Anti trust laws do not generally apply to these situations. The government has had an appetite for antitrust, but the cases are far from a slam dunk. We need modern laws for modern problems.
replyThose laws used to apply, until the courts adopted Robert Bork's "consumer welfare standard" in the 80s, under Reaganism.
replyAnalyzed well here: https://yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.pdf
Breaking up Apple would be glorious. Great hardware without an Orwellian OS on top.
replyApple only holds on monopoly position on the smartphone market for people with lots of money.
replyThey aren't a majority in any other market segment.
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replyIdk. Our antitrust laws present a high burden of proof and so much subjectivity. The question “Are customers really being hurt?” has to be argued in court (and then argued on appeal at like 3 levels). I think it harms our whole market system, and arguably even harms the capitalist system, to have players with so much power, and the antitrust laws are focused narrowly on proving specific harm mainly in the area of pricing, which isn’t the whole picture.
replyToo many markets are utterly dominated by one or two big players. I know it’s a tricky problem because market share is hard to define (Does Amazon have 80% share of e-commerce? Or 30% share of all retail?) but I think we would be better off if there were a more aggressive set of rules about anti-competitive behavior that automatically applied to these huge firms, which didn’t rely so much on subjective judgment.
Which requires voting in politicians that would do that. Of course we're much more likely to elect politicians that get the support of billionaires in general so this shit ain't never happ'ning
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