The worst possible antitrust outcome

Capitalism is just the view that one should try to accumulate more capital, by hook or by crook. And there are lots of ways to do that that don't involve any kind of productive work, much less building wealth through cooperation, specialization, and trade. Buying government favors, for example, which is how most big-time "capitalists" in US history did it (for example, the railroad barons who got the government to give them exclusive access to key routes). Today they do it by buying regulations that favor them.

Nonsense. It was because the government had control, and could force people to accept that it was giving special privileges to certain players. For example, the railroad barons in the late 19th century US who got the government to give them exclusive access to key routes. The people had no choice about accepting that. In a free market, there would have been competition, and that would have ended up resulting in better service. How do we know that? Because that's what happened until the government stepped in and gave special privileges to certain players.

In other words, your view is exactly backwards to what has actually happened.

If you read Bork's work, especially The Antitrust Paradox, and if you study the caselaw prior to and post 1970's, you'll see a stark difference.

It was really a conservative idea at that point but I'd say it's more neoliberal, which has a strong backing in the democratic party and has for decades, beginning with Carter.

The per se analysis and application, particularly, is just massively different from the pre-Bork era. He's the single largest reason that the three main elements of cost, quality, and quantity as a standard for antitrust analysis has eventually boiled down almost entirely to cost, partially because it's so much easier to measure but also because he advocated for it as a mechanism to measure business efficiency.

One of the big problems of this is the change in fundamentals since Bork was writing in the 70's, particularly with union membership declining so heavily. He was countering a very strong and powerful union system and factored that into his analysis, and we just don't have that in the private sector any longer.

I've been working on a paper for a while about theoretically adding in wage and labor market analysis into the mix, particularly with monopoly and monopsony situations, but it's kinda stalled since I've been clerking.

Honestly, read the guy's book and read some cases if you're interested. You'll see it fairly quickly.

Please reference any dictionary since you don't believe me.

The government still needs to raise money for e.g. funding the roads. This is not, because the government wouldn't be able to direct the resources of the economy towards this goal otherwise, but because the costs of that goal should be part of the beneficiaries of that goal. This should prevent inefficient pursue of goals.

For example when you get too less money for roads, it can be because all the foreigners use it for transit, but don't actually fund it, meaning the government subsidizes another governments economy, or because too less people drive on your roads/ people don't care much for the roads, so maybe you are building too much of them. When on the other hand you have to much money for roads, then maybe you are not building enough roads.

However this is not the only measure, as roads also create induced demand/economic activities, i.e. you need to put up roads to foster specific activities, before you see the demand. In other words it's complicated and you need to be an expert in the field you are governing and governing itself.

But while money on its own is (nearly) free for a government, once you have handed it out it isn't free anymore, since it now represents resources, that are also restricted for the government. This means that it still makes sense to be frugal with money, just not for money that was just created by it, but with money that comes to the government for the second time, and is now to be spent again, since this already is a proxy for specific resources.

> governments often act and talk like like their goal is to maximize revenue

I think this often comes from business people who promote (themselves) to government, but don't got the memo, that they aren't working for a company anymore, but instead decide on the framework for companies to thrive or not.

Politics, literally the art to govern [a city], is really the art of creating hard rules that still don't prescribe anything but instead control the famous invisible hand of a free market towards the right behaviour.