Brb 5 years experience post law school...in charge of the FTC and has power to nuke the Microsoft Activision deal.
Go read her harvard law review stuff. It's naive woke garbage that comes across as someone trying to sound smart, but who really doesn't understand how the world works.
Absurd she's in this position.
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Anyone understand the lack of price movement after the news? Was it really that priced in already or is everyone just doubting the FTC?
Priced in AF
I honestly don't hate the move. So many industries have become consolidated to the point that markets have become alarmingly anti-competitive. I can't speak exactly to the rationale behind this specific move, but I think the FTC has been lacking on anti-trust action for far too long. Enough mega-conglomerates.
Ok prospect
What a thoughtless response. How about responding with some actual substance?
Agree w you. Jeff ubben said it when he said all industries these days are just 2-3 relevant companies.
Doesn't seem like lna Khan will win tho
Could you honestly say with a straight face that the microsoft activision deal is not anti-competitive??
Sure, her credentials are suspect, but I think it's pretty reasonable to call for the deal to be reviewed
Tell us why. Microsoft put out a detailed op-ed explaining why it's not anti-competitive. You'll laugh that it's Microsoft saying this, but it's in line with what many neutral commentators have said. I just chose to reference Microsoft's piece because it was efficiently written.
So what's the other side? So far all I hear is that industries of the world are consolidated. That's a start, I guess.
i dont necessarily disagree with you here but the op-ed is a terrible example of why they should be allowed the deal. the only thing of substance is a promise not to make CoD (which makes up less than half of activision revenue), an xbox exclusive. they made the exact same promise 2 years ago for Bethesda and look what happened there.
again, I dont necessarily disagree, but I really dont see how its hard to see the antitrust argument here - the combined market share of the two companies is huge, and activision games would feed into a platform that could easily dominate gaming subscriptions. and if its so obvious to "neutral commentators" that the FTC doesn't have a case, why hasnt the market priced this in? relative prices still show a low % probability.
Shut up shill. It's pretty clear that the deal is anti-competitive
Yale Law Review, not Harvard
Another "Brit"
Don't know enough about this deal to really have a view, but will say it is really really in the public interest to have stronger regulatory anti-trust mechanisms, albeit more thoughtful.
Canada is a case study in regulatory capture and really what happens when you have no anti-trust cojones. It's so anti-consumer it's absolutely shocking. Telecom, groceries/retail, financial services, you name it.
It's true. >85% of Canada's wireless market is controlled by Rogers, Shaw, Telus and rates are among the highest in the world. As a consumer, Rogers-Shaw merger just seems laughable but I'm also not well versed in telecom - can anyone filter the PR and investor pres for the BS?
https://investors.rogers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Rogers-and-Shaw…
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/03/15/2192622/0/en/Roge…
I have heard anecdotally that any shift in the status quo is met with some form of "we employ x thousand Canadians, jobs that competition will take away". Whichever party goes against this will be unelectable for at least a generation.
Antitrust law was invented in the US over 100 years ago and the broad strokes of the regime (namely focus on consumer welfare) haven't really changed since the Clayton Act. Of course there have been little changes in interpretation from time to time. But to the question of whether US antitrust law is different today than it was in 1914, the short answer is no.
Over those 108 years the US has emerged as the most successful country in every way, while Europe, Japan, and other so-called developed markets (presumably Canada) have stumbled repeatedly in their implementation of antitrust law and economics broadly. Simultaneously taking tougher positions on antitrust and yet somehow having industries far more consolidated than they are in the US. Go figure.
So while we should always pay attention to what happens elsewhere, I'm far from convinced that Canada or any other market should be taken as an example of what could happen here. We've had a better system since the beginning, so maybe they should learn from us instead of us learning from them. And maybe we should have some hesitation about just flippantly casting aside 108 years of caselaw, economic results, and work of economists and legal experts who've given their careers to antitrust. A lot of smart people were watching this space long before Lina and the WSO interns came along.
actually, canada was first. not just that, but the fact that antitrust law hasnt changed significantly is exactly one of the reasons why it can be broadly enforced today.
same source: "Despite common origins in terms of time and motivation, the two antitrust laws developed in quite different ways. In general, the U.S. antitrust system emerged as broader, tougher, more extraterritorial and more frequently enforced privately than the antitrust system of Canada."
care to explain where you are getting your information, or is this entire comment pulled out of your ass? the worst part isnt the attribution of decades of US economic progress to a contradictory and false assumption, its the fact that you end it with "a lot of smart people were watching this before WSO interns came along," as if you are drawing from analysis made by ANY of these smart people.
I am happy to give you more sources made by these "smart people" if you are still in doubt.
Most of the big US antitrust cases did not work in the long run. When the government broke up AT&T all the constituent companies merged back together and the us telecoms industry is still highly consolidated. Exact same dynamic played out with standard oil.
The problem is it goes against economics, any high fixed cost, low variable cost industry will eventually become concentrated and anti trust enforcement can’t change this. There’s a reason why industries like fashion and apparel do not become consolidated while telecoms and tech platforms do.
Thoughts on meta / within deal ?
As an NYC-based expat, it absolutely fucking baffles me when Americans rail on the FTC. Everywhere I look in this country, be it airlines, telecommunications, pharmacies, pharmaceuticals, concert tickets (the list goes on), you have astoundingly anti-competitive oligopolies and/or monopolies that have made price gouging a National sport.
While I agree that the opposition to Activision is a little dubious, one of the biggest drivers of wealth inequality (and subsequent political volatility) in this country is the fact that businesses accrue profit through monopolistic/oligopolistic practices, screwing consumers in the process.
So even a person who looks unfavorably upon US competitive practices and industry concentration, thinks the Activision case is dubious. That should tell people all they need to know about the strength of the case, and about Lina Khan.
Regarding inequality. The goal isn't equality, the goal is to make less fortunate people better off. Even if we have high inequality in the US (debatable), we're a more prosperous country with more ability to take care of our less fortunate citizens. To the extent we aren't doing that, we should to better. But there's a very plausible scenario where our poor people are better off than poor people in other countries, and we also have higher inequality at the same time. Part of capitalism.
By what metric are the “less fortunate/poor people” better off in the US when compared with other first world countries? By every measure that I can think of, the “less fortunate” are worse off than a majority of first world countries. Access to affordable health care, quality of early education, affordability of higher education, living wages, safe housing/water, incarceration rates, etc…to name a few.
You need to go back
How about addressing the actual argument?
Does "wokeness" through US History look like this?
-Emancipation Proclamation/Thirteenth Amendment
-Sherman Antitrust Act/Standard Oil
-Women’s Suffrage/Voting
-Roosevelt’s New Deal
-Civil Rights/Voting Rights Act
-Climate Change
more like George Floyid Soros
LOL, 2022 "anti-wokers" would have decried all of those past Civil Rights milestones as "woke", don't kid yourself.
See the point you're making but another key milestone in US history is the 1st Amendment and the broader application of free speech principles in our culture even beyond 1A. And whatever woke means (which is hard to define), it's generally been anti free speech. I'd go so far as to say it's anti freedom.
Since it is hard to define why do people continue to use it?
Given hard to define lets go with my definition of Woke with key events like emancipation proclamation, thirteenth amendment, voting rights, etc...are anti-freedom? Is the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) anti freedom?
What does "woke" mean? I thought big tech was "woke". Now fighting big tech is also "woke"?
It's like that judge said about porn. Can't define it, but you know it when you see it.
Today for example, SBF said he should be granted bail because he is a depressed vegan. That's woke.
I'd say this vegan example is not woke but rather people labeling some stupid comment as woke. This then allows the specific stupid action to be generalized out to a large group as also stupid. Anything someone does that is stupid, and you can call woke, makes it is easy to label woke as stupid. Similar to a person who diminishes a group people as wrong, liars, stupid, lazy.....all the time and then pretty soon people start to believe that the group is so.
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