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karlmcguire | 5 years ago

Yea, because that's been working great thus far.

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theptip|5 years ago

Well no, the US hasn't been enforcing its existing antitrust laws very rigorously, that's the point the GP is making.

E.g. see https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-en...

Rather than proposing a new technological solution to the problem ("platforms to protocols") which may work but is unproven, we could simply restart the use of existing tools that have been proven to work. This has the advantage of being a strategy that can be explained to non-technical folks.

jjk166|5 years ago

If I have a car that worked great 50 years ago but haven't been able to turn it on since the 70s when my neighbor destroyed the engine, I would not call that a proven, working car.

The "existing tools" have been proven to have a major weakness, namely they can be neutered by regulatory capture. Unless you can get everyone to magically forget how they circumvented the rules last time, you can't simply restart using them.

alangibson|5 years ago

You can't really say antitrust hasn't been working when no one has been using it. The laws are fine if we have the will to apply them.

ashtonkem|5 years ago

"The government has been unwilling to use existing powers against powerful corporations, maybe if we give them new and more expansive powers that'll do the trick. There's no possible way that these new powers will be turned against the powerless, right?"