Except when it gets stuck on monopolies and oligopolies, but that's not a problem, right?

The legal wheels are grinding on Amazon for a while because it’s a unique case in america. American courts check if something harms consumers, and Amazon is able to show that it transfers the lowest cost to its customers.

One of the biggest legal changes in the past few years was a new direction altogether to determine anticompetitive behavior.

If I recall correctly, FB’a recent acquisition of giphy (?) was also stopped on anti competitive grounds.

Point being that this stuff isn’t necessarily easy, the other side has very good lawyers who tell them what not to do on top of this being novel.

> The legal wheels are grinding on Amazon for a while because it’s a unique case in america. American courts check if something harms consumers...

It’s not unique at all. The old trusts that were broken up at the dawn of antitrust (that’s where the name comes from) were of a similar structure and even more dominant.

The “consumer harm” test (really “short term consumer cost” test) was a deliberate crippling of antitrust doctrine during the Reagan era. The process is only now starting to return to its roots.

Consumers can be harmed by a low price when it is predatory, either to drive out competitors (so price can go up later) or to transfer business to a monopolist who can charge higher prices elsewhere and/or stave off competitive technological or entrepreneurial threats. This doctrine blessed such predatory tactics while pretending to be a high-minded consumer-friendly approach.

> The process is only now starting to return to its roots.

I'd like to cynically say that the rhetoric and arguments have finally started to return to their roots within this particular administration, but there's no evidence of a process actually being carried to completion yet.

There’s been legal theory movement over the past 15 years or so to revisit this shift. All you’re seeing now is some of the peaks of an undersea mountain range. This movement has been gaining in different agencies for years. I think it’s a secular shift rather than something administration-specific.

Of course the rentiers can still squash things, and will. But I think the tide is against them.

Matt Stoller has done great work both documenting this and contributing.

Do you have good references that provide broad coverage on the changing tastes of anti-competitive enforcement? The Reagan-era comment intrigued me.

The best would be to read Stoller's massive book on antitrust from the days of the standard oil trust to today, "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy". I suppose you could just skip ahead to Reagan and Bork, but the whole book is fascinating.

Failing that, you could read his blog. He's the most succinct and thoughtful writer on the topic today.

This is not some "hidden history" -- they were quite proud of it. I watched it unfold in real time.

I find it fascinating that the Reagan administration (and the bevy of organizations around it) moved taxonomy and models such that the democrats (in particular Clinton) discussed economics and antitrust using the republicans' framework, just as the republicans still think of the economy from a Victorian/Marxist framework (Labor Theory of Value, capital expressed only in smokestack industries and finance, etc etc).

Oh for sure, it’s been quite the change in attitudes over the decades.

It’s heartening that things are shifting, but it’s bound to be slow progress.

They also grind very selectively.

The fundamental hope that democracy is based upon is that they will eventually (in finite time) grind all problems, even if not right away.

I'm hopeful. "The logic of political survival" (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/logic-political-survival ) is one of many books that make a decent case for democratic systems simply being better than authoritarian (in the long run), the more democratic the better. This old journal article while dated and possibly no longer accurate about the arab world give a military perspective on the same dynamics https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

It's important to remember that 100 years ago (if you squint, 150 years no contest, there basically was no democracy in the modern sense (universal suffrage, no special rights), kings and queens and aristocrats still held most power and wealth in most places around the world. It's very easy to forget that the descendants of these aristocrats in places where lasting measures against the lingering power of the old rich weren't taken (i.e., they weren't executed and their wealth was left intact) are usually still in the richest 100 families of the country and wield considerable political influence.

I will stop here now because dang has repeatedly asked me not to make statements likely to inflame "boring" political discussions but I do think that as more and more people realize that they are not in fact temporarily embarrassed millionaires the old power bases of corruption and uncapped dynastic wealth will follow the way of dynastic hegemony over nations.

>"the more democratic the better"

I no longer believe this to be the case. I am pro-democracy but I am not a suffrage maximalist. During the last election cycle I looked at the myriad of obscure positions I had the right to vote for on the ballot and I realized most of what I was voting for I was unqualified to weigh in on.

For instance, why do I vote for the Railroad Commissioner? Why do I vote for my local county's community college board of trustees seat 5 and 6? You could say that I should be informing myself before I go to cast the ballot. While you wouldn't be wrong for saying that is my responsibility as a voter, I can assure you virtually no one actually does this. I also find the down ballot candidate's pitches so generic and milquetoast that there isn't enough substance to actually distinguish between them.

What's worse is that the obscure positions have either unopposed candidates or just two. And most of the time, people just look for the (R) or the (D) by the name and that's what they go on.

More democracy does not necessarily mean more committees in a big centralised state. One problem I personally have with representative democracy is that the representative class will proliferate. If e.g. the railroad/community was organised as a co-op with special legislative constraints, you could have democratic oversight without these meaningless elections. Compulsory, random chance representation or coercive voting with a review by your successors are also mechanisms which could be explored. Even a well designed market could serve that purpose.

"more democracy" simply means we do not just give one dude (and it's still most often a dude) the keys to power and call it a day and instead think about how to distribute this power so that it stays functional enough to produce public goods, but smeared around finely enough that it's hard to abuse.

While HN might not be the place for "boring" political discussions (no doubt that flame wars and conspiracy theories cloy), do you have another venue that you publish your thoughts on? I quite enjoyed this comment and learned quite a bit reviewing the linked information. Thoughtful political dialogue is ever necessary and frequently absent.

I'm reworking my website (see my profile/email) and will try to put them there as I finish my PhD. Just need to find rhr time to do it properly. It's one thing to type out comments, it's another to publish self contained text and claims.

I think the justice department hasn’t gotten involved in those cases for the last 40 years so, no, they don’t get stuck on them at all.

:-(

Fortunately antitrust appears to be moving back to its century-plus-old roots.

I want to believe this, but I sense this is just a comfortable platitude we tell ourselves. There are countless examples of both high and low profile injustices that have been carried out with no substantial consequences. You could say it is selection bias that I look towards those, but in the case of refuting an assertion, I think they count.