[piaste]

The difference is that LVMH-type products are irrelevant to 98% of the population, and have a highly questionable impact to the top 2%.

De Beers had an iconic monopoly on diamonds for over a century, but as far as I know the only time a major government really went after them was for colluding over industrial diamonds, which are actually important.

Ensuring that jewelry diamonds and checkered handbags are available at a competitive price would be an awful use of government resources, not least because the inflated price is the point of those products.

Luxottica (but only after the 2018 merger with their main competitor) would be a much better example.

[aurareturn]

I knew it someone would reply by saying Google's industry is somehow more important so Europe should regulate them but ignore their own monopolies.

[Yujf]

The commenter explains why that is and instead of reacting to his argument you are implying that it is just Europens who want to regulzte Americans while it is clearly not the case.

Not every monopoly is created equal and if you can not acknowledge that you are not arguing in good faith.

Edit: also I am looking into De Beers a bit more and it seems the EU has made steps to improve competition in the past.

Also if you want to argue that LVMH is a monopoly and that it has a bad impact, go ahead. I just think that since this is HN it is natural that most people do not feel the impact and do not really care. I do not know exactly how monopolistic they are and what the bad impact of that is but feel free to enlighten me.

[aurareturn]

What is the metric you're using to measure how important an industry is?

To some people, Google is more important. To others, LVHM is more important.

There are a ton of people who depend on the luxury goods industry. LVHM itself is a $500 billion company.

I know plenty of people who go crazy for luxury handbags, clothing, jewelry but could careless about which search engine to use.