Anti-trust

This is no doubt an era of consumerism, when the anti-trust authorities on both sides of the Alantic Ocean reign like King, imposing hefty amounts of fine at ready discretion on big corporations judged to have engaged in anti-competitive activities - not least on scores of international airlines alleged to have collaborated on "fuel surcharges". When tens of billions of dollars were fined on Microsoft, it seems that no market power amassed by any means can be stronger than the massive ego of authority - except perhaps the power of OPEC, for which the word "cartel" is blatantly and of course appropriately used to describe it in virtually all literature of news and editorial articles. The complete lack of visible initiative from both the American and European anti-trust authorities to take it on is...amusingly thought-provoking.

Perhaps this is not really so much an age of consumerism as one of agency-ism, when immensely huge amount of agency costs are readily incurred in all forms of legal fees in the process of anti-trust litigation, basically in all the absolutely unproductive activities of paper work - composing, searching and filing, and again and again.