Antitrust Ruling Distorts Cable Business

The arbitrary, uncomplying and unjudicable antitrust laws have felled another big, bad business: cable companies (“Major Firms Settle Massive Antitrust Case,” June 9). Paul Farhi states that this settlement will “help break the cable industry’s hold over its 60 million subscribers.”

What kind of “hold” are we talking about here? Did the cable industry “hold” a gun to 60 million people’s heads and demand they subscribe or else? Every one of those subscribers had the choice to decline cable TV if the price was too high, regardless if they had a choice between two or more cable companies. Has cable TV, along with welfare and health care, become a right?

The cable industry is not a monopoly--it’s good business. In what’s left of our free market, they still must set their prices and provide their service in such a fashion that people will buy their product. If they don’t, some other business will. These other companies obviously couldn’t compete with the seven major companies. Too bad!

Instead, they went crying to their politicians who have nothing better to do than go around penalizing success and rewarding mediocrity. The only way a coercive monopoly can occur is through government intervention in the form of restrictive legislation or special privileges such as franchises or subsidies.

Under antitrust laws, businesses are guilty until proven innocent! If they charge prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, they can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize;” if they charge prices lower than their competitors, they can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade;” and if they charge the same price as their competitors, they can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.”

Only politicians could produce such idiocy!

RANDALL L. GOERTZEN

Glendale