Presented by Willard Hurst as part of his course "Introduction to Modern American Legal History" at the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1978. Anti-trust law assumes three notions. First, monopoly is an uncommon phenomenon in the market. Second, oligopolies are the dominate structure in the market; that is, government and society views oligopolies as the market norm and the anti-trust division will act only if there is appearance of conscious parallelism. Third, overt price-fixing is an anti-trust violation. The rest of the discussion centers on economic efficiency and bigness. This short discussion looks at the effects of government regulation and technology on small and big business. Ultimately, Hurst asks if society should value smallness.
