Antitrust

Once upon a time, the US government enforced antitrust legislation. One of the most famous examples of this is the case of Standard Oil, which remains the textbook example of monopoly breakup taught in economics and law schools worldwide. To understand what happened to Standard Oil, we need to take a short walk back in time through history. The year is 1890, and the US Congress is a well-functioning body with rational officials whose brains still function at a high enough level to pass sensible legislation.