The cartel fell apart pretty much on its own without government intervention. But the cartel didn't fall apart 'on its own' due to magic self-regulating proper

The cartel fell apart pretty much on its own without government intervention. But the cartel didn't fall apart 'on its own' due to magic self-regulating properties of the free market. It took WW2 to do it. For some anecdotal post-war evidence, note that light bulbs in eastern Germany came with twice the lifetime of western models. In Germany, there also circulates a story about representatives from Osram and Narva (an eastern manufacturer) meeting at Hannover fair, the latter presenting a light bulb with a lifetime of 5000h. The stories goes that the Osram representatives accused the Narva representatives of being imbeciles for cutting into their own profits...