Re:Tim Bray told a union meeting Amazon should be broken up
by cybwraith on Friday June 12, 2020 @07:04PM
(#23504795)
Antitrust is not purely about consumers, but about protecting a competitive and open market. However I will admit that this has been widely debated and is not actually consensus in US history. A counter-argument is that antitrust action should be purely focused on consumer prices and do nothing unless consumer pricing is negatively affected. I would argue that the former is still being consumer-pricing focused, just with a long term view instead of a short term view
Those are all different issues though with different potential regulatory tools to apply against them vs a monopolist simply outright raising prices for buyers. I'm definitely concerned that way, way too many people have started to just reach for the big BREAK 'EM UP hammer for any problem they see, despite the potential for nasty battles delaying effectiveness and enormous and unpredictable side effects. I'd really like to see much more focused efforts tried first, particularly since a big central target can actually be easier to regulate and check for certain things. There is plenty of low hanging fruit at Amazon like their commingling practices, but such things tend to be more technocratic.
I'm concerned that focused efforts like that are seen as "boring" and in turn not getting the attention they should. This is similar to how I feel about other areas like secure hardware stacks. Rather then "break up Apple/Google!!!" I'd much, much rather see things like "devices owners must have the option to load their own crypto roots with equal power as any manufacturer roots" or "devices must be warranted for 1 month/$20 retail price up to 60 months" or the like done. They're not as catchy politics but they'd be really directly useful without risking a lot of the value scale can bring.