Deep dive on CALERA, the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act unveiled by Sen. Klobuchar, that would effectively revamp US antitrust enforcement
When it's railroading time, you get railroads. — When the railroads turn into the personal satrapies of rail-barons, you get trustbusters. Tweets: @doctorow , @doctorow , @doctorow , @doctorow , and @davidakaye Tweets: @doctorow : When it's railroading time, you get railroads. When the railroads turn into the personal satrapies of rail-barons, you get trustbusters. A couple decades ago, it was online service time. We had the users, the telcoms systems, the computers, the modems, so we got platforms. 1/ @doctorow : Now, some people aren't technically sophisticated, but they do understand a lot about competition law. That's how you get meat-and-taters antitrust proposals like @amyklobuchar's #CALERA, which address the structural problems with antitrust law. https://pluralistic.net/... 3/ @doctorow : Klobuchar's bill is hugely important. The reason we have monopolies is that we stopped enforcing anti-monopoly law 40 years ago. Monopoly isn't a tech problem, it's everywhere from sneakers to glass bottles to pro wrestling to candy to aerospace. https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/ ... 4/ @doctorow : We had that, but we lacked something important: effective antimonopoly enforcement. Lax merger laws allowed companies with access to capital markets to buy out or neutralize all their competitors, so we got monopolies. Right on schedule, we're getting digital trustbusters. 2/ David Kaye / @davidakaye : this @doctorow thread is just excellent on problems of tech monopoly & interoperability, with refs to key work by @mmasnick @daphnehk @EFF @FukuyamaFrancis @jilliancyork. should be widely shared across policy communities. https://twitter.com/...