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Government Businesses The Almighty Buck

Amy Klobuchar's Big Antitrust Bill Wants To End the Age of Megamergers (vice.com) 176

Posted by BeauHD from the long-overdue dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On Thursday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the incoming Democrat head of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, introduced an omnibus bill signaling a pitched battle over the future of antitrust law. The law takes aim not just at big tech companies, but potentially all large companies. According to experts Motherboard spoke with, some parts of the bill offer ambitious changes to antitrust law, but others adhere to a framework that has undermined enforcing antitrust law for too long already.

At its core, the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act essentially combines legislation Klobuchar has proposed over the past few years as well as some that Senate Democrats have been considering. It takes a harder stance on anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions, and also promises to empower the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department's antitrust division to aggressively enforce antitrust law. Some of the bill's key proposals concern amendments and provisions to the Clayton Act of 1914, an antitrust law that made certain anticompetitive practices such as price discrimination outright illegal. In her omnibus bill, one key proposal seeks to strengthen anticompetitive merger enforcement by amending the Clayton Act to outright ban mergers that "create an appreciable risk of materially lessening competition," as well as mergers that create monopsonies (buyers or employers who can suppress prices or wages via anti-competitive practices targeting other buyers or employers).

Klobuchar's merger prohibitions also shift the burden of proof to the merging companies, which would have to prove a deal would not be anticompetitive, or create a monopoly or monopsony. In part, this means deals where a merger (or acquisition) yielded over 50 percent market share, where a transaction is valued over $5 billion, or where an acquisition worth over $50 million by a company valued over $100 billion would be presumed illegal. This move won her some praise from experts who praised its clear presumptive bar on large mergers. Other key proposals, however, that have raised concerns among antitrust advocates who are seeking larger structural changes.
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Amy Klobuchar's Big Antitrust Bill Wants To End the Age of Megamergers More

Amy Klobuchar's Big Antitrust Bill Wants To End the Age of Megamergers

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  • An Idea Even a Conservative Can Back (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dcw3 ( 649211 ) on Friday February 05, 2021 @10:43PM (#61033350) Journal

    I'm a life long fiscal conservative (not as much on social issues). I believe in the free market and competition. What many who will oppose this don't understand is that a free market ONLY exists when there is competition, and thus regulation is required to prevent monopolistic behavior.

    • Republicans overwhelmingly voted for the Clayton Act, mentioned in the summary. That and the Sherman Act are the two big antitrust laws. The Sherman Act is named after John Sherman, a Republican Senator, Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State.

      As you said, the Republican platform is free market competition.

      The distinction between Democrats and Republicans is that the Democrats often say that monopoly is natural and good, we just need (Democrat) politicians in charge of the monopoly. Democrats thou

      • I don't know where you're getting this, Amy Klobuchar is a Democrat. Democrats are the ones talking about breaking up big tech.

        • I'm aware of that. Both Democrats and Republicans agree on antitrust (antimonopoly) laws like the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act.

          The difference between the two parties in regard to monopolies is that Republicans are consistent in saying competition is better than monopoly, Democrats sometimes say monopolies are natural and good - they just need to have politicians in charge of the monopolies.

          You won't hear Republicans saying this business or that business is a natural monopoly, that's the distinction. The

          • You're talking about Ma Bell and Sprint from the 1980s. Politics and parties have changed substantially since then. Reagan era republicans are hardcore leftists compared to current day republicans.

            • > You're talking about Ma Bell and Sprint from the 1980s. Politics and parties have changed substantially since then.

              So the Democrats aren't promoting government-run ISPs and fighting against school choice TODAY? That was a quick change, because they were on Wednesday.

              • You're being massively disingenuous.

                So the Democrats aren't promoting government-run ISP [...] TODAY?

                You're implicitly claiming government == monopoly. Thing is we both know they're promoting the ability of people to choose to form a local municipal ISP precisely because the local monopoly ISPs aren't doing a good enough job.

                So the answer is: no he Democrats are acting against monopolies in this regard.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dcw3 ( 649211 )

              "Reagan era republicans are hardcore leftists compared to current day republicans."

              Mostly only compared to the QAnon morons who are literally a tiny fraction (there are polls you can look it up) of it, but most of what you'll hear in the clickbaiting media.

          • Re:The Sherman Act is John Sherman (R, Ohio) (Score:5, Insightful)

            by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Saturday February 06, 2021 @01:04AM (#61033548)
            You're wrong about that. Republicans haven't been anti-monopoly for a long time. The pushback on breaking up monopolies will come from the GOP.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The GOP was like that once perhaps, but now they seem more interested in building swamps and helping the buddies out. The last administration was a great example of that.

        Would be nice if they went back to their old values.

        • The GOP was like that once perhaps [...] Would be nice if they went back to their old values.

          What, keeping down black and brown people?

    • I'm a life long fiscal conservative (not as much on social issues). I believe in the free market and competition. What many who will oppose this don't understand is that a free market ONLY exists when there is competition, and thus regulation is required to prevent monopolistic behavior.

      You aren't kidding - because as soon s one person/company pulls ahead in the free market, they switch to activley working to destroy it. And most of the time, they succeed.

      The free market is driven by greed - which is not necessarily a bad thing. But the pathologically greedy tend to become successful, and they want it all.

    • But letting our companies get as big as they can is the only way we'll be able to fend off the lizard people!

    • As a self-described moderate, I wholly second your opinion. Capitalism is great, but a free market needs certain guidelines to remain free.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      The "free market" needs careful definition. It only works in restricted circumstances, e.g. there need to be a low barrier to the entry of new companies, and there needs to be a sufficiently large number of existing companies (probably at least 20 of approximately equal success at the top). Given the right circumstances, it's a good choice. It's great for toilet paper and pillows. Less great for cars. Computers fall in between, but CPU chips are not a place where the "free market" is successful. OTOH

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        "but CPU chips are not a place where the "free market" is successful"

        Curious why you'd single this out? As an investor in some chip firms, I'll tell you it hasn't been a fair market, in cases like DRAM.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          The barrier to entry is too high. It's a real barrier, not an artificial one, but that doesn't mean the "free market" is an appropriate method or description. (The barrier is the cost of building a fab plant.) Also there are too few competing companies at the top end. The real problem is the barrier to entry, which is largely what caused the "too few companies", but that doesn't resolve the problem.

          Now the question of "how should this be handled" is a really tough one. Governments have a worse a track

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dcw3 ( 649211 )

            And Hyundai had to grow up much later in Korea...I was there in the late 80s and bought a new '85 back when I could get an Excel for $4700 loaded. But it was a total piece of shit. They learned and came to the US, and were still quite a piece of crap initially. Japanese cars were crap when they first entered the US markets too. But both of these companies were already huge before they came here. I believe both had assistance from their governments as well. I'm not so sure there are too few auto compan

    • I am a free market economist, and sometimes a professor of it.

      I categorically reject the notion that antitrust enforcement is a threat to free markets, or a deviation from them.

      Market power, whether monopoly or oligopoly, is an interference with my precious markets, that needs to be stomped out.

      I haven't looked at this particular proposal closely at this time, but I think that it probably sill allows *too much* merging.

      My approach would be to place the burden of proof on the company to prove that any merger

  • Wrong link, idiots. (Score:5, Informative)

    by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Friday February 05, 2021 @10:49PM (#61033364) Homepage

    The first link in the story goes to a Vice article called "Auto Industry TV Ads Claim Right to Repair Benefits 'Sexual Predators'".

    The correct article is here: Amy Klobuchar's Big Antitrust Bill Wants to End the Age of Megamergers [vice.com].

  • How about making mergers probationary? (Score:3)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Friday February 05, 2021 @10:55PM (#61033372)

    In 5 years, if the merger is or is headed in an anti competitive direction it gets backed out.

    Vice link is incorrect
    https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com]

    If this bill had been law in 2000, what mergers or buyouts would not have been permitted based on what we knew then?

    • Man I wish this was law since 2000. I think we would have more independent ISPs than we do now, Charter wouldn't be a giant bag of assholes like it is today. AT&T deathstar wouldn't be back together. Red Hat wouldn't be at the mercy of IBM and we would all still have CentOS. Linkedin, VMware and Dell all still suck, regardless of who owns them.

    • I'm in a PoliSci mood lately and I have been reading Adam Jentleson's book "Kill Switch" on the history of the filibuster in the US Senate.

      If the filibuster is not addressed in some meaningful way in the long term (in other words doing something more besides just voting to end it, just so the opposing party who wins the next term can bring it back in the next Congress) then stuff like Sen. Klobuchar's proposal will be doomed because the Republican minority can be obstructionist as often as they want all tha

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They will just wait 5 years. Better would be if splitting a company up is a more common remedy to abuse, especially if that company is the result of a large merger.

  • Let's enforce existing regulation first. No, let's end the revolving door, implement initiatives against corruption (by admitting substantial corruption exists to start with) and THEN enforce existing anti-trust legislation. Without those steps any new anti-trust laws are absolutely meaningless.
    • Current regulations may be too broad to be enforced as much as we would like.

      Every person who shall monopolize . . . or combine or conspire . . . to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce . . . shall be deemed guilty of a felony

      If I agree to buy all of widgets you can produce, I have possibly committed a felony. This is unworkable and it forces AGs to make policy-based decisions beyond ordinary prosecutorial discretion. Do we use the law to create a vibrant but inefficient marketplace (R&D, employee poaching, patent disputes), or do we consider consumer costs and allow a monopoly or duopoly to exist because their products keep getting cheaper and bet

      • Common Carriers are and should be characterized by the type of activity, not the volume.

        • Sorry, I meant the delivery aspect of Amazon. And even that may be a bad policy, since you could end up with an AWS-subsidized delivery service undercutting the competition.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      And while we're at it, let's end the "corporations are people too" bullshit. If they actually were, we'd see a lot more of them in jail. Personally, I'm still awaiting seeing some of the housing crisis bankers there, but I'm not holding my breath.

      Additionally, we need to end the lobbyists choke on our lawmakers. One person, one vote should also mean that we have an equal influence, and we never will while lobbyists are allowed to dominate.

      • Have you ever read Harrison Bergeron?

        When you imagine a world in which "we have an equal influence", how do you see that working out, in practice? Do we make the clever and articulate people wear gags when they talk about politics so that they aren't any more influential than you are? Or do we just limit people to an approved list of bumper sticker-level arguments written by people who don't understand the issues, like your "corporations are people" argument?

        • I say NASCAR rules should apply to politicians. You wear a suit with all the logos of your contributors. The logos are sized according to donation.

          Harrison Bergeron is a false equivalency. You can't compare a dystopian novel about the entire population being equal in intelligence and strength to corporations that literally pay for laws to be written in their favor.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dcw3 ( 649211 )

          Okay, let me rephrase...equal opportunity to influence, which is certainly not the case currently. What you have now is money buying influence, and it's nothing to do with being clever and articulate.

  • Thank you AmyK. Bill Gates squirreled away Orange.app calendar and the world has been hostage to Outlook ever since.

    Great ideas get sacrificed to the whims of monopolists who do throw money at its competition because they can. Unbelievable shit-as-product succeeds on the power of its maker to buy the competition out of business. Yes Adobe you bought Lightroom but quietly suffocated the suite of Lightroom apps that competed against you. Thank you PIXAR for birthing Renderman.app into 60% ownership of Disney.

  • A few issues here:

    It's nice to say that you'll do it the "right" way.. but, when is the last time you've seen that been done in relation to a law that doesn't have loopholes, etc?

    1. You can't prohibit assets being sold, so instead of mergers many companies will just sell their assets to another company instead, with a greater impact to consumers and employees.
    2. If you prohibit "selling" assets, branches, etc. to another entity then you'll impact consumers - especially in poorer areas. Many times companies

  • Shouldn't addressing the China market lockout threat to keep giant corporations and Hollywood in line be of more concern at this point in American history?

  • Not a good look for Slashdot (Score:3)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Saturday February 06, 2021 @11:50AM (#61034330) Homepage

    I skimmed down this thing, looking for some mention of TFA. Mostly, it was the same arguments about the very existence of government, taxation, and regulation, that I could have read here in the mid-nineties. Clearly, slashdot is not a useful place to put political topics. The site owners should take note.

  • finally.
    it is about god damn time

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