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I don't care who wins the election next month, Lina Khan needs to be kept as FTC chair. The FTC has been on a roll the past while.
by LorenDB 2y ago
I don't care who wins the election next month, Lina Khan needs to be kept as FTC chair. The FTC has been on a roll the past while.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoWhat has she done that didn't fail or get shot down as political overreach? (not being sarcastic...i mean that i may have missed something inadvertently)
- Multicomp 2y agoNot GP. I would say that her effectiveness is both in Fire and Motion [1], while one wants more Fire, before the status quo was not only no fire, but also no motion. Even the motion is a good starting point that businesses are having management adapt their strategies and plans to account for the motion, just out self-interested risk mitigation in case there is more fire than there currently is today, and that fire gets trained on them. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
- BoiledCabbage 2y agoA good analogy, but I think you swapped the meaning of fire and motion in your usage of it. In this case, her cases even if lost would be the equivalent of cover fire. Businesses need to re-act to the cover fire and cannot advance (perform their own motion) while she is firing. The second part is that you would hope/expect her to be able to gain territory in the near future via the "motion" part of the strategy. So I agree in your framing, just from my perspective you flipped the terminology.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y agoThat seems really bad for the government to be doing this. If she is losing, then using the resources of the government to harass businesses that are acting lawfully seems like fascism.
- immibis 2y agoharassing shitty actors, even if they're technically obeying the law, is not fascism
- givemeethekeys 2y agoI suppose the question is - despite her failures, do we agree with the policy that she / the Biden administration are pushing? If so, then if she isn't the right person for the job, is there someone who will be more successful?
- hughesjj 2y ago> didn't fail or get shot down as political overreach? Progress requires testing the system and seeing where the failure points are. It's significantly better than the relative nothing we've gotten from past admins. Also with the current judicial and congressional makeup it's a wonder anything gets done.
- jjtheblunt 2y agobut things that do get done were definitely critically reviewed, so that's something.
- jessriedel 2y agoUsing public resources to sue companies, force them to pay for expensive defense in court, and then losing when the court decides they did nothing illegal?
- Hasu 2y agoYes, that is how our justice system works. First, the government accuses you of a crime, then they have to prove that you committed it, and you get to defend yourself. How else could it possibly work? Companies just get to break the law and no one can ever take them to court over it?
- jessriedel 2y agoI’m not suggesting the justice system should change. I’m suggesting that civil servants who file and lose a ton of suits should be presumed to be doing net harm. Just as we would for prosecutors in criminal law. And when it’s politically motivated, it is not just harm in the sense of economic inefficiency, but further is unjust and lowers public trust in institutions.
- yathaid 2y ago[flagged]
- enragedcacti 2y agoThe FTC has succeeded at a lot of things that just aren't very interesting to report on. I'd recommend reading through FTC press releases. They generally release a statement whenever a major action is started and resolved. By my count in the past year or so the FTC was involved in at least 12 successful anti-monopoly actions (I counted modified mergers, killed mergers, and divestments). The most consequential merger win was probably the NVIDIA/ARM merger that died under FTC litigation. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/02/statement-regarding-termination-nvidia-corps-attempted-acquisition-arm-ltd https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/02/...
- jjtheblunt 2y agoThanks...that's the insight i was hoping for, great links. much appreciated.
- ta132141242 2y agoOf the reports linked, didn't look very inconsequential. A light touch maybe.
- toomuchtodo 2y agohttps://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/never-seen-anything-like-it-the-biggest https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/never-seen-anything-like-...
- tick_tock_tick 2y agoHer massive political overreach has achieved the goal. The chilly effect on all the behavior they want to stop but don't have the authority too. It's basically the executive sidestepping the legislator and blocking perfectly legal behavior by the threat of burying it in such long and expensive lawsuits it's not longer viable.
- megaman821 2y agoI don't know if I accept Khan's framing of, even though I haven't won any cases I have scared off potential mergers and that is a win. I think the US already leans too heavily on tying everything up in courts forever.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoWas the successful Google antitrust case not brought by the feds?
- megaman821 2y agoThat was the DOJ not the FTC.
- BadHumans 2y agoDon't fall for the Silicon Valley propaganda that things are on the downswing because the FTC is not allowing mergers or acquisitions. Plenty of both of those have happened this year. DirectTV is in the process of acquiring Dish Network and SlingTV which is one of the largest acquisitions of the year and should alone perish the thought that mergers aren't happening.
- dylan604 2y agoIf only the FTC could claim credit for the disappearance of free money
- megaman821 2y agoThe claim that there are less mergers happening is from Khan not Silcon Valley. “Sometimes, you know, the companies decide that they’re going to abandon the merger,” Khan said. Stahl asked if abandoning a merger amid the FTC’s scrutiny was a win, to which Khan said, “That’s right.” https://legal-mag.com/ftcs-lina-khan-defends-merger-and-acquisition-crackdown-in-60-minutes-interview/ https://legal-mag.com/ftcs-lina-khan-defends-merger-and-acqu...
- 2y ago
- carabiner 2y agoWrath of Khan and I'm here for it.
- christhecaribou 2y agoI would buy a “Wrath of Khan” shirt to support her efforts, 100%. It’s good for innovation and competition to break up these thuggish megacorps. I wish a POTUS candidate would come out in support of Khan so I could point to that as a reason to support that candidate (it’s definitely a component of how I’d vote).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tick_tock_tick 2y ago[flagged]
- BadHumans 2y agoThe FTC won the case against Google did they not? Which monopolies would you like to see them tackle?
- endo_bunker 2y agoThey should probably just stop shaking down the American tech firms that are driving US economic growth.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- __loam 2y agoMonopolies are harmful to the economy.
- BadHumans 2y agoCompanies that use their market position to kill competition hurts economic growth.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago"draining the working class's resources and stability" has been the shift as of late.
- __loam 2y agoI know she's on the right track because the ghouls here are calling her political.
- 93po 2y agoi genuinely have no idea why someone would be trying to defend amazon on HN
- hornban 2y agoI happened to come across her on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago, and that interview seemed awkward and sound-bitey to me. Thinking that she just might not be great at short-form segments I dug a little deeper and found an awesome long-form interview that she did with the Council on Foreign Relations. I highly recommend this to get a feel for what she is actually like as a policy person. She really impressed me. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L_QaZk5iJOA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L_QaZk5iJOA
- cactusplant7374 2y agoProf G also interviewed her recently. It was a good one.
- BoiledCabbage 2y agoNice link, that was an interesting watch.
- oooyay 2y agoWhen Lina took over she wiped her series of interviews, thought pieces, etc from the internet almost over night (I've followed her since she was a fellow). Her long form writing and podcast interviews are incredible. She knows this problem space well in both modernity and history as well as having vision for the future. There is no one else I trust more than Lina to right this ship.
- kyleee 2y agoWhy do that?
- Uvix 2y agoNobody can hold you to account for what you said in the past if you wipe the evidence.
- bryanrasmussen 2y agoI would think unless her opponents were incompetent they would have made copies of all that when there was a chance she would be appointed. Maybe even before that, if they keep an enemies list.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoToo early to call. At least initially, her FTC was incompetent to the point that M&A lawyers were urging companies to attempt mergers because shit that wouldn’t usually get through would get bungled in court. She was aggressive but incompetent. She appears to be improving. But the FTC chair isn’t an internship.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoI am happy for her to be aggressive and would forgive mistakes in court simply due to the value brought to society by her prominently going after these large anti-competitive companies. And yes she might fail to address that as well, but I wouldn’t ascribe that failure to her competency. The reality is that no one in this seat has even been trying. They’ve been asleep at the wheel as the economy gets increasingly captured by megacorps that don’t really face competition. And if she fails to rein them in, it’ll be because the existing law (antitrust law) is inadequate, more than anything else. I think the attention she’s bringing to the issue will cause many people to ask why antitrust enforcement has to be so hard. Any company with more than $100B in revenue is a quasi-government, and damages fair competition merely through their existence. Instead of making enforcement rely on years-long court cases, we need more immediate ways to break up or regulate these companies, and what we have today is not enough. If her attempts make more people realize the current laws aren’t enough, that might be its own form of success.
- Centigonal 2y agoRichard Feynman was brought onto what would become the Manhattan project at age 24. He had not yet earned a graduate degree. Lina Khan was 32 when she started as FTC chair. Prior to that, she had researched anti-trust at the New America Foundation, received a JD from Yale, worked as a legal director at the Open Markets Institute, worked as a legal fellow at the FTC, and served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust. I don't disagree that she made some early missteps at the FTC, but this is far from her first rodeo. I also think that, on balance, it's a benefit to hire young, promising voices to positions of power, and that we should get back to a place where we do that a lot more.
- 2y ago
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoI hope they absolutely fuck up FAANG.
- whoitwas 2y agoRIP. I don't think project 2025 has plans to gut the FTC, just most other federal agencies. It obviously matters a ton who wins, but the outcome may likely be the same regardless.