Is the SEC and FTC ever going to do their job? They have failed us in the 21st century. Shareholder value over everything else. It would be nice for some regulation to attack all this rent seeking.
what job do you want the FTC to do here? I assume you think there is an antitrust angle on this potential acquisition? I am an economist and that is my field. I disagree with your take, if that is what you mean. This is a vertical merger. Vertical mergers are quite different in their welfare effects to consumers than horizontal mergers. Vertical mergers can frequently be welfare-improving to consumers. Indeed, this i…
> If your prediction is that this will result in a welfare loss to consumers I would ask that you offer some evidence.
You are going to need to bring some evidence to support that notion, it's not on average people to prove that your merger isn't going to cause harm. Thankfully the Borkist era is very quickly coming to its end.
Consolidation should be blocked by default once companies reach a certain size. In order to proceed they should have to substantially prove that both consumers and labor are not going to be harmed by the merger. Any other arrangement results in speculative handwaving by lawyers and economists, and the supposed benefits almost never materialize, except for shareholders.
> Most of the hate Amazon gets on this site for being a “monopoly” is extremely wide of the mark.
What nonsense. Amazon has consistently used their platform anti-competitively to take over valuable product lines. They keep expanding into unrelated verticals in violation of federal law, and they are committing substantial, transnational labor abuses. Use whatever term you want to describe it.