Final answer:
Antitrust laws benefit consumers through increased choices by preventing practices that would decrease competition, such as cartels, price-fixing, and monopolies. Enhanced competition leads to innovation, better products, and lower prices.
Step-by-step explanation:
Laws designed to prevent monopolies and anticompetitive alliances serve to create a more competitive marketplace. As a result, such laws benefit consumers primarily through increased choices. The various U.S. antitrust laws including provisions against forming cartels, colluding on pricing or outputs, bid-rigging, and market divisions purposely strengthen competition.
Through fostering competition, consumers ultimately benefit from a diversity of products and services at competitive prices. Contrary to enabling higher prices or practices such as false advertising or unfair debt collection practices, antitrust laws are crucial for ensuring that companies continue to innovate and offer better products at lower prices without the unfair advantage of a monopoly.
The government supports this competitive environment through various policies that promote competition, such as blocking anticompetitive mergers and ending restrictive practices, assuring that the benefits of competition like choice and innovation are accessible to consumers.