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Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

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Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#11

Post by nicoburns »

richwater wrote: post #7
bix6 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect a perfect success rate against the highest paid lawyers in the world? At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Big is bad bro. There’s like 5 companies carrying the entire S&P rn how is that good for anyone outside of those 5 companies?

> Big is bad bro Using "big" as a synonym for "consumers are worse off than alternatives" does not do anyone justice. > At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Her prejudice against big tech and pretty much ignoring any other industries is not something to be proud of.

Big doesn't necessarily mean that consumers will be worse off than small. Just like having a dictator doesn't neccesarily mean that citizens will be worse off then in a democracy. What it does mean in both cases is that if the powerful entity decides to abuse their power for their own gain, it's very difficult (albeit not entirely impossible) to do anything about it. It's therefore better in the long-run to preempt this and bias towards smaller entities that are each less powerful.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#13

Post by gruez »

elefanten wrote: post #9
richwater wrote: post #4

Lina Khan's obsession with "big is bad", especially her preexisting prejudice of Big Tech should have disqualified her from any position well before she took the wheel. How many times did the FTC fail in court under her watch? More than I can count on two hands. Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.

Her opinion should not be taken seriously on the matter. It's not just the empirically terrible track record she had as a regulator and the baffling cases she brought to bear (imo proof of your point that she had an overgeneralized bias). It's also that she was demonstrably inexperienced at the time she was selected! It was clearly performative political appointment, which the Biden administration was pretty egregiou…

>The essay (literally, a homework assignment she did at law school) for which she became famous that criticizes Amazon for being big is so chock full of errors, misconstructions and faulty logic, that it's an indictment of some really poor political habits and instincts that the US is prone to.

source?

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#14

Post by elefanten »

bix6 wrote: post #6
richwater wrote: post #4

Lina Khan's obsession with "big is bad", especially her preexisting prejudice of Big Tech should have disqualified her from any position well before she took the wheel. How many times did the FTC fail in court under her watch? More than I can count on two hands. Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.

You expect a perfect success rate against the highest paid lawyers in the world? At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Big is bad bro. There’s like 5 companies carrying the entire S&P rn how is that good for anyone outside of those 5 companies?

Doesn't have to be a perfect success rate... how about just something other than abysmal failure rate?

Asserting a sloganized refrain is not very convincing. Make a real argument. Here are some counterpoints to "big is bad" Neobrandeisianism: -Scale enables better economics for certain businesses which consumers and other businesses then benefit from. -Large size allows additional speculative cutting edge R&D funding which the whole world benefits from even if it never pays off. -Being big on its own is almost never a cheat code to permanent monopoly / monopsony lock-in, especially in the technology business. That comes from actual anti-competitive behavior or regulatory capture (which ARE the parts that should be regulated, rather than targeting or preventing size for its own sake).

The S&P point is more than a bit overstated and it also doesn't really matter? The subset of the S&P that's performing well will naturally get weighted higher over time, until the performance changes. It doesn't really matter if the S&P is driven by 5 enormous companies or 500 equally-sized ones. Whatever works at the moment is what gets rewarded with capital -- that's the point of the system and it's been more effective than any alternatives. Besides, it'd be poor investing practice to be literally all-in on the S&P.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#15

Post by bix6 »

richwater wrote: post #7
bix6 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect a perfect success rate against the highest paid lawyers in the world? At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Big is bad bro. There’s like 5 companies carrying the entire S&P rn how is that good for anyone outside of those 5 companies?

> Big is bad bro Using "big" as a synonym for "consumers are worse off than alternatives" does not do anyone justice. > At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Her prejudice against big tech and pretty much ignoring any other industries is not something to be proud of.

I’m unclear what your first point is saying

FTC under her blocked Kroger/Albertsons, blocked Tapestry/Capri, ended non-competes, enacted click to cancel, made major strides on right to repair, etc. in addition to all the “prejudice against big tech” which are the titans of industry right now…

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#16

Post by sealeck »

richwater wrote: post #4

Lina Khan's obsession with "big is bad", especially her preexisting prejudice of Big Tech should have disqualified her from any position well before she took the wheel. How many times did the FTC fail in court under her watch? More than I can count on two hands. Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.

> especially her preexisting prejudice of Big Tech should have disqualified her from any position well before she took the wheel.

The purpose of the FTC is literally to take regulatory action to prevent unfair competition. Your argument is that you shouldn't appoint a commissioner on the basis that they think large tech companies are engaging in anti-competitive behaviour?? Note that this position isn't playing dictator; the FTC is subject to judicial oversight.

> Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.

How do we know this isn't just your preexisting prejudice of cable companies? Maybe you've just got an obsession with "big [cable] is bad"? On a serious note – it seems that you _do_ agree with antitrust regulation, just not against Facebook/Amazon for some reason (and only against Comcast)??

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#17

Post by elefanten »

gruez wrote: post #13
elefanten wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her opinion should not be taken seriously on the matter. It's not just the empirically terrible track record she had as a regulator and the baffling cases she brought to bear (imo proof of your point that she had an overgeneralized bias). It's also that she was demonstrably inexperienced at the time she was selected! It was clearly performative political appointment, which the Biden administration was pretty egregiou…

>The essay (literally, a homework assignment she did at law school) for which she became famous that criticizes Amazon for being big is so chock full of errors, misconstructions and faulty logic, that it's an indictment of some really poor political habits and instincts that the US is prone to. source?

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.p...

She got boosted by an insurgent group of law professors who spearhead whats called the Neobrandeis moment. Their theory is that anti-trust should be preemptively enforced against size for its own sake.

This is the article she wrote for her law review as a law student which put her on their radar and they started calling her a "rising star" etc etc, which snowballed into the performative appointment by the Biden admin.

Feel free to read through it.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#18

Post by bix6 »

elefanten wrote: post #14
bix6 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect a perfect success rate against the highest paid lawyers in the world? At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Big is bad bro. There’s like 5 companies carrying the entire S&P rn how is that good for anyone outside of those 5 companies?

Doesn't have to be a perfect success rate... how about just something other than abysmal failure rate? Asserting a sloganized refrain is not very convincing. Make a real argument. Here are some counterpoints to "big is bad" Neobrandeisianism: -Scale enables better economics for certain businesses which consumers and other businesses then benefit from. -Large size allows additional speculative cutting edge R&D funding…

Scale enables big companies like Amazon and Walmart to force anti-competitive vendor and pricing agreements that harm small businesses.

Meta is top 10 for DC lobbying. No regulatory capture to see here.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#19

Post by lemoncookiechip »

richwater wrote: post #7
bix6 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect a perfect success rate against the highest paid lawyers in the world? At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Big is bad bro. There’s like 5 companies carrying the entire S&P rn how is that good for anyone outside of those 5 companies?

> Big is bad bro Using "big" as a synonym for "consumers are worse off than alternatives" does not do anyone justice. > At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Her prejudice against big tech and pretty much ignoring any other industries is not something to be proud of.

- Three major court wins (Illumina, Tapestry/Capri, Kroger/Albertsons), multiple deals dropped.

-Over $1.5B refunded. Significant settlements (Epic, MoneyGram, Amazon delivery drivers, etc.)

- Junk-fees ban, click-to-cancel rule (You can thank the current administration for walking back on this), non-compete ban.

-Right to repair, data privacy enforcement, health-care pricing interventions ( reduced out-of-pocket costs for inhalers and insulin).

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#20

Post by bryant »

sealeck wrote: post #12
grandmczeb wrote: post #2

So what is iRobot’s bankruptcy evidence of?

That if Amazon acquired it, this would enable it to horizontally integrate and take control of yet another market? This, eventually, woudl lead to lower prices for consumers...

> This, eventually, woudl lead to lower prices for consumers...

What incentive would Amazon have to drop prices after vertical integration is done?

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