anti-trust enforcement is premised on the existence of some harm, generally related to anti-competitive practices (like price fixing), and it seems like Posner

anti-trust enforcement is premised on the existence of some harm, generally related to anti-competitive practices (like price fixing), and it seems like Posner doesn't see a harm there, at least in traditional anti-trust terms. this is not surprising: posner (I would assume) ascribes to the chicago school re: anti-trust, where anti-trust is really all about consumer harm and efficient outcomes for the industry, and on those terms especially hard to see harm since google is "free" to what most people understand as consumers, and even the real consumers (advertisers) don't seem to be banging on the door saying they are overpaying (at least not yet), and google seems to do a decent job of running their ad markets efficiently (that's a total guess honestly, feel free to correct me if wrong!). on a funnier (and more cynical) level, when posner says "anti-trust is dead" he may very well be giving himself a pat on the back, since he's a leading thinker of the "law and economics" school (usually attributed to u chicago, where posner has long been a professor - his seminal paper on the subject here is pretty amazing: http://m.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/53.Posner.Values_0.pdf http://m.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/53.Posner.Values_0.pdf) that many give credit / blame for shifting anti-trust's focus away from reigning in corporate power (the traditional "trust-busting" rationale, which was really as much about trying to avoid total capture of government by the big trusts), and instead focus on consumer harm and market inefficiency, which is generally indifferent to the expansion of corporate power so long as they don't gauge prices or do anything blatantly harmful to the market. this shift in focus greatly reduced the scope and practice of antitrust prosecution, and I think posner in general thinks that's a good thing since he's prefer less gov intervention. what's odd to me is that he seems concerned (or honestly, he just seems annoyed ha) about corporate influence on government, but doesn't seem to care that the fact that these companies are able to become so massive is in large part why they are able to influence the government so much... this is the backdrop to a lot of the interview, good example is when the interviewer asks "Are we only concerned about seeing low prices, and not about other things like capture or having members of the House of Representatives owned by one large company?" this is just rambling at this point (sorry!), but posner's response here is totally amazing / weird - he seems to basically say the problem is that the court system has been making bad decisions because it has been politicized because appointments are made by politicians, and (at least in part) because money influences politics, the politicians are picking judges for their stances on token political issues, not their abilities. that all makes sense, but his solution is not to attempt make the entire political system less full of shit...but just have other smart judges/lawyers appoint new judges (presumably producing more judges like...him). he seems to want to simultaenously NOT reign in corporate power at all (or maybe he just doesn't believe it's possible, which is a fair assumption), but still not have corporations influence (at least one branch of) government - feels pretty "cake-and-eat-it-too" to me. not the worst idea, but exposes posner's high view of himself to be both smart and nonpartisan (not surprising and honestly pretty well-deserved) and his arguably naive belief in the ability of judges to be "above the fray" - very few people in general are as intelligent, idiosyncratic and nonconformist as he is - pro market, pro choice, pro drug legalization, pro human organ markets, and frankly he's widely considered a genius (an eccentric one for sure, but that's not an unusual pairing)!