“The U.S. Department of Justice has not only successfully sued Apple for arguably non-existent anti-trust violations in the e-book market. It has even demanded – and gotten – a court-appointed ‘monitor’ placed inside the company to supervise the company’s pricing decisions,” Hunter Lewis writes for Breitbart. “This is a company that went from an $18 billion market value in 2000 to a $455 billion market value in 2013… Should anyone expect the success story to continue now that the government is meddling with all the company’s pricing?”
“Among the interesting facts that have come out about the “monitor,” Michael Bromwich, it has been revealed that he bills for his time at $1,100 an hour and charged $138,432 for his first two weeks of ‘work,'” Lewis writes. “Apple has labeled Bromwich’s appointment “unprecedented and unconstitutional.” We wish it were unprecedented. This form of government price interference and intimidation has become increasingly common.”
“This is not just the small-time corruption it might seem. It is tremendously damaging to the economy. The collapse of the Soviet Union should have demonstrated once and for all how important honest and unimpeded prices are for an economy,” Lewis writes. “If the government takes control of pricing, as it is doing in more and more sectors of the economy, it is guaranteeing unemployment and economic suffering. It is also guaranteeing an ever greater problem of crony capitalism, as companies respond by increasing their campaign contributions or take other steps to buy influence in Washington.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rad Wagner” for the heads up.]
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