The Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to promote candidates close to an election raises many relevant marketing questions: Will doing so antagonize customers? If a firm spends advertising dollars to influence elections rather than simply to promote goods and services, how can those dollars be spent effectively? Should a company advertise as part of a coalition? Will procandidate or antiopponent advertisements be the better choice, or are special events a wiser choice than any advertising? The authors explore these marketing questions, which have public policy implications, because proposed legislation to limit the effect of the Supreme Court decision is best evaluated according to understanding of corporate priorities. A key issue is transparency-that is, whether the audience for any promotion to support or oppose a candidate knows which corporations are the sponsors or whether their identity is hidden within a coalition.

When a Senate committee considered regulating access to a popular National Football League (NFL) broadcast in 2007, the context was familiar to marketers: accusations of abusing monopoly power. The specific issue of NFL telecasts was eventually resolved outside the public policy arena, but it raises a more general question: What "monopolies" should governments regulate? Antitrust laws in the United States arose from a desire to protect competition. However, public policy is beginning to apply them in marketplaces that are monopolies only in the sense that consumers perceive a lack of competition, even though, in actuality, competitors are free to operate. Examples range from the NFL to iPod to De Beers. The authors refer to the dominant suppliers in these markets as "psychological monopolies" created by consumer beliefs and feelings, not by economic reality. The authors argue that the regulation of such monopolies is misguided.

This article outlines the principle of efficiency as taken from physics and misapplied into the realm of economics. The result of the misapplication has been a narrow view of antitrust policy, culminating in an extremely conservative application of the consumer welfare standard. The result of such policy has been increasing concentration in many industries, abdication of any examination of monopoly power in the context of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and dogmatic defense of “consumer welfare” as the only scientific approach to antitrust law. Part II reviews of the original goals of antitrust, as viewed without the lens of present-day economic efficiency. These are policy goals as described in legislative history and judicial development of common law. As such, they are ethical considerations distinct from consumer welfare. In part III, the article discusses the central tenets of economics in antitrust policy. These central notions are policy considerations that are misapplications of physics. Part IV discusses the physics definition of efficiency, with some insights as to the issues arising from adopting such a standard in terms of antitrust markets. Part V addresses the failures of antitrust using the lens of physics, explaining that consumer welfare is an ethical argument, not a scientific one. Part VI addresses other potential ethical standards for antitrust enforcement, as well as empirical evidence that support such norms. Part VII offers concluding thoughts where the article argues that there are superior ethical norms that would boost antitrust enforcement and that are consistent with the goals of antitrust.

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