Robert Bork had already been Nixon's acting-Attorney General at that point. He became acting AG when AG Elliot Richardson refused Nixon's order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and instead resigned. Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus also then refused to fire Cox and resigned. Bork then became acting AG but he did not refuse to fire Cox.
Bork's legal career was not propelled by any singular brilliance.
Bork's legal career was not propelled by any singular brilliance.
Well there was the whole Blockbuster rental history thing during his confirmation but that’s more like fun/interesting pub-trivia than anything necessarily “brilliant”.
It's quite silly and not the greatest look for the country. I mean, to some people it is the greatest look -- the DEI story and the heroic "brilliant youth" narrative.
But appointing someone so inexperienced to such a high office is not something you do you if you are serious about governing.
Since when are 32-year-olds "so inexperienced"? Maybe she's got different experience from prior appointees but 10+ years of high quality experience is IMO, more than enough. Most people are at the top of their game at that age.
I get where you're coming from, "so inexperienced" is probably overstating it. But she's been out of law school for four years, and I feel like saying most folks are at their best then discounts all the experience and learning that come from working another 30 years in the field (for, say, a 62-year old).
4 years out of law school is what I was referencing.
I stand by my phrasing. She had (presuming usual timelines) 3 years of work between undergrad and law school. She went from law school student to law school associate professor (on the strength of her viral rewview article).
She has 0 non-academic work experience and will now be regulating entire industries.
Most people are at the top of their game at 31? Uh, no. No. Maybe in startup lala land, but in this kind of role, 31 is "learning the ropes" territory.
What? The whole point of "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" is that we should abandon the "consumer welfare" standard. Meaning that we should gut Amazon even though it provides enormous benefits to consumers in the form of low prices. Lina Khan may represent the interests of Amazon's competitors, but she certainly doesn't represent the interests of consumers.
The problem with the "consumer welfare" standard is that it traditionally only considers a single variable: Cost. But consumer welfare can and should extend beyond that. But if you try to get customer service from many of these monopolies, you'll see plenty of consumers falling through the cracks. Google abuses people's privacy, eliminates competitors, kills off services people rely on, provides literally no customer service... but because their core services are "free", the consumer welfare standard is often considered inadequate to deal with an absolutely reprehensible and societally harmful company.
And what's really crazy is: Competition tends to force companies to compete on treating consumers well. Protecting competing businesses protects consumer welfare pretty darn well, and it provides room for innovation which stagnates when a single company dominates a field.
> get customer service from many of these monopolies, you'll see plenty of consumers falling through the cracks
That's true of many non-monopolies too. And Amazon is widely known to have pretty good service. Conversely, no cellular company has ever had a monopoly in the US but a number of them are famed for poor customer service.
I can call Verizon or Comcast right now and get someone on the line in minutes. Usually they can solve my problem too. Get Google on the phone though. (Amazon actually does deserve credit here, their customer service isn't the worst, by any means. But they have a litany of other issues, like a work environment where people have to pee in bottles to make quotas...)
To add onto that, if we manufactured more here, it might raise the price of goods, but if those goods are of higher quality and they last longer it might be better for the consumer in the long run. You might even extend this to looking at the environmental wins of having better wuality products that stay out of the landfill.
Absolutely agreed. Additionally, the more we manufacture here, the more competitive with overseas we eventually become. We'll never reach price equality, because we have labor standards, but we can get closer than people imagine today.
Amnesty International disagrees. (I think it would be off-topic here to give a lengthy account of Google's human rights abuses, the way they harm women and minorities, and the money they invest in politicians which are also very detrimental to society, with sources, but suffice to say, my description of them is, at least, a defensible position.)
My read is that people are seeking a means to an end. Means: whatever she’s writing. End: reducing Amazon’s scope of business.
If you’re being intellectually honest, the source of low prices is Chinese outsourced labor, not monopolies. Amazon could vanish tomorrow, and shit will still be cheap.
Amazon has many retail competitors. Maybe they have pricing power in AWS, but otherwise, I do not see evidence of them having control of the retail goods market.
Even for AWS, they have Microsoft and Google as competitors and a few other companies too.
Amazon is in such a monopoly position that it is able to force sellers to cover the price of prime shipping (incorporating the shipping price into the display price) and then penalizes their display rank when they list lower prices on websites where shipping is separate from product price. Forcing suppliers to raise prices on unrelated sales is a classic monopoly move, like when MSFT forced OEMs to pay for Windows licenses on computers sold without operating systems.
And those sellers cannot go to Target or Walmart or Home Depot or advertise their own website?
We have Apple Pay, Google Pay, Paypal making it very simple to pay for things with a simple click, just like Amazon. Amazon has inertia, but it’s not exactly in a high barrier business. Walmart supplanted Kmart, and Amazon was able to gain share from Walmart.
The switching cost is visiting a different website. If you have a good product at a price people we willing to pay, the internet makes it very possible to survive without any big retailer’s help.
The bigger problem is probably someone cloning it but with 50% cheaper materials and selling it for 70% of your price, one that I’m sure many sellers on Amazon’s flea market are aware of.
They can advertise and sell on other websites, but if they advertise below the prices they advertise for on Amazon, then Amazon pushes them out of the search results box. Something like 90% of Amazon sales happen due to products being put in that box.
And how is that comparable with an appointment to the number one top position in the authority over thousands of regulations governing thousands of companies etc.
Also I think i's safe to assume you don't just "get appointed" to the lead team in SpaceX you need to actually "show" that you have what it takes.
I'm not saying she won't be good, I'm just asking how can we trust?
Yes, she wrote a virally-popular law school review article in 2017. It aligned with a ton of political interests, which no doubt helped buoy it as high as went.
She then got invited to do some fellowships, advisory roles, etc... while stepping from law student to associate law school prof. None of that exposes you to the inner workings of industry.
Surely, she's a very smart and capable person. But there's a lot you don't learn in academic settings.
Regulating trillions of dollars worth of industry with only a theoretical understanding of the market, acquired only from a regulatory perspective, does not inspire confidence.
At least she's not on the backend of her mental stamina. +1 for being hungry. Unlike congress, who today ignored the homeless ( or pick your) crises to make Juneteenth an official holiday. I'd like to see a lot of under 40 year olds governing if that is the result of "experience".