[elefanten]

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.p...

She got boosted by an insurgent group of law professors who spearhead whats called the Neobrandeis moment. Their theory is that anti-trust should be preemptively enforced against size for its own sake.

This is the article she wrote for her law review as a law student which put her on their radar and they started calling her a "rising star" etc etc, which snowballed into the performative appointment by the Biden admin.

Feel free to read through it.

[estearum]

Performative and ineffective but somehow actually deterred a lot of M&A? How does that make sense?

[linotype]

What errors?

[elefanten]

A lot beyond the scope of the time I have to comment here. Read it with an open mind, knowledge of tech business, knowledge of how things unfolded since it was published and see for yourself.

But some short hand:

-Assumes vertical integration is necessarily abusive

-Assumes lowering price is necessarily a setup for anti-competitive practices. This one’s particularly ironic because lowering prices is definitely a first-order good for consumers and businesses that buy those goods. Bezos’ famous saying was “your margin is my opportunity” —- would you rather the standard continue to be massive retailer markup profit that goes straight to retail corps?

-Vague scare tactic claims that expanding into media production etc will somehow (yadda yadda, Step 2: ???) lead to monopolies in every category they enter.

The TLDR of the problem with Neobrandeis is it forms a very opinionated paranoid notion that size can only lead to bad things and no good things. It is a lazy dodge around the traditional responsibility of regulators to identify and regulate actual anti-competitive behavior when it actually happens By constraining companies from using any form of size or integration-related advantage, it lowers the pressure to actually be competitive and innovative for everyone else. I’m not saying everything should be unconditionally allowed, there’s a balance to strike. But when you just have a blunt “anti-size” hammer, you’re gonna do collateral damage to a healthy competitive ecosystem in a damaging way.

[radiofreeeuropa]

> It is a lazy dodge around the traditional responsibility of regulators to identify and regulate actual anti-competitive behavior when it actually happens

Traditional since the ‘70s, when Chicago school jackasses got their way and all but destroyed antitrust enforcement, in practice.

A shift back would be great. Let’s get a little more traditional.

[Spooky23]

We’ve seen this TV show before, but nobody paid attention. The magnificent 7 are essentially the ITT/LTV/Litton of the 1960s reborn. GE is the other one of more recent memory.

Massive diversified entities get bureaucratic, unwieldy and ineffective over time.