Regulation helps capitalism work for more people, and keeps our society healthier. It's a good thing.
We’ve looped back to that term. What is an “economic market?” Precisely? In a way that makes the law grounded, predictable and extensible.
I’ve struggled with this, too, by the way. The courts have as well.
However, I do think there is a lot of money depending on making the situation as complicated as possible — especially in the US.
The fact the EU is managing to progress this type of matter, proves it's possible.
Is it? The European Commission has no theory of a market, just an enemies list. It has never once in court sustained a succinct pitch on how to define a market for antitrust purposes in a way that snares big tech. Once in a while it settles for a fine and everybody moved on.
Catching out these corporations in order to lay a 'charge' shouldn't be necessary, when it's quite clear to most people that their behaviour is stifling competition.
We simply need to implement the necessary legislation to enable a playing field which is able to serve a greater range of players.
“We simply need to implement the necessary legislation” could be said about literally any problem. The EU has this figured out about as much as the U.S. does.
> the EU doesn't rely on litigation to define the economic landscape in the same way that the USA does
The courts have been snubbing the European Commission’s expansive views of antitrust. In part due to a lack of any consistent definition of a market.
I find it maddening to see the corporations run rings around elected governments!
“We simply need to implement the necessary legislation” could be said about literally any problem. The EU has this figured out about as much as the U.S. does.
This moves the problem of defining a market to defining a submarket.
Please don't interpret this as my being facetious. In the days of good and services being sold to consumers, we had metrics to measure this. The government measured and the courts incorporated said metrics into antitrust law. Those measures don't work well in the digital era. These cases are about proposing new measures and getting them to stick.
Mind bogglingly, the FTC didn't propose such a metric. That's why its complaint was dismissed. I'm curious to see what they propose, if anything.
In that case, the core product (to other businesses) is shelf space.
So is there a monopoly on shelf space control?
Walmart is huge. But Target's pretty big too (~10% their size by revenue). And they've got bigger competitors in grocery.
But in the Facebook case, where else are you going to buy eyeball time? The closest thing to the scale of Facebook ad space would be if Google put ads on the launcher of Android.
You need to define these terms in a way that doesn't make everything a monopoly. Because by this logic, my corner flower vendor has a monopoly on her corner and also on the flowers she is holding in her hand right now.