[TheCoelacanth]

We need to fix the jurisprudence around anti-trust.

> No person engaged in commerce or in any activity affecting commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital and no person subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission shall acquire the whole or any part of the assets of another person engaged also in commerce or in any activity affecting commerce, where in any line of commerce or in any activity affecting commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.

Taken at face value, that would forbid companies from buying any large competitors unless the competitor is already failing. Somehow that got watered down into almost nothing.

[ethbr1]

The issue is that current law around monopolies defines them from the wrong angle.

Instead of taking a consumer-centric / competition perspective, they should be defined in terms of market share (with markets broadly defined from a consumer perspective).

>10% = some minimal interoperability and reporting requirements

>25% = serious interoperability requirements

>35% = severe and audited interoperability requirements, with a method for gaps to be proposed by competitors, with the end goal of making increasing market share past this point difficult

Close the "but it's free to consumers (because we monetize them in other ways)" loophole that every 90s+ internet business used: instead focus on ensuring competition as measured by market share.

[calvinmorrison]

well exactly, Verizon, Amazon, etc all LOVE more regulation. they have armies of lawyers who not only help in constructing the laws, they help pass, lobby and implement them. then the same law firms help amazon, verizon, etc execute it.

It's regulatory capture

now a small competitor wants to do something like get into the wifi game and they're look at huge fixed fees to get started.

[ethbr1]

I think 00s+ tech history has demonstrated that the free market is no longer sufficient to promote healthy competition.

Partly a consequence of the biggest tech firms getting bigger.

And partly because of newfound technical ability to achieve mass lock-in (e.g. vendor-controlled encryption, TPMs, vertical integration in platforms, first-party app stores, etc).

The 'but regulatory capture' counter argument rings hollow when the government has given the market a lighter monopoly regulatory touch... and we've ended up with a more concentrated, less competitive market than when it was more heavily regulated.

[marcosdumay]

Fixed fees are nothing.

If you want to make electronics with any complexity, you'll suddenly discover that you need to pay patent fees. And those come as a fixed share of your revenue. Add enough complexity and you can easily be required to pay more than 100% of your revenue in fees.

[GoblinSlayer]

Looks like market share is not a concern anymore: when one participant adopts a dark pattern others follow, because then consumer has nowhere to go. What Orwell called it, collectivist oligarchy?