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Democratic and Republican administrations and the Supreme Court, in implementing antitrust law as "a consumer welfare prescription" over the past 40 years, reached a consensus on two important issues. First, antitrust enforcers and courts have presumed that corporate mergers generally advance, or at least do not threaten, consumer welfare. Second, enforcers and courts have treated horizontal collusion, among both big and small actors, as the principal evil for antitrust enforcers to root out. This deference to the consolidation of business property and hostility to horizontal agreements have concentrated power in the economy among a small elite.For antitrust law to redistribute power downward, a radical philosophical change is necessary. First, antitrust law should tightly restrict the consolidation of corporate property. Second, policymakers should recognize that collusion among powerless actors can represent socially desirable cooperation. Reconstructing antitrust law in this manner would transfer power in markets away from corporate executives and financial interests to workers, professionals, and small firms.

Despite being the prevailing wisdom, consumer welfare antitrust rests on a bed of nonsense. First, consumer welfare antitrust is built on false history and a rewriting of legislative intent. Second, it relies on a false conception of the market and submerges the state construction of the economy. Third, it depends on, and is informed by, false assumptions about business conduct. While the third falsehood suggests an analytical renovation and better antitrust economics are sorely needed, the first two falsehoods show that empirical improvements are necessary but not enough. These falsehoods together mean that the entire enterprise at present is built on a bed of sand and that a fundamental reconstruction of antitrust is required. An antitrust that promotes an equitable economy and protects democratic institutions will be true to legislative intent, recognize the state construction of the marketplace, and informed by empiricism.