Apple uses their phone/hardware profits to upend other businesses. What Apple is doing to Spotify is the most recent example. Apple runs their iTunes/Music on a break-even basis. Apple has the dominant smartwatch market share. Apple runs adverts pushing Apple Watch+Apple Music combo. Apple privileges their Music app on the smartwatch and doesn't provide the needed APIs for Spotify to compete on that platform. Apple Music marketshare is growing and might catch up to Spotify soon.

1. Apple would be forbidden to subsidize unrelated unprofitable businesses for too long.

2. Developing a feature of an existing business is okay under my proposal (so iPhone upending P&S cameras is okay because camera is just a feature of iPhone and hence not completely unrelated business).

Every layer of bureaucrat control and vagueness that is applied, dramatically harms the economy and brings it down toward stagnation of zero growth. We got 30+ years of that demonstration from France, where their GDP growth and wage growth has averaged 1/4th to 1/5th that of the US over the last several decades. Similarly Japan has a hyper regulated and rigid economy, with predictably bad growth as a consequence. As the US has grown more regulated over the last 40 years, its GDP growth has dramatically slowed (while the global economy has routinely grown far faster, and the US share of the global economy has not fundamentally changed).

Instead of considering these political concepts in an idealized fantasy scenario, you have to actually apply them to things as they are. You have to apply them with politicians as they exist in the US today. It would be the worst nightmare imaginable economically, next to moving to actual Socialism (ie direct, literal corrupt control of the economy by bureaucrats).

If Walmart tried and failed the Amazon did with Amazon Fresh, the stock would be savaged, for example.

We’re in an era where we are slowly rebuilding the trusts of the 19th century. It’s all about personal relationships and deliberately incompetent regulatory enforcement.

Tesla. A 15 year old business, run by an enigmatic (plausibly genius) leader, worth $56 billion, that has never earned a meaningful profit in its entire history. Currently bleeding immense red ink. Trading for about four times sales. Amazon trades for a reasonably similar, if slightly lower, sales to market cap ratio.

This sounds like a terrible idea that will be used mostly by politicians to extra money from companies.

And after every election these lines would likely be redrawn. The chaos this would introduce.

What I object to is the behavior of private entities to use their resources to subsidize their products/services and capture new markets.

How would we distinguish _unrelated_ businesses? Would all media be forced to charge a subscription? It looks like an advertising business that subsidizes a journalism business.