If we’re arguing about strategic decisions made a decade ago in this context, aren’t we really arguing about whether any company should ever fail?

This is Matt Stoller throwing a bunch of dust in the air because he wants to have been right when he was glad Khan shut down the merger, and then right again when the husk of iRobot sold out to the Chinese. Because Matt is always right, and “Wall Street” is always wrong.

Sorry, can you explain the "do a good job" option in more detail please? How should they have been run differently to generate more profit?

That's not what a good job is

Thanks, that's very helpful.

I mean, read the article? That's what it's about.

...except it's not.

That's only an option if the FTC can rewind time. Can they?

er? No we are talking about the attribution of blame. If you're saying "what a shame that iRobot is being sold to Chinese competitors" and then you "...because of the FTC" you're essentially lying; it's because of incompetence and capitalism and then also maybe a little bit the FTC (although I'm very skeptical of that as well, because in this whole narrative the FTC is the only party that can be even claimed to be acting prosocially).

People focus on the FTC because not blocking struggling companies from merging seems a lot more tractable than revamping capitalism or stopping humans from making business mistakes.

iRobot was (arguably) mismanaged just like Spirit Airlines or Warner Bros, but I'd appreciate if the FTC didn't make the matter worse.