The answer to the first is a certain yes. There are laws against businesses forming monopolies in the United States. You can read up on the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts from the 1890s and 1910s to start with. There is also considerable case law stemming from this legislation.
The answer to "should there be laws against monopolies" is a little more open. One theoretical justification for breaking up monopolies, is that in some cases monopolies cause economic inefficiencies. Look up "deadweight loss from monopoly pricing".
It's very complicated to measure any efficiencies or inefficiencies from tech monopolies, so I don't think there's a clear answer.
It's also not generally agreed upon that economic efficiency should be the goal of government, so there is a lot of room for debate on that question.
> It's also not generally agreed upon that economic efficiency should be the goal of government
I think you managed to sum up my thoughts much better than I did.
That is not true. There are laws against certain behavior by monopolies.
Here's the Sherman Antitrust Act you mentioned, which makes this clear [1].
As such, it's not legal to simply break up a monopoly solely because they're a monopoly. They have to exhibit specified illegal behavior first.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act_of_1890
This of course was a disaster for the American economy and it's taken 30 years of increasing corporate concentration for the politics to finally swing back against monopoly.
Hell, you can't even sell a product on Amazon without a good chance that Amazon will just slap their Amazon Basics logo on it and undercut you to death.
Similar to Wal-Mart many of their competitors are dead because they optimized their supply chain. No one gets that kind of access out of their garage.
The rules are changing. We need to think about the geopolitics here as well. We need US companies to win global markets in an era of increased competition.
why
How is it a good thing for the US to limit their own companies, when foreign companies don't have the same limitations? Giant companies will still exist, they will just cease to be US based companies.
because Amazon uses their non-retail business profits to identify high selling items, produce them themselves, sell them at a lower price (because they have all the data also), and finally steer customers to those products. They're the market place and a player. This new idea isn't well defined in law, but using your profits from one company to undercut another area is illegal.
> "by the rules"
is the same idea as "illegal", and even if they're not, the point she's trying to make is the fact they are not breaking rules should be setting off alarm bells because...
> "but why is that a concern of the government?"
because America loves the free market, and big business is the enemy of it.
They are the market place and players. And they also drive traffic to their products via website and shelf placement. If you say amazon is illegal here, you can’t simply ignore almost all big players are.
Not sure that’s illegal anyways since the consumer has plenty of choices at Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc.
Historically with Walmart and Target being players and the marketplace, have you seen that damage the consumer? Largely consumers end up getting commodity goods for cheaper, and the goods that are specialized/branded for roughly equivalent prices to other marketplaces.
Do you have data that shows this actually happens?
Everything else you stated before this part is a win for consumers in my mind. More competitors is generally a good thing.
I do disagree with your last comment though:
> because America loves the free market, and big business is the enemy of it.
Sure big businesses can raise prices and cause consumers to pay more. But big businesses can also lower prices too by investing in technologies that save money - which we see all the time.
So I guess I don't see big business as the enemy of the free market, after all, there's nothing forcing me to buy from big company A, even if they have a monopoly on a product. The reason is, in a free market, I'm free to discover and pursue ways to side step a monopoly. I don't need the government to help me do that.
> "unwind tech mergers that illegally undermine competition"
> "I want a government that makes sure everybody — even the biggest and most powerful companies in America — plays by the rules"
The word "illegally" in the first quote really set off my alarm bells. What have large companies like Amazon, Google, FB, etc. done that is considered illegal in this regard?
The "by the rules" in the second quote is confusing too. What does that mean? Which rules are being broken?
The way I see it: Isn't it the goal of entrepreneurs to be as successful as possible? Let's say I found a way to grow a business to that of the size of some of the bigger ones (which would be awesome). To grow a business that big, consumers obviously like what I'm selling/producing. I get the impression that Warren is saying she doesn't like big businesses because they snuff out the little ones. And maybe that's true, but why is that a concern of the government? There's nothing stopping a smaller company (or even an individual) from coming up with a really good idea and trying that idea out in something like his garage, and then reshaping the next generation... kinda like Amazon did in comparison to Sears. Or Microsoft did with IBM.
I'm sure there's going to be plenty of disagreements on my stance, but I guess I'm just not seeing this problem in the same light as Warren.