[HN Gopher] Boom! Antitrust Bill Passed
___________________________________________________________________
Boom! Antitrust Bill Passed
Author : scyzoryk_xyz
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-10-01 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mattstoller.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mattstoller.substack.com)
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| We're probably not going to hear or read much on that subject in
| the mainstream tech news.
|
| I am glad it could make a blimp on HN.
| [deleted]
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Passed the _House_ , not passed into law.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| Time for another refrain of "I'm Just a Bill"?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6MinvU93kI&t=20s
| nova22033 wrote:
| _What the bill does NOT do is change the substance of antitrust
| law itself._
|
| Oh..
|
| _The lead organizer of this campaign is Congressman Jim Jordan,
| who is the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee and a well-
| respected conservative_
|
| Well respected? The guy trying to overthrow the results of the
| presidential elections The guy who isn't the chair because the
| dems control congress.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| This is just the EU trying to punish US big tech firms for
| success. /s
|
| Every other hn thread on anti-trust law has a string of comments
| saying the above, so, just for fun, I will add it here too. It
| makes just as little sense.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Great as far as it goes; but there's many a slip 'twixt dress and
| drawers in Congress.
|
| What could we do to fix "corporations" longer term? How about
| some sort of union-like "customer representative" on the board of
| directors? as well as a labor representative.
|
| Personally I have issues with the legal recognition of
| corporations, even though it's at least theoretically open to all
| the real people its amazing how much it works out to be a class
| privilege in law.
|
| Yet another cause to throw in the bonfire with "Tort reform."
| Pleasant bait for theoretical debates but any real world
| implementation is almost certain to be too complicated to ever
| get much agreement on.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Well, I'm no expert. But a center piece of Matt Stoller's
| argument has been that this problem has been solved before in
| the US. There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to reach
| for the same solutions. It doesn't mean commerce or
| corporations should be torn down. Merely making certain
| maneuvers and strategies unacceptable, punishable, criminal (in
| extreme cases) would be enough to deflate the outsize power
| monopolies have. And I agree with this - Stoller convincingly
| writes about how the US was amazingly good at enforcing
| antitrust. Business communities simply did not reach for
| monopolistic strategies in the 50's, 60's and 70's. And the US
| economy of that time was amazingly strong at that time,
| delivering prosperity, innovation and consumer choice.
|
| The reason why it seems to be unachievable is that it seems too
| complicated/hard. But monopolies like Standard Oil were
| complicated too.
| mtgx wrote:
| Every acquisition over $100m should automatically trigger a
| review, especially if said company is a "leader" in ANY market,
| and looked at from the perspective of:
|
| "Is the company removing this competitor from the market
| hurting competition in their own market in the long term?"
|
| It's way better for the market to let the cash-rich large
| corporations attempt to develop their own competitor to a new
| threat they might see in the market than to allow them to buy
| that competitor.
|
| It would've been better for us if Instagram was never bought by
| Facebook, Admob never bought by Google, and so on.
|
| Sure, maybe they wouldn't have gotten quite as successful on
| their own, but for one perhaps Facebook wouldn't have become as
| strong as it became in the social media space (a good thing) or
| they would've been forced to create a NEW competitor, and we
| all benefit from more competitors in the market. Instead they
| removed one and made themselves even more powerful.
| dnissley wrote:
| _It would 've been better for us if Instagram was never
| bought by Facebook, Admob never bought by Google, and so on._
|
| What makes you think that?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Because the essential feature of very large companies is
| their attempting to create a market where they can invest
| as little as possible and continue to extract revenue.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Oligopolies are bad, competition is good or something
| peter303 wrote:
| There was a significant television ad campaign against this bill
| (before the autumn election ads started). They claimed many of
| our beloved tech apps and services would disappear or become very
| costly. I dont think the audience paid much attention to these
| ads.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Why would anyone write such an article on something that still
| has to go through the senate?
|
| I actually had to check how delusional they were, because it
| wasn't clear, like maybe it started in the senate or this was
| just a procedural reconciliation for something that had passed in
| the senate.
|
| Nope it only passed the house, and yep there are 3 months left
| before all outstanding bills get deleted from consideration.
|
| And with 57% of the House voting for it, this "weird bipartisan
| coalition" would not be enough for the Senate, if the same
| distribution of support was mirrored (unlikely, lots of stuff
| passed the house). You would need 60% of the Senate.
| theptip wrote:
| This is discussed in the article.
|
| One of the points is that there is a chicken-and-egg issue with
| antitrust bills, where Schumer was refusing to table
| discussions because he claimed there was no support. So a clear
| demonstration of support, even in the other chamber, is a
| significant and newsworthy change in momentum.
|
| The other (related) point at the bottom is worth reading too.
| Basically the claim is that big-tech lobbyists were bragging
| about how they could stomp on even a small and common-sense
| procedural bill like this one. Instead they "stuck their necks
| out and got their heads chopped off". That they had no good
| arguments and just ran a straight dirt campaign (on both D and
| R sides!) is a bad look that will be noted by the marginal
| Congressman.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Thanks, I had skimmed the article looking only for evidence
| that it had been voted for in the senate as well. That is an
| interesting wrinkle in how they addressed this.
| tgibbster wrote:
| My main takeaways were that there is a working, bi-partisan
| majority in the House in support of anti-trust, and this bill
| sets a precedent for further anti-trust work-- which seems
| worth publishing about. The big tech lobbying playbooks were
| interesting to read about too.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Why would anyone write such an article on something that
| still has to go through the senate?
|
| Clickbait. I see this all the time, usually a headline about
| some crazy revolutionary new bill only to find out it either
| just got passed the house, or hasn't even got that far.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I'm glad he wrote it and then plastered a big sign over it so
| that i couldn't read it.
| connor11528 wrote:
| It's a free article on substack..
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I read that on a iPhone 4 and it was fine. Just click <<
| let me read it first >>
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'm not understanding where or what he's basing his statements
| on? This seems to be the bill he's referencing:
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/228 It's
| extremely short and can be easily read, it's a fraction as long
| as the article.
|
| The bill seems to do nothing except change various filing fees,
| and give ~half a billion to the FTC and DoJ Antitrust Division. I
| base this on the text of the bill as well as the bill's
| description itself: "This bill modifies and expands the schedule
| for graduated merger filing fees and requires that such fees be
| adjusted each year based on the Consumer Price Index."
| ethbr0 wrote:
| You linked to the Senate version, which contains one title.
|
| The version that passed the House, and is discussed in the
| article, is here [0] and contains the three titles mentioned.
|
| And given that it's effectively a legislative diff, a summary
| of its impact is useful.
|
| [0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-
| bill/3843...
| BrainVirus wrote:
| Yeah, the article seems to be more about promoting a certain
| political meta-narrative than actually analyzing the bill.
| Parts of it are misleading and it doesn't link to the actual
| bill, which any normal blogger would do within the very first
| paragraph.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| The whole point of the article is to discuss the political
| meta-narrative. If you're just looking for the substance of
| the bill, and you're especially not interested if it hasn't
| been signed into law, this article isn't for you.
| wil421 wrote:
| Most writers would have at least one paragraph dedicated to
| what the bills says. It will give readers a background on
| the subject before diving in.
| layer8 wrote:
| The article does exactly that under the subheading "The
| Substance", and in the first sentence thereof also links
| to earlier articles expanding on the contents of the
| bill.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I would suggest looking into all the work by this writer.
| This guy wrote a huge book on the subject, along with a
| regular newsletter, which this article is part of.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Increases in filing fees will support an expansion of the FTC
| and DOJ Antitrust enforcement budget available to Lina Khan and
| Jonathan Kantor. These are two lawyers that Big Tech are
| particularly afraid of, calling them impartial and/or asking
| for their recusal. One could imagine that Big Tech wants to
| foster divisiveness so that lawmakers cannot unite to support
| Khan and Kantor. Big Tech profits from divisiveness. It drives
| "engagement". It also derails any legislative progress toward
| regulation.
|
| What Stoller is suggesting is that this bill's passing
| indicates that lawmakers can unite and support Khan and
| Kantor's work. The problem of Big Tech is a nonpartisan issue,
| but Big Tech wants people to believe it is political. The Big
| Tech situation threatens everyone, regardless of political
| affiliation.
| metadat wrote:
| https://archive.ph/wxTt8
|
| (Due to gray modal dialog covering the page and making the
| article impossible to read)
| motoxpro wrote:
| Just click "Let me read it first"
| metadat wrote:
| I click archive.is or archive.org and then all is well.
| Batting .980+ with this strategy.
|
| Suffice it to say, I don't respond well to modals appearing
| after a few seconds and/or when the page starts to scroll.
| It's just Bad UX.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-01 23:01 UTC)