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Also, does the public have the image of Comcast and Verizon CEOs as being specific people who are really rich and dislikable? So that taking them down a notch

Also, does the public have the image of Comcast and Verizon CEOs as being specific people who are really rich and dislikable? So that taking them down a notch will make the public happy? And so taking them down a notch is a good political stance? To be fair, I think there is some argument that some of the larger tech giants would benefit consumer welfare by being broken up. Facebook probably less so since people already have choice. Warren does herself no favors by using $25 billion as the threshold of a monopoly. What a real monopoly is is when there is no consumer choice at all, leading to large corporate profits that hurt consumers at the pricing level. By not using consumer choice or harm as the standard (which is what the court uses), Warren comes across (and perhaps actually intends) to be against large companies, regardless of welfare.

mushufasa 8y ago
In the past couple years, a new legal theory proposed that the definition of monopoloy needs to be updated for the 21st century. Instead of focusing on consumer welfare, antitrust law should focus on 'anticompetitive behavior'. In this argument, amazon is the platform through which all other online sellers go to market, like railroads in the late 19th century. Behaving as both a platform and participant is anticompetitive, regardless of whether programs like 'amazon basics' make consumers happy. NYT article about the author of the original law paper https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antitrust-lina-khan-amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antit... I don't have strong feelings on the issue, but this may help explain warren's stance, which isn't directly related to consumer choice.
- basch 8y ago
  The original paper is pretty readable, the NYT article doesnt really add anything but context. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
- cowl 8y ago
  so we are ok with removing the only thing we as people have going for us, consumer welfare consideration and focus only on how to make it easier for businesses to screw us. Should I feel better that the business that is screwing me is a "small business" instead of a giant? is that the new standard?
  - int_19h 8y ago
    It's not either-or. The problem is that the current interpretation only looks at consumer impact, and ignores a lot of anti-competitive behavior that makes the market less free overall. In practice, this still hurts consumers, it's just that much harder to prove because of indirect effects - and so monopolies get away with it more often than they used to.
    - cowl 8y ago
      >>In practice, this still hurts consumers. I Don't agree with this view. It surely has the potential to hurt the consumers in the future but IF and WHEN it does consumer impact at that time can be used to fight it (break up etc). No need to actually hurt the consumer NOW for the fear that they might be hurt in the future.
  - vkou 8y ago
    >so we are ok with removing the only thing we as people have going for us The way that the 'consumer welfare' protection is currently implemented has no teeth. Consider the Comcast/TWC mergers. The companies involved pay 'experts' (Of their choice) to spin fairy tales about how they project that costs to customers will go down. Five years down the road, when they don't (Or, customers suffer because other intangibles degrade, due to lack of competition), nobody actually holds them accountable, after the fact.
- int_19h 8y ago
  It's not a new legal theory, though. It's a return to the old one that predated the current state of affairs. In other words, it's a return to what the people who originally wrote our anti-monopoly laws meant them to do.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Yep people forget the economic impact of monopsonies aswell as monopolies
- dnautics 8y ago
  the old hay is, if you charge less than your competitor, you're engaging in anticompetitive behavior, if you charge the same as your competitor, you're engaging in collusion, if you charge more than your competitor, you're price gouging, so as a business, the only way to survive is to lobby politicians enough and buy yourself protection.
- ajhurliman 8y ago
  Amazon Basics is a tiny part of their revenue. The conclusion that they participate in their own platform and therefore need to be broken up makes no sense.
ashelmire 8y ago
> What a real monopoly is is when there is no consumer choice at all, leading to large corporate profits that hurt consumers at the pricing level. Well, sure, 100% national market share is obviously a monopoly. But you're also a monopoly if you distort a market (generally markets with less than 3 major players) or have control or distortion over individual markets (you can have a monopoly in NYC but not the US, for example). I think this obviously applies to telecoms, which often have monopolies over certain areas (and often granted by local government! thanks a lot Philly city council). I think there's a whole host of bad behavior that's non-monopolistic. That's what I think needs to be cracked down on. Some of these do relate to market share, but I don't think it's as simple as a boolean monopoly / not-monopoly. It's a gradient, and much of the behavior in that gradient should be dealt with. There's often collusion between companies on pricing, or agreements not to compete, etc...
- noarchy 8y ago
  >I think this obviously applies to telecoms, which often have monopolies over certain areas (and often granted by local government! thanks a lot Philly city council). That's a key distinction. Are there any actual monopolies (I don't mean companies that are merely dominant) that are not backed by government?
  - ashelmire 8y ago
    Healthcare, insurance often do? I haven't really thought about that too much. According to the FTC, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. Let's clear up what we're talking about. I don't find monopolies to be a very interesting subject. What I have a problem with is anticompetitive behavior (which is illegal but the US has been notably slacking on enforcement for years). When a company uses their position as a platform for sales to start pushing into selling actual products in markets they've determined to be profitable, or a company bundles their applications with their mobile platform thereby dominating the app market, or when a company runs the largest platform for search but simultaneously distorts it through advertising and mysterious delisting or account shutdowns, then you have problems. These companies are anti-competitively distorting markets in ways that consumers can't understand and requires regulation. There are two ways tech companies are often uncompetitive. Predatory or below cost-pricing, https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/predatory-or-below-cost https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... is first among them. Think Uber, where they lose money each ride. "Free" services also seem like they violate this, as they prevent anyone from competing in that market. You can't sell private email services so long as free email exists. App and service bundling falls under the other condition, https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/tying-sale-two-products https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a.... Mysterious delisting or shutting down accounts without reason or recourse falls under refusal to deal, https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/refusal-deal https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a....
stcredzero 8y ago
To be fair, I think there is some argument that some of the larger tech giants would benefit consumer welfare by being broken up. Facebook probably less so since people already have choice. It's only kinda choice. They have such a dominance over the social graph, most people who "leave" them don't actually completely leave. Most of them keep Facebook around as an address-book+messaging. People who "leave" by actually deleting their account then turn around and create obvious dummy accounts.

mushufasa 8y ago

In the past couple years, a new legal theory proposed that the definition of monopoloy needs to be updated for the 21st century. Instead of focusing on consumer welfare, antitrust law should focus on 'anticompetitive behavior'. In this argument, amazon is the platform through which all other online sellers go to market, like railroads in the late 19th century. Behaving as both a platform and participant is anticompetitive, regardless of whether programs like 'amazon basics' make consumers happy. NYT article about the author of the original law paper https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antitrust-lina-khan-amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antit... I don't have strong feelings on the issue, but this may help explain warren's stance, which isn't directly related to consumer choice.

basch 8y ago
The original paper is pretty readable, the NYT article doesnt really add anything but context. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
cowl 8y ago
so we are ok with removing the only thing we as people have going for us, consumer welfare consideration and focus only on how to make it easier for businesses to screw us. Should I feel better that the business that is screwing me is a "small business" instead of a giant? is that the new standard?
- int_19h 8y ago
  It's not either-or. The problem is that the current interpretation only looks at consumer impact, and ignores a lot of anti-competitive behavior that makes the market less free overall. In practice, this still hurts consumers, it's just that much harder to prove because of indirect effects - and so monopolies get away with it more often than they used to.
  - cowl 8y ago
    >>In practice, this still hurts consumers. I Don't agree with this view. It surely has the potential to hurt the consumers in the future but IF and WHEN it does consumer impact at that time can be used to fight it (break up etc). No need to actually hurt the consumer NOW for the fear that they might be hurt in the future.
- vkou 8y ago
  >so we are ok with removing the only thing we as people have going for us The way that the 'consumer welfare' protection is currently implemented has no teeth. Consider the Comcast/TWC mergers. The companies involved pay 'experts' (Of their choice) to spin fairy tales about how they project that costs to customers will go down. Five years down the road, when they don't (Or, customers suffer because other intangibles degrade, due to lack of competition), nobody actually holds them accountable, after the fact.
int_19h 8y ago
It's not a new legal theory, though. It's a return to the old one that predated the current state of affairs. In other words, it's a return to what the people who originally wrote our anti-monopoly laws meant them to do.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Yep people forget the economic impact of monopsonies aswell as monopolies
dnautics 8y ago
the old hay is, if you charge less than your competitor, you're engaging in anticompetitive behavior, if you charge the same as your competitor, you're engaging in collusion, if you charge more than your competitor, you're price gouging, so as a business, the only way to survive is to lobby politicians enough and buy yourself protection.
ajhurliman 8y ago
Amazon Basics is a tiny part of their revenue. The conclusion that they participate in their own platform and therefore need to be broken up makes no sense.

ashelmire 8y ago

> What a real monopoly is is when there is no consumer choice at all, leading to large corporate profits that hurt consumers at the pricing level. Well, sure, 100% national market share is obviously a monopoly. But you're also a monopoly if you distort a market (generally markets with less than 3 major players) or have control or distortion over individual markets (you can have a monopoly in NYC but not the US, for example). I think this obviously applies to telecoms, which often have monopolies over certain areas (and often granted by local government! thanks a lot Philly city council). I think there's a whole host of bad behavior that's non-monopolistic. That's what I think needs to be cracked down on. Some of these do relate to market share, but I don't think it's as simple as a boolean monopoly / not-monopoly. It's a gradient, and much of the behavior in that gradient should be dealt with. There's often collusion between companies on pricing, or agreements not to compete, etc...

noarchy 8y ago
>I think this obviously applies to telecoms, which often have monopolies over certain areas (and often granted by local government! thanks a lot Philly city council). That's a key distinction. Are there any actual monopolies (I don't mean companies that are merely dominant) that are not backed by government?
- ashelmire 8y ago
  Healthcare, insurance often do? I haven't really thought about that too much. According to the FTC, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. Let's clear up what we're talking about. I don't find monopolies to be a very interesting subject. What I have a problem with is anticompetitive behavior (which is illegal but the US has been notably slacking on enforcement for years). When a company uses their position as a platform for sales to start pushing into selling actual products in markets they've determined to be profitable, or a company bundles their applications with their mobile platform thereby dominating the app market, or when a company runs the largest platform for search but simultaneously distorts it through advertising and mysterious delisting or account shutdowns, then you have problems. These companies are anti-competitively distorting markets in ways that consumers can't understand and requires regulation. There are two ways tech companies are often uncompetitive. Predatory or below cost-pricing, https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/predatory-or-below-cost https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... is first among them. Think Uber, where they lose money each ride. "Free" services also seem like they violate this, as they prevent anyone from competing in that market. You can't sell private email services so long as free email exists. App and service bundling falls under the other condition, https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/tying-sale-two-products https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a.... Mysterious delisting or shutting down accounts without reason or recourse falls under refusal to deal, https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/refusal-deal https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a....

stcredzero 8y ago

To be fair, I think there is some argument that some of the larger tech giants would benefit consumer welfare by being broken up. Facebook probably less so since people already have choice. It's only kinda choice. They have such a dominance over the social graph, most people who "leave" them don't actually completely leave. Most of them keep Facebook around as an address-book+messaging. People who "leave" by actually deleting their account then turn around and create obvious dummy accounts.