A depressing aspect of this is that our toolbag is mostly empty. The few rusty old tools we have are not very good.
On the antitrust side... Courts and antitrust law are completely ill equipped to deal with modern monopoly. Everything must be funneled through a 19th century lens.
On the regulatory side... it might be even worse. We need to keep in mind that regulators are usually monopoly enforcing. Look at banks, traditional media, etc. The difference between a regulated fb and an unregulated one may be that fb can blame the regulator for censorship. This is how it works in a bank. Whatever mindless bureaucracy exists, everyone can just claim it's mandated. Meanwhile, it makes competition less likely. A "privacy preferences" popup approach will not help us with our monopoly problem.
Courts: The recent EU adwords case is a great example. They found unequivocally that adwords monopolises search ads, and use this monopoly to suppress competing search engines who have to sell ads on the adwords network. Google got a $1.5bn fine. Similar cases against amazon marketplace. To Google, it's a cost of doing business, and google would have undoubtedly paid that much just to get the narrow benefits proven in court. Monopolies are not a narrow phenomenon though. Whatever can be proved in court is the tip of an iceberg, almost by definition. If courts focus on the narrow (they are), then maneuvering around court decisions is trivial.
Meanwhile, consider this: If Toyota (workers, machines.. everything) fell of the disc tomorrow, the world would have less auto manufacturing capacity. It would take time and resources to rebuild. If facebook fell off the disc, the social media vacuum would be filled near instantly. There would be no social media supply issues.
This is where modern monopolies depart from 19th century monopolies. Courts may have wanted to liberalize (eg) the market for steel, but they didn't want to crash it. We still needed their steel. We don't really need facebook's "steel." Whether fb makes $100bn on ads or 1% of that, we will have plenty of social media. There is no (public interest) reason to step (on fb) lightly, but courts can't really make these distinctions.
IMO, the only answer is to act against size itself, and make decisions on a case-by-case basis. Also IP. Say Tesla does get to self driving years ahead of everyone because data... do they now get a monopoly forever? The poverty of our public domain is going to become increasingly relevant.
Given, for example, that AMZN "are the market" in a meaningful sense, why not make their sales data disclosable. That data is being proven in court to be a monopolistically potent. Give other market participants access. Advertising even moreso. This data is of major public interest
On the antitrust side... Courts and antitrust law are completely ill equipped to deal with modern monopoly. Everything must be funneled through a 19th century lens.
On the regulatory side... it might be even worse. We need to keep in mind that regulators are usually monopoly enforcing. Look at banks, traditional media, etc. The difference between a regulated fb and an unregulated one may be that fb can blame the regulator for censorship. This is how it works in a bank. Whatever mindless bureaucracy exists, everyone can just claim it's mandated. Meanwhile, it makes competition less likely. A "privacy preferences" popup approach will not help us with our monopoly problem.
Courts: The recent EU adwords case is a great example. They found unequivocally that adwords monopolises search ads, and use this monopoly to suppress competing search engines who have to sell ads on the adwords network. Google got a $1.5bn fine. Similar cases against amazon marketplace. To Google, it's a cost of doing business, and google would have undoubtedly paid that much just to get the narrow benefits proven in court. Monopolies are not a narrow phenomenon though. Whatever can be proved in court is the tip of an iceberg, almost by definition. If courts focus on the narrow (they are), then maneuvering around court decisions is trivial.
Meanwhile, consider this: If Toyota (workers, machines.. everything) fell of the disc tomorrow, the world would have less auto manufacturing capacity. It would take time and resources to rebuild. If facebook fell off the disc, the social media vacuum would be filled near instantly. There would be no social media supply issues.
This is where modern monopolies depart from 19th century monopolies. Courts may have wanted to liberalize (eg) the market for steel, but they didn't want to crash it. We still needed their steel. We don't really need facebook's "steel." Whether fb makes $100bn on ads or 1% of that, we will have plenty of social media. There is no (public interest) reason to step (on fb) lightly, but courts can't really make these distinctions.
IMO, the only answer is to act against size itself, and make decisions on a case-by-case basis. Also IP. Say Tesla does get to self driving years ahead of everyone because data... do they now get a monopoly forever? The poverty of our public domain is going to become increasingly relevant.
Given, for example, that AMZN "are the market" in a meaningful sense, why not make their sales data disclosable. That data is being proven in court to be a monopolistically potent. Give other market participants access. Advertising even moreso. This data is of major public interest