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Some good faith changes to the definition of monopoly could certainly be valuable.

However, I fear most efforts would start with "Companies X, Y, and Z need to be categorized as monopolies. Let's write rules to fit"



Agreed. Lina Khan is one of my favorite voices on this matter for that reason.

Edit:

Stating my opinion without why isn't very HN-ly of me, eh?

She's been on Planet Money and discussed her ideas, where they come from, etc before. I don't think I'd quite do them justice explaining them myself. Apparently she's now a chair of the FTC as well (which I was unaware of).

If you want a raw view of her views on anti-trust: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.p...

In one of the podcasts she dives into the history of anti-trust. She talks about how after Standard Oil we convinced ourselves everything was a monopoly and stifled a lot of innovation, which led to some reforms later and the anti-trust we have today which are demonstrably too permissive. She has picked on Amazon (as a wider corporation) quite a bit, but a lot of it has to do with the practices of their ecommerce division and the extent to which Amazon can compete with it's vendors. Basically, she believes there's a middleground to be found between the two anti-trust time periods and that it's important to be concise in how we do that. You can see some of her specific criticisms in the article above.

A more full bibliography can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan

I highly suggest "The Separation of Platforms and Commerce" as that's the one that resonated with me, having worked in the startup world.


I initially downvoted but thought it would be better to ask for the information I think would make your comment more helpful.

Would you mind linking to something pertinent, in order to add to the discussion? What does she say? Where does she say it? Why does that appeal to you?


To be fair, when Hacker News publishes "____ Has Died" posts and makes the title bar black, 99% of the time I have absolutely zero idea who "____" was. So I don't think it's terribly over-burdensome to expect the curious to highlight a name, right-click, and select "Search".

In this case, the opening of the person's Wikipedia page probably sums it up right away:

> In the article, Khan argued that the current American antitrust law framework, which focuses on keeping consumer prices down, cannot account for the anticompetitive effects of platform-based business models such as that of Amazon. She proposed alternative approaches for doing so, including "restoring traditional antitrust and competition policy principles or applying common carrier obligations and duties."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan


She's been on Planet Money and discussed her ideas, where they come from, etc before. I don't think I'd quite do them justice explaining them myself. Apparently she's now a chair of the FTC as well (which I was unaware of).

If you want a raw view of her views on anti-trust: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.p...

In one of the podcasts she dives into the history of anti-trust. She talks about how after Standard Oil we convinced ourselves everything was a monopoly and stifled a lot of innovation, which led to some reforms later and the anti-trust we have today which are demonstrably too permissive. She has picked on Amazon (as a wider corporation) quite a bit, but a lot of it has to do with the practices of their ecommerce division and the extent to which Amazon can compete with it's vendors. Basically, she believes there's a middleground to be found between the two anti-trust time periods and that it's important to be concise in how we do that. You can see some of her specific criticisms in the article above.

A more full bibliography can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan

I highly suggest "The Separation of Platforms and Commerce" as that's the one that resonated with me, having worked in the startup world.


I highly recommend people read the law review article, it’s extremely non-lawyer friendly.




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