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>Instead of breaking them up though, we should simply be more stringent with anti trust hearings and merger approvals. There have been a few mergers recently th

by ABCLAW 5y ago

>Instead of breaking them up though, we should simply be more stringent with anti trust hearings and merger approvals. There have been a few mergers recently that absolutely shouldn’t have been approved. Recently? Competition bureaus have been green lighting consolidation in key industry sectors for bullshit reasons with bad evidence for decades. Also, if we acknowledge that bureaus have allowed the over-consolidation of a number of industries, then why wouldn't we break them up? The harm to competition is already done - we already have titans accumulating the lucre of uncompetitive margins. The market's health cannot be judged in respect of what margins currently are; they have to be judged in respect of what they would be under situations of proper competition.

clairity 5y ago
yes, and the focus on tech is a red herring distraction du jour. every company over $100MM should be scrutinized for breakup into smaller entities. m&a should be default deny, with extraordinary evidence required for approval, with penalties that pierce the corporate veil for not meeting stated fair market objectives. that would actually encourage competition and functional markets without harming substantive efficiency/productivity gains from economies of scale, which, despite the popular conception, tend to be sublinear rather than superlinear. that's because coordination problems scale superlinearly with size (a la mythical man month), which in turn is why there is a optimum firm size both for the firms themselves as well as for the markets they compete in. markets (independent actors loosely coordinating via price signals) actually specifically arose to solve these very coordination problems.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > yes, and the focus on tech is a red herring distraction du jour. every company over $100MM should be scrutinized for breakup into smaller entities. Or we could just levy punitive corporate taxes on large companies over $100MM, and let market participants figure out the most efficient breakup arrangement. Come to think of it, this doesn't look all that different from what the Biden administration seems to be planning re: global corporate taxation.
  - clairity 5y ago
    i'm absolutely in favor of progressive tax functions (minus the numerous loopholes, e.g., tax shields) for corporations. in fact, there's no reason to have differing corporate and individual tax functions (smoothly varying, as opposed to discontinuous, stepped rates), especially when corporations have gained favored personhood status, and are treated better and more deferentially relative to actual people. note that the biden global tax is a tax floor, and discontinuities just beg to be gamed. moreover there's no reason to preclude one for the other. let's do both, and more, to make markets competitive and work for the common welfare, rather than decidedly favoring consolidation and capital-holders.

by ABCLAW 5y ago

clairity 5y ago

yes, and the focus on tech is a red herring distraction du jour. every company over $100MM should be scrutinized for breakup into smaller entities. m&a should be default deny, with extraordinary evidence required for approval, with penalties that pierce the corporate veil for not meeting stated fair market objectives. that would actually encourage competition and functional markets without harming substantive efficiency/productivity gains from economies of scale, which, despite the popular conception, tend to be sublinear rather than superlinear. that's because coordination problems scale superlinearly with size (a la mythical man month), which in turn is why there is a optimum firm size both for the firms themselves as well as for the markets they compete in. markets (independent actors loosely coordinating via price signals) actually specifically arose to solve these very coordination problems.

zozbot234 5y ago
> yes, and the focus on tech is a red herring distraction du jour. every company over $100MM should be scrutinized for breakup into smaller entities. Or we could just levy punitive corporate taxes on large companies over $100MM, and let market participants figure out the most efficient breakup arrangement. Come to think of it, this doesn't look all that different from what the Biden administration seems to be planning re: global corporate taxation.
- clairity 5y ago
  i'm absolutely in favor of progressive tax functions (minus the numerous loopholes, e.g., tax shields) for corporations. in fact, there's no reason to have differing corporate and individual tax functions (smoothly varying, as opposed to discontinuous, stepped rates), especially when corporations have gained favored personhood status, and are treated better and more deferentially relative to actual people. note that the biden global tax is a tax floor, and discontinuities just beg to be gamed. moreover there's no reason to preclude one for the other. let's do both, and more, to make markets competitive and work for the common welfare, rather than decidedly favoring consolidation and capital-holders.