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> The old antitrust laws weren't, but they've been narrowed so much over time through court decisions that they're no longer effective, as evidenced by all the

by ethbr1 3y ago

> The old antitrust laws weren't, but they've been narrowed so much over time through court decisions that they're no longer effective, as evidenced by all the industries dominated by less than a dozen major companies. That's endemic to new markets though. The internet crushed incumbents, the winner of which then became incumbents, and so the cycle continues. One could argue that this is exactly the point in the cycle when antitrust should start being used. Any earlier and you preemptively regulate. > The first sale doctrine is the thing the industry keeps chipping away at with anti-circumvention laws and ebook licensing etc. I'd have gone with rent-instead-of-own and converting purchases into platform subscriptions. But point being that the original law was against the wishes of the largest players in that sector. > Telecoms are probably the textbook case of regulatory capture. I'm sure old ATT would have something to say about that... > A lot of aspects of airlines are actually not that heavily regulated, it generally operates as a fairly competitive market. The explicit deregulation of the carrier market and substitution of new rules promoting competition. I'd say the incumbents were pretty upset about that, considering Southwest spent the first 3 years of its existence in court... > Food safety is the thing where this happens: A pile of examples does not an argument make. Otherwise, I'd just be able to link here and call it a day: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety... What's your argument? > Transportation safety is pretty thoroughly captured by automakers. [...] and we make dumb responses [...] instead of actually effective responses like building more housing near jobs so people drive fewer miles or don't need as many cars (obvious negative effect on automakers). You're suggesting the NHTSA solve the US housing market? That's a bit outside their remit, which is ensuring that vehicles pass these standards: https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/statutory-authorities https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/statutory-authorities And let me tell you, automakers aren't thrilled about CAFE standards... > Environmental safety rules don't seem to apply to oil companies. Citation needed. If your point is that the EPA is under-matched against some of the largest companies on the planet, yes. But to say say they get a free pass is simply wrong. There are multiple court cases where the EPA is currently fighting to uphold and enforce regulation. In addition to new rules being enacted. E.g. https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-12/epas-final-rule-for-oil-and-gas-operations.-overview-fact-sheet.pdf https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-12/epas-fina... > Fish and wildlife rules are commonly structured to give large incumbents the right to harvest the disproportionate share. That's called grandfathering, and it exists because there's a realpolitik recognition that if you didn't give the current incumbents a juicy cut of the quota they'd just ignore it. That's the way the world works. > Also, this is one of the cases where the industry wants the rules, because over-fishing is a harm to them Ha! If there weren't fishing quotas, companies would happily deplete fisheries as quickly as they could get them on the boat. Industrial fishing doesn't care about long term.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> One could argue that this is exactly the point in the cycle when antitrust should start being used. Any earlier and you preemptively regulate. Antitrust is about anti-competitive practices, like vendor lock-in, tying, collusion, mergers etc. These are practices non-monopolies use to establish a monopoly. Waiting until there is already a monopoly is too late, and the modern focus on "monopolies" is itself being used as a dodge by large companies, because a market with only two or three competitors is already concentrated enough to hold together a cartel. Moreover, antitrust isn't like other regulations. You typically don't have to impose any compliance burden ahead of time, instead you declare contracts in restraint of trade to be void and prefer remedies in the form of court orders rather than damages. So for example, if a company (regardless of size) is abusing the DMCA or imposing contractual terms to prevent buyers from installing apps on devices the company sold, that's anti-competitive and no court should enforce the contract, and a customer should be able to sue them not for damages but for a patch to allow them to run their own code. This isn't a problem for new markets because you're not bankrupting the company if they get it wrong or imposing penalties for not hiring a lawyer, you're just preventing the anti-competitive practice from being effective by ordering it to stop the first time anyone raises the objection. > I'd have gone with rent-instead-of-own and converting purchases into platform subscriptions. That's ebook licensing. > But point being that the original law was against the wishes of the largest players in that sector. The first sale doctrine was originally created by the courts rather than the legislature. > I'd say the incumbents were pretty upset about that, considering Southwest spent the first 3 years of its existence in court... But isn't that the point? The incumbents liked it better when the regulators were captured by the industry and imposing regulations at their behest. When those regulations were removed, they sued and got upset. > I'm sure old ATT would have something to say about that... Are you kidding? That's how they got their monopoly to begin with. The original phone network was a thousand companies each running their own wires across the city. Ma Bell took a picture of the rat's nest of cables and said "something must be done" and had their monopoly enshrined into the law. And many of those laws persist even after the company was broken up. > What's your argument? The regulators are so captured that the thing they're prohibiting is safety testing because the large incumbents neither want to pay for the testing nor want their competitors to be able to advertise having done it when they won't. It's proof that the regulators are beholden to the industry, quod erat demonstrandum. > You're suggesting the NHTSA solve the US housing market? I'm suggesting that the industry captures the relevant regulators. NHTSA does things like require safety equipment customers would have demanded from major car companies regardless. This has minimal cost to the large incumbents and in fact helps them by making it more expensive to start a new car company, because crash testing and certification is a negligible incremental cost for a company making millions of cars but a significant fixed cost for a small manufacturer. Meanwhile allowing more people to live in areas where they don't need cars would actually cause problems for them, so they make sure national policy is to fund highways and not fund high-density market-rate housing construction. > And let me tell you, automakers aren't thrilled about CAFE standards... Which is why they had them neutered. Notice how more than half the "cars" people drive are actually trucks and SUVs? Because they have a lower efficiency requirement. > If your point is that the EPA is under-matched against some of the largest companies on the planet, yes. The problem is that those are the ones they need to be effective against, because those are the ones operating at scale. Meanwhile they impose rules with high compliance costs on smaller companies, which is what those larger companies want. Moreover, the issue is here is not "should regulations exist" -- you need to prohibit major sources of pollution, there is no way around it. Dumping mercury in the river is bad. The issue is that you shouldn't just create a regulatory agency with the power to continuously create new rules that accumulate but never expire, with no capacity for them to be challenged on the basis of e.g. efficacy or cost/benefit ratio. Which is what we've been doing. > That's the way the world works. That's the way politics works, which is the point -- politics ruins everything it touches and therefore should prudently be restrained from touching many things. > If there weren't fishing quotas, companies would happily deplete fisheries as quickly as they could get them on the boat. If you took a vote exclusively of fishing companies, do you think they would favor some quota system or no quota system? Regardless of what they would do if there were no quotas, they are not lobbying for the thing they know would put them out of business in a year.

by ethbr1 3y ago

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> One could argue that this is exactly the point in the cycle when antitrust should start being used. Any earlier and you preemptively regulate. Antitrust is about anti-competitive practices, like vendor lock-in, tying, collusion, mergers etc. These are practices non-monopolies use to establish a monopoly. Waiting until there is already a monopoly is too late, and the modern focus on "monopolies" is itself being used as a dodge by large companies, because a market with only two or three competitors is already concentrated enough to hold together a cartel. Moreover, antitrust isn't like other regulations. You typically don't have to impose any compliance burden ahead of time, instead you declare contracts in restraint of trade to be void and prefer remedies in the form of court orders rather than damages. So for example, if a company (regardless of size) is abusing the DMCA or imposing contractual terms to prevent buyers from installing apps on devices the company sold, that's anti-competitive and no court should enforce the contract, and a customer should be able to sue them not for damages but for a patch to allow them to run their own code. This isn't a problem for new markets because you're not bankrupting the company if they get it wrong or imposing penalties for not hiring a lawyer, you're just preventing the anti-competitive practice from being effective by ordering it to stop the first time anyone raises the objection. > I'd have gone with rent-instead-of-own and converting purchases into platform subscriptions. That's ebook licensing. > But point being that the original law was against the wishes of the largest players in that sector. The first sale doctrine was originally created by the courts rather than the legislature. > I'd say the incumbents were pretty upset about that, considering Southwest spent the first 3 years of its existence in court... But isn't that the point? The incumbents liked it better when the regulators were captured by the industry and imposing regulations at their behest. When those regulations were removed, they sued and got upset. > I'm sure old ATT would have something to say about that... Are you kidding? That's how they got their monopoly to begin with. The original phone network was a thousand companies each running their own wires across the city. Ma Bell took a picture of the rat's nest of cables and said "something must be done" and had their monopoly enshrined into the law. And many of those laws persist even after the company was broken up. > What's your argument? The regulators are so captured that the thing they're prohibiting is safety testing because the large incumbents neither want to pay for the testing nor want their competitors to be able to advertise having done it when they won't. It's proof that the regulators are beholden to the industry, quod erat demonstrandum. > You're suggesting the NHTSA solve the US housing market? I'm suggesting that the industry captures the relevant regulators. NHTSA does things like require safety equipment customers would have demanded from major car companies regardless. This has minimal cost to the large incumbents and in fact helps them by making it more expensive to start a new car company, because crash testing and certification is a negligible incremental cost for a company making millions of cars but a significant fixed cost for a small manufacturer. Meanwhile allowing more people to live in areas where they don't need cars would actually cause problems for them, so they make sure national policy is to fund highways and not fund high-density market-rate housing construction. > And let me tell you, automakers aren't thrilled about CAFE standards... Which is why they had them neutered. Notice how more than half the "cars" people drive are actually trucks and SUVs? Because they have a lower efficiency requirement. > If your point is that the EPA is under-matched against some of the largest companies on the planet, yes. The problem is that those are the ones they need to be effective against, because those are the ones operating at scale. Meanwhile they impose rules with high compliance costs on smaller companies, which is what those larger companies want. Moreover, the issue is here is not "should regulations exist" -- you need to prohibit major sources of pollution, there is no way around it. Dumping mercury in the river is bad. The issue is that you shouldn't just create a regulatory agency with the power to continuously create new rules that accumulate but never expire, with no capacity for them to be challenged on the basis of e.g. efficacy or cost/benefit ratio. Which is what we've been doing. > That's the way the world works. That's the way politics works, which is the point -- politics ruins everything it touches and therefore should prudently be restrained from touching many things. > If there weren't fishing quotas, companies would happily deplete fisheries as quickly as they could get them on the boat. If you took a vote exclusively of fishing companies, do you think they would favor some quota system or no quota system? Regardless of what they would do if there were no quotas, they are not lobbying for the thing they know would put them out of business in a year.