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Amazon faces potential break-up as FTC finalizes antitrust lawsuit | The FTC is getting ready for the big one::undefined
Amazon faces potential break-up as FTC finalizes antitrust lawsuit | The FTC is getting ready for the big one::undefined
Great news! I hope it happens but I won’t be holding my breath. The US has gotten really bad about this kind of action over the past 20 years.
While I am with you on the frustration, I think it’s important to understand why we got to this point. A ton of those anti-trust rules and laws were written a century ago and were around steel, oil and rail. Industries that provided physical good and services to the country. Tech has been able to skirt all of this as the rules were never written for them. Hopefully we see updates to our anti-trust rules and update accordingly. I’d love to take down Amazon, but I also want to prevent others from getting that big ever again.
I think it has a lot more to do with the US antitrust doctrine being focused on “consumer welfare” for the last 40 years. Robert Bork argued that monopolies were not inherently problematic, and that antitrust should only go after “bad” monopolies (which he argued could not survive for long.) Khan has explicitly rejected that doctrine.
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/02/17/more-than-money-antitrust-monopolies-are-defined-from-bork-to-khan#
Closer to 40 years, sorry to say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System