Bork’s signal contribution was this. He took Director’s “consumer welfare” idea—that antitrust was intended only to lower prices for consumers—and argued that it was not merely what an economist like Director thought the law should do, but that it had been, all along, the actual intent of the laws. Working with his Chicago allies, he then created a fully formed alternative account of what the antitrust laws should do and not do, in a book entitled The Antitrust Paradox. In 1964, when he first presented the thesis, it was considered absurd and even insane. But within twenty years he’d manage to
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