Why do we get such a distorted view of the era of the so-called robber barons? One reason is that the popular press at the time trumpeted that view....virtually none of the impetus for antitrust laws came from consumers. Much of it came from small producers who had been competed out of business. They didn't want more competition; they wanted less...As the late University of Chicago economist George Stigler, who won the Nobel Prize in 1982, pointed out, "[M]ost important enduring monopolies or near monopolies in the United States rest on government policies."9 That's because if governments do not restrict entry, high profits of firms with market power attract new entrants and new competition the way honey attracts ants. As I put it in the tenth of my Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom,10 drawing on similar wording from Stigler, "[C]ompetition is a hardy weed, not a delicate flower."[ emphasis added]
The truth is often the opposite of what we are told. That's why you need critical thinking skills in order to determine truth for yourself. Hard to do that when you are "educated" not to think for yourself, but to think the way you are told to think.
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