[HN Gopher] Why they're smearing Lina Khan
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Why they're smearing Lina Khan
Author : vo2maxer
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-07-14 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pluralistic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (pluralistic.net)
| tl wrote:
| Doctorow has been lionizing Khan since her appointment. She and
| the FTC were dormant for almost the past two full years and came
| out swinging relativly recently. It's hard to tell if the slow
| speed of action is necessary or if we should have seen more as
| early as 2021. It feels late, disorganized and the work of
| someone with a political axe to grind.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Slow speed? You could take the chair of that org and act
| faster?
| dev_daftly wrote:
| Politics has broken him
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| A confusing mix of realistic hope that things might get better
| with constant reminders of the endemic corruption that is
| currently status quo.
| [deleted]
| marai2 wrote:
| The conclusion of this piece says: We shouldn't
| have to tolerate this sleaze. And if we back Khan and her team,
| they'll protect us from these scams. Don't let them convince you
| to give up hope. This is the start of the fight, not the
| end.
|
| How do we back Khan and her team?
| impissedoff1 wrote:
| $$$ just in time for elections.. that's all it is
| shihab wrote:
| While ideologically I agree with this sentiment, is there any
| good neutral take on this issue?
|
| One specific criticism I heard against Lina Khan is that while
| her heart might be in the right place, her lack of legal
| expertise is in big part to blame for the failures in court. Her
| approach to litigation; the legal theories, precedence etc. she
| built her case upon- well apparently she could do better.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| >...it would be unfair to put the merger on hold in order to have
| a full investigation into its competition implications because
| Microsoft and Activision had set a deadline of July 18...
|
| On this part, I disagree with the author's take. It's not just
| that there is a deadline, but that the FTC took a very long time
| to take any action on this deal and set their own deadlines to
| land after the known merger deadline.
|
| The FTC didn't act professionaly or with the right level of
| urgency and is seemingly trying to run out the clock on the deal.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I sortof see where you're coming from, but if MS and Activision
| want to do this deal, they can just extend the time period,
| right?
|
| Ultimately an agreement between two private companies is not
| grounds for the government to cave.
|
| I actually thought this deal was ok, but the linked Matt
| Stroller piece has convinced me otherwise.
| ljm wrote:
| As a non-American reader this article really puts the sickness of
| modern politics on display.
|
| The public discourse is fundamentally unwell.
| evo_9 wrote:
| Smearing is the new mainstream way of silencing open discussions.
|
| You can always tell something is up when the use of certain words
| / phrases are used to discredit the other person, always without
| supporting data.
|
| This is a form of censorship and it's growing more frequent.
|
| History has shown us that the ones doing the censoring are always
| the bad guys.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> You can always tell something is up when the use of certain
| words / phrases are used to discredit the other person, always
| without supporting data
|
| You mean language like "The Republican project is a matter of
| getting turkeys to vote for Christmas by doing a lot of culture
| war bullshit, cruelly abusing disfavored sexual and racial
| minorities. This wins support from low-information voters
| who'll vote against their class interests"?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I mean it's Cory Doctorow, he always says stuff like this.
| The linked Matt Stoller piece is much better on the details
| and in terms of arguments.
| camdenlock wrote:
| Apparently, to a socialist, a person can't merely have
| contrary convictions; they must be stupid and deluded.
| DannyBee wrote:
| People are smearing Lina Khan because she is radically different,
| yes. People are _also_ smearing Lina Khan because she keeps
| failing in court in very bad, obvious ways.
|
| She is also consistently ignoring the advice of the very seasoned
| lawyers in her own organization, who are not in political
| positions (federal agencies have both career employees and
| political ones).
|
| Her organization has started to lose faith with her, and even
| scores in things like "honesty and integrity" dropped by 50%
| (from 84 points to <40 points), with comments pointing out they
| feel like they are being forced to pursue cases with frivolous
| arguments. See FEVS[1].
|
| None of these are good things.
|
| Cory wants her to be successful because she's a true believer,
| and she is a true believer in things he supports. But the true
| believers are rarely (maybe never) successful when they have
| _zero_ pragmatism.
|
| So far, she has zero pragmatism. She is consistently losing in
| court (Meta/Within, Lumina/Grail, Activision/MS, Altria/Juul,
| etc).
|
| If Lina continues on the path she is on, she will be totally
| unsuccessful. She will change nothing, and will in fact, set
| things back and make people unwilling to try it again. The
| Activision case is a great example - the FTC's arguments are just
| silly. I think this merger is a bad thing, but the tact the FTC
| is taking stands no chance of winning.
|
| She will move precisely nothing forward in the world at this rate
| - it will only get harder - losses make it more likely you keep
| losing, people scrutinize arguments harder, etc.
|
| The kind of change she wants and Cory wants doesn't happen by
| throwing abstract policy positions at the wall (in the form of
| court cases), even if the positions are ones I mostly agree with.
| It happens by moving your legal position from where it is, in
| reasonable, logical steps, to where you want it to be, and
| convincing courts along the way to take those steps with you.
|
| That may suck in a lot of ways - especially when you think you
| are very right and everything sucks (and you might be!). But
| bringing people along on the journey is necessary for courts too,
| the same way it is for any other part of society. The
| righteousness of your cause or position rarely matters to the
| speed at which you can do successfully something about it .
|
| [1] These are not employees who love or hate any particular
| company or industry, and have maintained high scores despite
| plenty of changes in administrations over the decades.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Why do you think the Activision merger is bad? And how could
| the FTC change their case to win?
| worrycue wrote:
| Not the person you were replying too.
|
| Consoles rely on 3rd party support to be successful.
| Microsoft just bought out one of the largest 3rd party
| publishers in the gaming industry. By failing to stop it,
| it's signaling to other players in the console space that
| they shouldn't bother continuing in the business as there is
| no way they can compete with the spending power of Microsoft
| - whose market cap is >14x both their competitors combined.
| jamesliudotcc wrote:
| Khan and the "Neo-Brandeisians" have a legal theory, which to
| oversimplify, holds that the true meaning of the antitrust
| statutes is "big business is antithetical to democracy, and
| so the federal government is empowered to stop businesses
| getting bigger." The current precedent in antitrust holds
| that antitrust means that the government is only empowered to
| act when bigness results in consumer harm, mostly in the form
| of higher prices.
|
| Note, legal theories are not like scientific theories! Courts
| can be influenced by legal theories. And in fact, the current
| mainstream in antitrust, which focuses on consumer harm,
| started as a legal theory propounded by the likes of Bork
| (yes, that Bork) and Posner. Because it has been adopted by
| the courts, especially by the Supreme Court, it is the
| precedent.
|
| Trial courts are bound to follow the precedent! So, of course
| the legal strategy was bound to lead to losses in court. You
| can win under this strategy, but only in the Supreme Court,
| which isn't bound to follow the precedent, but mostly prefers
| to follow its own precedent. Getting to the Supreme court
| typically takes years, and it requires the Supreme Court
| wanting to take the case.
|
| We'll see in the next stage if this was the strategy. If I
| were pursuing this strategy, I would say so. Then the losses
| wouldn't hurt morale!
| cratermoon wrote:
| Amazon's Antitrust Paradox is definitely worth a read.
| <https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...>
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(page generated 2023-07-14 23:01 UTC)