Antitrust Introduction
Antitrust law was once one of the most effective ways of keeping the American economy fair and vibrant. Now, unfortunately, it has become mostly if not in totality a way to suppress innovation and maintain monopolies and shared monopolies. This was true in the earlier non-competitive automobile industry and is even more true in the more recent, less competitive, bailed-out automobile industry. In recent times "antitrust enforcement" seems to have become a way to punish out of favor companies. All that is written here about the more recent, less competitive, bailed-out automobile industry refers to the automobile industry in the Western world, Japan, and Korea. It excludes China and Tesla. This is the product of less than ethical and less than honest government oversight. The condition has been aided by the lack of oversight which would be provided by a free and uncontrolled press - e. g. see Zachary, G. Pascal. "All the News." Wall Street Journal, 6 Feb. 1992: 1. Print.
The automobile industry in the United States has been in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act for decades. The lack of competition reduced innovation and led to increased costs. These factors were important reasons the automobile industry was bailed out at the end of 2009. Being too big to be subject to antitrust law, it was also too big to be subjected to the rigors of free enterprise.
Economy of scale requires manufacturing based on interchangeable parts not replaceable parts. Without interchangeable parts, economy of scale is limited. The greater the use of standard, interchangeable parts and the fewer the number of non-interchangeable parts, the greater is the resulting economy of scale. The greater the number of interchangeable parts, the higher the quality of the end product which will be manufactured at lower cost because of fewer defects and lower manufacturing cost. Interchangeable parts are the basis of good manufacturing.
Industry standard parts are best. Significantly less beneficial but still acceptable are manufacturer standard parts. Also acceptable when required are model standard parts where satisfactory operation or performance requires the use of a model specific part such as a small power source for a small car and a large power source for a large car.
Despite this common sense knowledge, Western automobile manufacturing eschews such thinking and steadfastly adheres to Parts Churn. Flaunting common sense and long existing antitrust law, automobile manufacturers (except Tesla) intentionally churn proprietary components to produce unnecessarily expensive and dangerous vehicles.