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No, it is to help all citizens. Even those who are not a party to a particular market.

• stale2002 11d ago
  But really helping consumers is one of the biggest goals here. In fact, our existing ruling on monopoly law actually agree with me on this, in that prices being "too low" is almost never a problem, unless there is very strong reason to believe that its a short term low that will lead to long term high prices . But other than that, lower prices is almost definitionally good in our existing monopoly law interpretations.
  • NewJazz 11d ago
    Laws cannot define good or bad.
    • stale2002 10d ago
      Ok thats fine. But the point stands that in many moral frameworks prioritizing consumers is a perfectly good goal and thats why laws were made as such.
      • NewJazz 10d ago
        Which moral frameworks? Almost universally the point of economics and governance is to produce value for all people, not just those participating in a particular transaction or set of transactions.
        • stale2002 10d ago
          > Which moral frameworks? Well probably the moral framework that lead to courts prioritizing consumers in the first place, and for society to support that. So a pretty common moral framework that literally got baked into the law. > Almost universally the point of economics and governance is to produce value for all people No actually, distribution of that value is a large part of governance, and society takes action to redistribute that value all the time even at the cost of value somewhere else. And large parts of society are happy with that goal. Such as, for example, redistributing that value to consumers that is baked into our legal systems interpretation of these laws.
          • NewJazz 10d ago
            In welfare economics, a Pareto improvement formalizes the idea of an outcome being "better in every possible way". A change is called a Pareto improvement if it leaves at least one person in society better off without leaving anyone else worse off than they were before. A situation is called Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal if all possible Pareto improvements have already been made; in other words, there are no longer any ways left to make one person better off without making some other person worse off.
            • stale2002 9d ago
              Ok, the point stands that our legal system and morals that underpin it have found very good reasons to prioritize consumers for distribution reasons. Thats why the courts value this. This is completely uncontroversial that courts prioritize consumers in monopoly/market power cases. This happens in all parts of our economy as well, where the government subsidizes or taxes certain things, which technically has "deadweight loss" in the strictest, most basic and reductive econ 101 manner, and yet society has good reasons to do those things anyway as well as prioritizing consumers.
              • NewJazz 9d ago
                Why does society have good reasons to subsidize this case? Deadweight loss implies there was no externality being corrected... Usually there should be. Again, what is the externality being corrected by subsidizing these transactions?
                • stale2002 9d ago
                  > Why does society have good reasons to subsidize this case? You are asking why courts and society would priority large swaths of regular consumers over that of a few companies in an oligopoly? Well I guess the reason is because the courts and society cares more about large swaths of regular consumers than they do about a few companies in oligopolies. Thats just definitionally the reason. > what is the externality There is no externality. The courts just care more about this group than the other group, and society is fine with that as well. > Usually there should be. No, there doesn't have you be. You can instead just care more about 1 group than another. Thats perfectly normal. And a thing many people society do. I know the basic econ 101 arguments. Here is a pro-tip though. Economics isn't a morality class. Its descriptive. It says nothing about values. One's value system can simply be to care more about 1 thing than another. It is not weird at all to say that many people care more about large swaths of regular people than a few massively valuable companies, as is the case in basically all market power court cases.