anti-competitive lawsuits involving such notable corporate giants as Microsoft, Oracle, and West Publishing.

The author was involved on some level in most of the cases he writes about.

He observes the different views and outcomes in anti-trust suits when economists became the prominent experts predicting the affects on the market of mergers and monopolies.

A disturbing aspect of a few of the cases is the judicial bias and incompetence that favored corporations over the anti-trust division of the government.

Reback has written a thorough and well-researched book on the subject.
It shows the reader that in some respects the market is not "free". It is monopolized.

Memory told me that resale price maintenance (price-fixing) was illegal. Yet it is also clear that Sony and Samsung, for example, are forcing standard pricing on their hottest products. Reback's "Free the Market" explains what's going on.

Minimum-pricing agreements keep retail profit margins higher, which in turn keeps retailers from pressuring manufacturers to lower the wholesale prices they pay, explains the 4/28/09 Wall St. Journal. Suppliers also think eliminating pricing competition can help retailers spend more promoting their products. Starting with the Reagan years, free market proponents have argued for limiting antitrust rules, trusting companies to be self-policing and markets to be self-correcting.

After covering the early history of anti-trust etc. legislation, Reback relates his own initial experience defending retail price maintenance for Apple Computer - rationale was to stop "free-rider" mail-order vendors that sloughed education etc. expenses off onto retail stores. Reback et al lost the case, thanks to a 1911 Supreme Court case that had declared such practices illegal, per se (no counterarguments allowed).

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court then overturned that decision in 2007, thanks to the influence of the "Chicago school" of economics and law (and failed to notify me).

Reback explains, and then strongly disagrees with their decision, stating that the essence of capitalism is that free and open competition is good for the public and must be nurtured and protected by the government. Disastrous results have followed the Chicago school, beginning with mergers creating overpowering giants, and excessive patent and copyright protection.

I'm not an attorney, so Reback's detailed legal accountings were a bit much for me. Nonetheless, "Free the Market" was an informative book, and undoubtedly even more so with legalistic minds. The "good news" is that efforts are underway in the Senate to circumvent the Supreme Court's ruling, and Maryland is leading the way to do so as well.

Gary Reback's Free the Market is a remarkable achievement. It is not a polemic as the title might suggest, but a thoughtful odyssey through many of the most important competition policy cases and issues of the past 25 years. It is extraordinarily well-written and enjoyable, in part because Reback is a practicing attorney dealing with concrete issues with real clients that are familiar to anybody that has worked in the IT sector. This behind-the-scenes account vividly recreates the complex legal, business, and political environment in which he has worked. Concrete details and personal observations enliven a very difficult area of the law, in which economy theory, empirical evidence, and legal framework are deeply intertwined. While a background in law or economics (and a familiarity with IT sector) is undoubtedly helpful, these different elements are pulled together through lucid and unpretentious writing in a way that any intelligent reader who cares about competition in today's digital economy can understand and enjoy.