How many times did the FTC fail in court under her watch? More than I can count on two hands.
Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.
Big is bad bro. There’s like 5 companies carrying the entire S&P rn how is that good for anyone outside of those 5 companies?
Using "big" as a synonym for "consumers are worse off than alternatives" does not do anyone justice.
> At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once.
Her prejudice against big tech and pretty much ignoring any other industries is not something to be proud of.
FTC under her blocked Kroger/Albertsons, blocked Tapestry/Capri, ended non-competes, enacted click to cancel, made major strides on right to repair, etc. in addition to all the “prejudice against big tech” which are the titans of industry right now…
-Over $1.5B refunded. Significant settlements (Epic, MoneyGram, Amazon delivery drivers, etc.)
- Junk-fees ban, click-to-cancel rule (You can thank the current administration for walking back on this), non-compete ban.
-Right to repair, data privacy enforcement, health-care pricing interventions ( reduced out-of-pocket costs for inhalers and insulin).
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-ftcs-antitrust-ov...
Food plus quality price index in Japan and France look better to me despite the lack of Walmarts.
And, I read some things about price collusion of the major grocers during the pandemic that makes me concerned.
I will say, thanks for being a human and discussing this as a human. Too many bots on HN lately.
Asserting a sloganized refrain is not very convincing. Make a real argument. Here are some counterpoints to "big is bad" Neobrandeisianism: -Scale enables better economics for certain businesses which consumers and other businesses then benefit from. -Large size allows additional speculative cutting edge R&D funding which the whole world benefits from even if it never pays off. -Being big on its own is almost never a cheat code to permanent monopoly / monopsony lock-in, especially in the technology business. That comes from actual anti-competitive behavior or regulatory capture (which ARE the parts that should be regulated, rather than targeting or preventing size for its own sake).
The S&P point is more than a bit overstated and it also doesn't really matter? The subset of the S&P that's performing well will naturally get weighted higher over time, until the performance changes. It doesn't really matter if the S&P is driven by 5 enormous companies or 500 equally-sized ones. Whatever works at the moment is what gets rewarded with capital -- that's the point of the system and it's been more effective than any alternatives. Besides, it'd be poor investing practice to be literally all-in on the S&P.
Meta is top 10 for DC lobbying. No regulatory capture to see here.
The essay (literally, a homework assignment she did at law school) for which she became famous that criticizes Amazon for being big is so chock full of errors, misconstructions and faulty logic, that it's an indictment of some really poor political habits and instincts that the US is prone to. That due diligence in vetting her as a rigorous and informed thinker on the topic failed is an unequivocal failure.
source?
She got boosted by an insurgent group of law professors who spearhead whats called the Neobrandeis moment. Their theory is that anti-trust should be preemptively enforced against size for its own sake.
This is the article she wrote for her law review as a law student which put her on their radar and they started calling her a "rising star" etc etc, which snowballed into the performative appointment by the Biden admin.
Feel free to read through it.
The purpose of the FTC is literally to take regulatory action to prevent unfair competition. Your argument is that you shouldn't appoint a commissioner on the basis that they think large tech companies are engaging in anti-competitive behaviour?? Note that this position isn't playing dictator; the FTC is subject to judicial oversight.
> Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.
How do we know this isn't just your preexisting prejudice of cable companies? Maybe you've just got an obsession with "big [cable] is bad"? On a serious note – it seems that you _do_ agree with antitrust regulation, just not against Facebook/Amazon for some reason (and only against Comcast)??
Real talk Lina
I don’t know. All I know is that Lina is out of power, and suddenly we see an upswing in M&A. Coincidence, I’m sure.
Not everything needs to last and companies that can’t radically transform their management culture to enable innovation and competition deserve to wane until they’re in a steady-state or they go under to allow for a new competitor to rise.
The founding team at Figma would have gotten a similar amount much sooner if the acquisition was let thru OR if the underwriters didn't screw them over by underpricing at $33.
[0] - https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/figma-ipo-pop-spotlight-...
Basically, before an IPO, the underwriters take the company on a "roadshow" in which they pitch the IPO to potential buyers.
There's a hierarchy of these: the best are very large buyers that place large orders and trade seldom. Pensions, sovereign wealth funds, etc.
Those buyers then make offers ("I'll buy 50MM at $100"), which the bank uses to set the IPO price. The bank then gives them an allocation.
If you're a high (10MM+) net worth individual that banks with one of the underwriters, you can often get an allocation in an IPO. The richer you are, the more of an allocation you can get.
When an IPO pops, it's these people that get the benefit.
The benefit for the company is that the stock is owned by prime people the bank selected: you crucially _don't_ want to just sell to the highest bidder if they are going to dump the stock immediately after the pop (or that's the theory, at least). They have stable shareholders with a vision aligned with management.
The benefit to the bank is that they get to reward their customers with access to profitable trades--but the bank itself does not profit.
Post-2015 other than large language models this industry has mostly been riding on intellectual property consolidation. That's basically Lina's point; nobody actually benefits from this - not customers, not share holders, not the American people. The over practice of M&A leaves a small pool of winners who are not the kind of people that post on or read this forum.
This is an international forum mate
grandmczeb•1h ago
sealeck•1h ago
bryant•1h ago
What incentive would Amazon have to drop prices after vertical integration is done?
tomrod•1h ago
margalabargala•57m ago
Why would Amazon, having lowered their costs, pass that savings on to the consumer when they could simply profit more?
dgfitz•53m ago
roughly•19m ago
tomrod•8m ago
CamperBob2•1h ago