4 ms·

How is going back to a policy that used to work "vague and unactionable"? It literally had been actionable.

by miltonlost 4mo ago

amazingamazing 4mo ago
It did not work though. Bell and Standard Oil are notable examples. What else?
- miltonlost 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - amazingamazing 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - zdragnar 4mo ago
    > Companies can be bought and sold but not if it creates concentrations of economic power that allow them to dictate prices to vendors or customers. The policy in question (as stated) should have prevented Ma Bell and Standard Oil from getting to the point of being broken up.
    - asolove 4mo ago
      1. If you are proposing something even stricter than previous antitrust rules, great. But getting back to antitrust itself is actionable is step 1. 2. You don’t have to prevent every case before it happens so much as just stochastically go after the worst ones to make it less economical for people to go take on debt to have huge swaths of consolidation. Letting the market work, after pricing in that egregious monopolies will be broken up, is kinda great and better than minutely scrutinizing every tiny deal for long-term consequences.
      - zdragnar 4mo ago
        If you want to move the goalpost of the conversation that's fine, but it's different from what the previous person was talking about, and why it doesn't make sense to blow up at them for it. > You are a troll. There's nothing left to say. Bye. is a wildly disproportionate response to the post, IMHO.
- palmotea 4mo ago
  > It did not work though. Bell and Standard Oil are notable examples. What else? That's pretty unfair. IIRC, Standard Oil was on of the companies that was the impetus for antitrust law (and broken up by it), and AT&T was broken up (famously) in the 80s. Basically, your "argument" is a troll or a deep and basic misunderstanding. Especially in the case of Standard Oil. You're basically saying the law doesn't work because it didn't work before it existed (Standard Oil became dominant in the 1870s or 1880s and the Sherman Antitrust act wasn't passed until 1890).

How is going back to a policy that used to work "vague and unactionable"? It literally had been actionable.

amazingamazing 4mo ago

It did not work though. Bell and Standard Oil are notable examples. What else?

miltonlost 4mo ago
[flagged]
- amazingamazing 4mo ago
  [dead]
- zdragnar 4mo ago
  > Companies can be bought and sold but not if it creates concentrations of economic power that allow them to dictate prices to vendors or customers. The policy in question (as stated) should have prevented Ma Bell and Standard Oil from getting to the point of being broken up.
  - asolove 4mo ago
    1. If you are proposing something even stricter than previous antitrust rules, great. But getting back to antitrust itself is actionable is step 1. 2. You don’t have to prevent every case before it happens so much as just stochastically go after the worst ones to make it less economical for people to go take on debt to have huge swaths of consolidation. Letting the market work, after pricing in that egregious monopolies will be broken up, is kinda great and better than minutely scrutinizing every tiny deal for long-term consequences.
    - zdragnar 4mo ago
      If you want to move the goalpost of the conversation that's fine, but it's different from what the previous person was talking about, and why it doesn't make sense to blow up at them for it. > You are a troll. There's nothing left to say. Bye. is a wildly disproportionate response to the post, IMHO.
palmotea 4mo ago
> It did not work though. Bell and Standard Oil are notable examples. What else? That's pretty unfair. IIRC, Standard Oil was on of the companies that was the impetus for antitrust law (and broken up by it), and AT&T was broken up (famously) in the 80s. Basically, your "argument" is a troll or a deep and basic misunderstanding. Especially in the case of Standard Oil. You're basically saying the law doesn't work because it didn't work before it existed (Standard Oil became dominant in the 1870s or 1880s and the Sherman Antitrust act wasn't passed until 1890).