Laws That Are Intended to Further Fair, Balanced, and Competitive Business Practices

Week 3 – APA Paper

By: Lisa Ford

Intro to Business & Technology

Professor: Sanford Friedman

Sunday, March 23rd 2014

The United States has several laws that are intended to further fair, balanced, and competitive business practices. Do you think that such laws are effective? If so, why? If not, why not? Be sure to provide evidence to support your position one way or the other.

The United States has several laws that are intended to further fair, balanced, and competitive business practices. These laws are typically effective as control measures to ensure fair business practices are followed. Determining the success or failure of specific legislation or regulations can be relative to what angle you are looking from. With these anti-trust laws we are insured safeness from unreasonable trade, price discrimination, and unfair and anti-competitive business practices.

I feel anytime new laws or regulations are introduced there is initial skepticism about their purpose and the impact they will have even when the laws that are enacted that are intended to promote fair and competitive business practices. Although people may not realize it, as a consumer, antitrust laws affect their daily life in a variety of ways.

In 1890, Congress enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act, a law designed to restore competition and free enterprise by breaking up monopolies. The Act of July 2, 1890(Sherman Anti-Trust Act) states that

“This Act outlaws all contracts, combinations, and conspiracies that unreasonably restrain interstate and foreign trade. This includes agreements among competitors to fix prices, rig bids, and allocate customers, which are punishable as criminal felonies (pg.1).”

The original intention of the Sherman Antitrust Act was to protect consumers from big businesses that were using unscrupulous means to raise prices artificially, such as intentionally producing too few goods to meet consumer demand and thereby driving up the products' value and price....