[gajeam]

This view of "traditional monopolies" isn't actually that traditional. From the end of the Gilded Age to through the LBJ administration, antitrust law was focused on reducing market concentration, barriers of entry, and anti-competitive behavior. Only in the 60's did Robert Bork and the Chicago School start to chip away at this way of thinking. By the end of the Reagan administration, Bork's idea that a firm is only a monopoly if it reduces consumer welfare (aka raises prices.) [0]

Google and Facebook have taken full advantage of this new definition. They provide their products for free, acquire competitors without a peep from the FCC (Waze, Instagram, WhatsApp), invest heavily in corporate lobbyists, and have the fastest connections by colocating their data centers and building fiber optic cables. How can a new competitor be expected to lay undersea fiber optic cables?

[0] Tim Wu, "The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age", 2018

[nabla9]

There are two problems. Enforcing good old-fashioned antitrust system has effectively stopped and there is no new solutions to new problems.