The following is a letter to the editor that I submitted to the Richmond Times Dispatch on May 12, 2002. Editor, Times Dispatch: Congress recently held what has become an annual springtime event: Hearings concerning rising gas prices (even though prices are an average of 30 cents lower than last year at this time). Similarly, it was only a few months ago that the Virginia General Assembly was debating whether or not to control prices on gasoline. However, that debate was not about prices that were too high but about gasoline sellers keeping prices too low. This circus of contradictions is a superb demonstration of the philosophy that led to the abuse of government power through the antitrust laws. Altruism calls for the sacrifice of values and individual rights to the “common good.” Antitrust laws are based on the assumption that corporations cannot be trusted and are always guilty. That is why the laws were made intentionally vague and subjective. They can be enforced at the whim of a politician for any reason (whatever he considers the “public interest” to be that week). The solution to achieve a true free market is not more regulation. Enron, which is a corporation that profited from government-mandated price caps and environmental regulations, would have been allowed to fail sooner had insiders been allowed to sell their shares (driving down the stock price to it’s proper level). The solution is laissez-faire capitalism, which is based on the philosophy of the pursuit of rational self-interest through objective moral values. No one is to be sacrificed to others or to have others sacrificed to him. -Bob Murphy. Richmond