[HN Gopher] Private antitrust cases are going through the courts
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Private antitrust cases are going through the courts
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-02-22 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thebignewsletter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thebignewsletter.com)
| Arainach wrote:
| [flagged]
| adamc wrote:
| True. I would expect a big reversal at some point, with
| confiscatory tax rises. The Democratic base is angrier than
| I've ever seen it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| We have to fail to succeed again.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Yes, if history has taught us anything it's that the
| pendulum will swing back. Sometimes it takes a decade,
| sometimes it takes 500 years, but it always comes back.
| Hopefully we'll be alive to see it!
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem we've consistently had is that when Democrats
| run they say they're going to do something about these
| megacorps and then when they get in years pass and the
| corporations have only swallowed even more of each other
| up. Then Republicans say they're going to lower taxes and
| streamline regulations and they get in and government
| revenue as a percent of GDP never really goes down and
| the number of pages of legislation keeps going up.
|
| It would be nice if _either of them_ would actually do
| the thing they say they 're going to do.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| There are pretty big differences between the parties but
| one thing they both do incredibly well is bold-faced
| lying the to public.
|
| Its all a game to these clowns who have been in power for
| 40+ years. Chuck Schumer & Mitch McConnell are different
| sides of the same coin and _that coin ain't in our
| pockets_. That coin belongs to the multinational
| billionaire class.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| When things become really bad lying won't help anymore.
| The more delayed the response the more violent it will
| become
| threecheese wrote:
| The lies are indistinguishable from facts these days,
| which doesn't change your assertion of violence IMO -
| just that it's unlikely to be targeted at the actual
| problem
| onemoresoop wrote:
| No, the lies are so bad, self contradictory and illogical
| that they stand out quite easily. They are very easy to
| expose as lies. The problem is that there are so many of
| them that it makes focusing harder on the problem at
| hand. But we don't need to be stupid and start
| laboriously fact checking everything, we could be much
| smarter than that. We could localize the sources where
| these lies originate.
| leptons wrote:
| >It would be nice if either of them would actually do the
| thing they say they're going to do.
|
| It would be nice if voters voted. It would be nice if
| voters actually gave the Democrats enough power in
| Congress (and POTUS) to enact the legislation they want
| instead of being obstructed by Republicans at every
| single turn.
|
| Mitch McConnel famously obstructed Obama and prevented
| him from seating a SCOTUS judge because "it's too close
| to an election" that was a year away.
|
| So when you call out Democrats as doing nothing, please
| realize it isn't for lack of trying, it's for lack of
| power that the people didn't give them.
| righthand wrote:
| The Democratic base is tired of reaching across the aisle
| only to have their hands slapped and be met with disapproval
| and silence. This will all be a huge blow back very soon but
| it also means the angry people will look to revenge. And
| revenge means a D Potus coming in and doing things like
| firing every Republican they can, attempting to redirect
| funds.
|
| A lot of flip floppers often quote "both sides" talking
| points but both-sides-arguments only really apply in the
| context of what has happened historically and lack of
| willingness to set new precedents (I need all the flaws to
| also win mentality). Those arguments aren't helpful in the
| actual solution to the problem. Even though the arguer isn't
| exactly incorrect.
|
| IMO, the only revenge that will work is by making laws
| forcing both sides to legislate. Idk what that looks like but
| not legislating has led to interpreting the law as acceptable
| behavior for the team to win, not interpreting the law as
| applied against the acting individual. However something like
| a legislation quota sounds messy and easily abused in a
| country of lobbyists.
|
| The only other solution is getting non-term limited people to
| agree to term limits.
| righthand wrote:
| A political comment is about to be the fuel that shoots me
| over 1k karma. Apply your down-votes here to help keep me
| grounded.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The best solution would be a reform of the voting system.
| It has become clear over the last decades that a two-party
| system slowly radicalizes both sides. It is also very
| problematic in the face of single-issue voters. But the
| two-party system exists just because first-past-the-post
| voting makes it a strategically bad choice to vote for
| anyone but the two dominant parties, and makes party-
| internal reform hard by making it a nonstarter to split a
| party, no matter how severe the disagreement.
|
| Now first-past-the-post made some sense in the 1700s, but
| with the vastly improved communication of the 1900s and
| 2000s it's just a bad voting system. Basically anything
| else is better.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Someone has to do those reforms in the first place.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Right. During stable times, neither party would take such
| a risk. Big reforms occur during unusual periods where a
| system experiences shocks and its limits are tested. If
| there was ever a time for voting reform it would be the
| 2028 term, assuming that Democrats actually manage to
| capitalize on the historic moment rather than capitulate
| and shift right while campaigning on some limp slogan
| like "back to normal."
| leptons wrote:
| "All that is necessary for evil to win is for good people
| to do nothing", and 1/3 of the people of voting age _did
| not vote in 2024_ - they did nothing, they just didn 't
| care.
|
| You can reform voting all you want but if a significant
| portion of people still aren't voting then it's not going
| to do much for the country.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| The direction of political discourse hasn't been toward
| "radicalization" _per se._ Democrats have only moved
| slightly to the left of where they were in the early
| 1970s, but the majority of that movement has taken place
| since 2011. Republicans, OTOH, have been moving rightward
| at a steady and near-constant pace since 1971, though
| they did start shifting faster around 2001. This has lead
| to Congress becoming significantly more conservative over
| time. Keep in mind, the Democrats would be considered
| just slightly left of center in most European countries.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-
| polar...
|
| TL;DR: there's no "radicalization" taking place in the
| Democratic party. It's the Republicans that are driving
| it.
| watwut wrote:
| That is optimistic scenario. Pessimistic one is that this
| will be irreversible because remaining agencies and wealth
| will be used against opposition.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| My thoughts as well. However, the pendullum will swing
| harder this time
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > The Democratic base is tired of reaching across the aisle
| only to have their hands slapped and be met with
| disapproval and silence.
|
| Perhaps the Democratic base should stop "reaching across
| the aisle" the way they are because it clearly isn't
| working. On any given issue, Republicans generally
| understand the Democratic position on things and reject it.
| Democrats rarely understand the Republican position. That
| makes it sound like "reaching across the aisle" is a bit
| more of "preaching across the aisle" than truly attempting
| collaboration.
|
| > And revenge means a D Potus coming in and doing things
| like firing every Republican they can, attempting to
| redirect funds.
|
| This already generally happens, and more power to the
| Democrats who want to swing the pendulum hard on the
| Republicans after this one. The fact remains that for the
| last several administrations, if you were high up in one of
| these organizations, you would have to expect to get fired
| or demoted when the other party gets into power. If you
| want to see the history of this, the EPA has some of the
| most visible examples. The situation that's new is the
| wholesale gutting of entire agencies at the direction of a
| third party (Elon Musk).
|
| > IMO, the only revenge that will work is by making laws
| forcing both sides to legislate. Idk what that looks like
| but not legislating has led to interpreting the law as
| acceptable behavior for the team to win, not interpreting
| the law as applied against the acting individual. However
| something like a legislation quota sounds messy and easily
| abused in a country of lobbyists.
|
| I completely agree with you here. The administrative bloat
| of the executive branch is largely because the legislature
| has abdicated the power to write the rules on all but the
| broadest basis to the executive branch. The executive
| branch is run by only one elected person who has the power
| to change quite a bit about its operations.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Democrats rarely understand the Republican position.
|
| This is an extremely shallow and incorrect take.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This has been studied several times. The most famous
| study was Johnathan Haidt's.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| > The Democratic base is tired of reaching across the aisle
| only to have their hands slapped and be met with
| disapproval and silence.
|
| You mean, like the Democrats have been doing since the
| Obama administration? The ACA was not a bipartisan bill, it
| was a jam-down, and that attitude only continued. Pendulum-
| swing indeed.
|
| The solution is the same one Lincoln pointed out. The
| people aren't fooled anymore, so if you really want to do
| something, you can't just shuffle the problem around for
| campaign donations and not actually fix it. You have to
| make an honest attempt to support the good of the people.
| At the moment, President Trump is seen as the one doing it,
| because the Democrats have so clearly been acting against
| the interests of the majority of their constituents in
| favor of ideological luxuries. We're done with that for a
| while.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > The ACA was not a bipartisan bill, it was a jam-down
|
| No, it wasn't. It was watered down substantially.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Yes, it was: https://www.forbes.com/sites/physiciansfound
| ation/2014/03/26...
| 1propionyl wrote:
| You might be surprised to learn (it surprised me too!) that the
| new FTC leadership has affirmed Khan and Kantor's 2023
| guidelines on anti-trust and stated they will carry forward
| with them.
|
| It's an odd situation where more aggressive anti-trust posture
| is actually rather popular with Trump's base. Anecdotally, I
| know several 2024 Trump voters who cite Khan's FTC as the thing
| they liked the most (or only) under Biden.
|
| I tend to agree with you otherwise, but this issue does have a
| bipartisan consensus forming and it's unwise to seek conflict
| where you share values.
|
| https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/trump-enforcers-affirm-li...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| For all the weight that carries in an environment where an
| un-elected billionaire can come in and ransack the place at a
| moments notice.
| 1propionyl wrote:
| On some level I hope he tries. There's already mounting
| hostility on the populist wing of the right towards Elon.
| Going after anti-trust might just be the bridge too far.
|
| And frankly, given his public comments about and noted
| vitriol towards Lina Khan and the FTC (and his own
| tendencies towards seeking monopolies) I assume at some
| point he'll try.
|
| Further, purely speculating: it may be he already has
| tried. It's indicative that we didn't immediately see him
| go for the FTC. He's too small of a man to not have wanted
| to for personal reasons, and too greedy to not have wanted
| to for long-term business reasons. I have to wonder if he
| was restrained from doing so on account of (correctly)
| predicted blowback from such an action.
|
| Seeming to come down on the side of John Deere and DuPont
| subsidiaries and spinoffs is not a smart move. These are
| hot issues for the populist wing of the party who want to
| purge what they label as the "Con(servative) Inc" wing and
| routinely make hobbyhorses of issues affecting farmers in
| flyover states.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| well then you will be surprised by the facts. trump just
| sided with khan on this issue
| darkerside wrote:
| > Further, purely speculating: it may be he already has
| tried. It's indicative that we didn't immediately see him
| go for the FTC.
|
| Pure speculation. It could just as easily be frog
| boiling. I guess we'll all find out soon.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| He has started by going after the groups that are
| investigating his companies. USAID investigated
| overpaying for starlink in Ukraine. FDA doesn't like
| neuralink. The FAA investigates every time he blows up a
| rocket and showers debris into the airspace. The IRS has
| audited his tax filings before and he expressed
| frustration about it. He hasn't done anything the FTC
| cares about yet, though.
| hibikir wrote:
| Having an extreme regulatory posture, which is then lifted
| for friends and family, is typical in developing countries.
| The barriers make it so that your friends' companies do not
| get significant competition.
| sonofhans wrote:
| "For my friends: everything; for my enemies: the law."
| mlinhares wrote:
| Americans are going to be very surprised when they figure
| out what happens to the government when the country becomes
| a third world Latin American state.
|
| At least those of us that did live through the turmoil in
| these countries can see what is going on.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| American exceptionalism shield them from learning from
| others mistakes
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| what are you talking about?
|
| > the Trump administration ratified that the merger guidelines
| from the Biden administration are a fair reading of the law.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| You clearly don't read Matt's newsletter if you're trying to
| paint that he's somehow a Trump fan. The point is that the
| administration has taken some surprising stances affirming some
| pro-labor results, but probably not in a way that's more than
| posturing.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents,
| please don't post shallow dismissals of other people's work,
| please omit internet tropes, and please don't use HN for
| political battle. This is all in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| (I'm not arguing with you politically btw--just trying to avoid
| what predictably leads to repetitive and generic, and therefore
| bad, HN threads.)
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| People are, unfortunately but rightfully, angry. I don't envy
| you your job the next few years.
| dang wrote:
| For sure they are rightfully angry. From a moderation point
| of view, should we let that anger, however rightful, break
| this site for its intended purpose? I don't see what good
| that would do.
|
| (I realize you weren't arguing for that)
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder whether you were ordered to take a
| "neutral" editorial stance that was favorable to tech nazis
| or whether you did it by accident.
|
| In the end it doesn't matter all that much. Getting trump and
| musk in power was the most significant project you've ever
| contributed to, and you're going to be hearing about it for
| the rest of your life.
| hklijlyh wrote:
| Yeah but only bots don't care about this. So bots and trolls
| like me are the only ones left.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >The Trump administration is tearing down every regulatory part
| of government capable of limiting corporations
|
| Even Trump is against Big Tech. We're seeing right now how much
| of that brown nosing is making him look the other way. It's not
| a certainty
|
| Also, the government isn't in entire lock step with trump just
| yet. People are still trying to do some good while they can.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I wonder why they explicitly mentioned Warren Buffett. I'm
| assuming that means something to some group, but I have
| absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to read into that.
| thfuran wrote:
| I think it means the writers expected more people to have heard
| of Buffet than of Versisign.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I'll believe it when I see it. What are the actual remedies going
| to be? More piddly payouts that net each customer 57 cents?
|
| The penalties for monopolies need to be RUINOUS. The sword of
| Damocles should be hanging over every company and every
| individual with decision-making power at every company.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Law is slow and gradual. I'm not sure if States can break up
| companies, but these build undeniable precedent for when the
| feds get around to suing. So I wouldn't underestimate these
| cases just because they aren't _the_ case that will be
| remembered in history
| bsder wrote:
| > I'm not sure if States can break up companies,
|
| States used to pull corporate charters if you weren't
| operating for the common good.
|
| That needs to come back.
| amelius wrote:
| I'm tired of all the proverbial wrist-slapping. It's the cost
| of doing business. Let a wronged consumer give a monopolist CEO
| some physical wrist-slapping, on a public channel. Perhaps then
| it has a bigger chance of stopping.
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(page generated 2025-02-22 23:00 UTC)