I can see that the aim of this article was to do some high level inspection of the recent progressive movement in antitrust, however it fails to fundamentally offer any valid critique due to getting multiple facts wrong and avoiding what the actual data says, something anti-trust places heavy burden on.
Firstly, no one, not consumers, not workers, not Wall Street, not regulators, is buying the decade old rhetoric of the China boogeyman coming to take over tech.
You might of had a stand, a very tiny one, if this was about SMCs but it's not. The basic facts:
- US has 97% of the search market
- US has 93% of the browser market
- US has 97% of the OS (PC/mobile) market
- US has 75% of the cloud market
- 3 US companies alone have 50% of the entire global advertising market
- Out of the Top 50 most valuable Tech companies, 35 are US. A mere 5 are Chinese.
Complete nonsense to broadcast such fear mongering.
It's interesting you bring up market definition yet miss out on the FTC's historic win in the Meta case. Market definition in an economic sense, the one regulators look at, is not too difficult to quantify. One looks at the similarity of competitor sets, supplier sets, the substitutability of each product, diversion ratios, poll consumers or other industry members, and many of these can be quantified or plainly identified by going through the corporate documents/email/presentations of the companies.
Your Adobe/Figma analysis for instance is categorically false. Adobe have a direct competitor to Figma called Adobe XD.
The market definition debate happens when companies like Big Tech hijack an entire lawsuit, and centre it on ever expanding markets to evade a clear monopoly definition, rather than confront the reason for the purchase.
Two recent wins in court however have changed that. Penguin and Simon merger was blocked by the DOJ and won in courts, with the DOJ emphasising that the market of high earning authors is particularly important to look at. The Judge agreed because the data clearly showed it.
In the FTC v Meta case, the judge agreed on the FTC's narrow definition of a market, the idea that big companies can buy out leaders in nascent markets, and that yes that it is anti-competitive. To point out how historic this is, this is the first time since the 1980s the courts have accepted such a framework.
You talk about Illumina and GRAIL and once again its misguided. GRAIL has many rivals and they are in an innovation race. There's plenty of funding to go round, GRAIL does not need Illumina, the public markets alone would give ample funding. Illumina has no say in this race, instead their clear purpose was to prevent GRAIL rivals by either denying or jacking up prices of its NGS systems which they need. Their remedies showed that.
It's ironic you talk about wanting to help cure cancer, and yet advocate for the crushing of early cancer test companies (competition is what breeds innovation and accelerates it) or have prices be jacked up in such a vital industry.
Speaking of healthcare, you make the assertion that the FTC focusing on tech somehow means it is ignoring healthcare, hospitals, defence, as if the two are mutually exclusive.
They are not and you clearly have not been paying attention. The FTC/DOJ has blocked: United Health/Change, Saint Peter’s Healthcare System/RWJBarnabas Health, HCA/Steward Health , Lifespan/Care NE, Lockheed/Aero, SUNY Upstate University Hospital/Crouse Hospital, have crushed insulin prices, reducing it by 70% and addressed the Pharmacy Benefit Manager's rent seeking issue of jacking up prices nationally.
All this in 2 years and yet I do not see you support the FTC/DOJ for any these that you claim is truly addressing consumer harm.
There's a lot more to poke holes in, like how you take offence in global regulators working together, despite the fact that each domestic regulator still follows the legal framework within their country, so I just want to say, the tides are turning.
The world has lived in an anti-trust ice age for the past 40 years. It's no longer acceptable. The regulators have completely changed, the FTC, the DOJ, the UK CMA, the Australian ACCC, the Germans, and the EUC. The politicians have changed, President Biden for the first time in decades mentioned and constantly referred to anti-trust in the President's State of the Union. Most importantly the people have changed. They are increasingly against corporate consolidation due to their actual experiences of living/working in monopolised markets.
You only have to look at the historic public support the FTC/DOJ has gotten from blocking Penguin/SS, investigating Ticketmaster or banning non-competes. Some of the most upvoted posts of all time on Reddit are about anti-trust. Stephen King and Taylor Swift now talk about anti-trust.
Activist bureaucrats-turned-bullies are making our country sicker, weaker, and less free. And dumber with indoctrination, not education. We need to get back to basics by doing to the government what Elon did to Twitter - fire all toxic commissars: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-fire-a-commissar-part-2
I can see that the aim of this article was to do some high level inspection of the recent progressive movement in antitrust, however it fails to fundamentally offer any valid critique due to getting multiple facts wrong and avoiding what the actual data says, something anti-trust places heavy burden on.
Firstly, no one, not consumers, not workers, not Wall Street, not regulators, is buying the decade old rhetoric of the China boogeyman coming to take over tech.
You might of had a stand, a very tiny one, if this was about SMCs but it's not. The basic facts:
- US has 97% of the search market
- US has 93% of the browser market
- US has 97% of the OS (PC/mobile) market
- US has 75% of the cloud market
- 3 US companies alone have 50% of the entire global advertising market
- Out of the Top 50 most valuable Tech companies, 35 are US. A mere 5 are Chinese.
Complete nonsense to broadcast such fear mongering.
It's interesting you bring up market definition yet miss out on the FTC's historic win in the Meta case. Market definition in an economic sense, the one regulators look at, is not too difficult to quantify. One looks at the similarity of competitor sets, supplier sets, the substitutability of each product, diversion ratios, poll consumers or other industry members, and many of these can be quantified or plainly identified by going through the corporate documents/email/presentations of the companies.
Your Adobe/Figma analysis for instance is categorically false. Adobe have a direct competitor to Figma called Adobe XD.
The market definition debate happens when companies like Big Tech hijack an entire lawsuit, and centre it on ever expanding markets to evade a clear monopoly definition, rather than confront the reason for the purchase.
Two recent wins in court however have changed that. Penguin and Simon merger was blocked by the DOJ and won in courts, with the DOJ emphasising that the market of high earning authors is particularly important to look at. The Judge agreed because the data clearly showed it.
In the FTC v Meta case, the judge agreed on the FTC's narrow definition of a market, the idea that big companies can buy out leaders in nascent markets, and that yes that it is anti-competitive. To point out how historic this is, this is the first time since the 1980s the courts have accepted such a framework.
You talk about Illumina and GRAIL and once again its misguided. GRAIL has many rivals and they are in an innovation race. There's plenty of funding to go round, GRAIL does not need Illumina, the public markets alone would give ample funding. Illumina has no say in this race, instead their clear purpose was to prevent GRAIL rivals by either denying or jacking up prices of its NGS systems which they need. Their remedies showed that.
It's ironic you talk about wanting to help cure cancer, and yet advocate for the crushing of early cancer test companies (competition is what breeds innovation and accelerates it) or have prices be jacked up in such a vital industry.
Speaking of healthcare, you make the assertion that the FTC focusing on tech somehow means it is ignoring healthcare, hospitals, defence, as if the two are mutually exclusive.
They are not and you clearly have not been paying attention. The FTC/DOJ has blocked: United Health/Change, Saint Peter’s Healthcare System/RWJBarnabas Health, HCA/Steward Health , Lifespan/Care NE, Lockheed/Aero, SUNY Upstate University Hospital/Crouse Hospital, have crushed insulin prices, reducing it by 70% and addressed the Pharmacy Benefit Manager's rent seeking issue of jacking up prices nationally.
All this in 2 years and yet I do not see you support the FTC/DOJ for any these that you claim is truly addressing consumer harm.
There's a lot more to poke holes in, like how you take offence in global regulators working together, despite the fact that each domestic regulator still follows the legal framework within their country, so I just want to say, the tides are turning.
The world has lived in an anti-trust ice age for the past 40 years. It's no longer acceptable. The regulators have completely changed, the FTC, the DOJ, the UK CMA, the Australian ACCC, the Germans, and the EUC. The politicians have changed, President Biden for the first time in decades mentioned and constantly referred to anti-trust in the President's State of the Union. Most importantly the people have changed. They are increasingly against corporate consolidation due to their actual experiences of living/working in monopolised markets.
You only have to look at the historic public support the FTC/DOJ has gotten from blocking Penguin/SS, investigating Ticketmaster or banning non-competes. Some of the most upvoted posts of all time on Reddit are about anti-trust. Stephen King and Taylor Swift now talk about anti-trust.
The tides are turning and they are turning fast.
Activist bureaucrats-turned-bullies are making our country sicker, weaker, and less free. And dumber with indoctrination, not education. We need to get back to basics by doing to the government what Elon did to Twitter - fire all toxic commissars: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-fire-a-commissar-part-2