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I agree. In fact, "consumer welfare" is tantamount to repealing antitrust, and the growth of FAANG can be directly traced to this change in legal standard. Lit

I agree. In fact, "consumer welfare" is tantamount to repealing antitrust, and the growth of FAANG can be directly traced to this change in legal standard. Literally every monopoly ever can be said to have a consumer welfare benefit. Competition is always at least a little anti-consumer - you have to consider alternatives and multiple business relationships, and consumers have a risk of those alternatives being inferior or outright harmful. The problem is that nobody is ever purely a "consumer". There are no professional consumers whose entire life is just buying and using things[0]. "Consumer" is just a hat that people wear among many others. So whatever welfare consumers get from larger firms is mere compensation for welfare lost when those same people are either working for or operating the firms at the other end of the business. Even if someone isn't both a user and developer on Apple platforms, they are indirectly impacted when those developers are harmed by Apple's misconduct, and have to compensate in other ways, such as charging more money across-the-board or skimping on other things. (e.g. not shipping an Android version of their app because App Store compliance is taking up too much developer time) [0] Though, the attitude I've gotten from some Apple users would imply that their entire life literally is just buying things on their iPhone.

FabHK 5y ago
> In fact, "consumer welfare" is tantamount to repealing antitrust, and the growth of FAANG can be directly traced to this change in legal standard. Literally every monopoly ever can be said to have a consumer welfare benefit. Eh? Not at all. The entire point (in classical economic theory) is that a monopoly, compared to perfect competition, reduces consumer surplus and arrogates a part of that to itself as rent (thereby reducing total social surplus).

FabHK 5y ago

> In fact, "consumer welfare" is tantamount to repealing antitrust, and the growth of FAANG can be directly traced to this change in legal standard. Literally every monopoly ever can be said to have a consumer welfare benefit. Eh? Not at all. The entire point (in classical economic theory) is that a monopoly, compared to perfect competition, reduces consumer surplus and arrogates a part of that to itself as rent (thereby reducing total social surplus).