Libertarians do have a problem dealing with monopoly and oligopoly. They will claim that all such cases arise from government intervention and protection, and in many cases, they are right or at least partly right. But it's not whole picture by any means.
As for the conservative movement, there was an attempt in the early 80s to eliminate all antitrust enforcement as redundant. Even many conservatives were uncomfortable with this, because people back then remembered why antitrust arose in the first place. So the criteria were narrowed to consumer welfare alone, and antitrust was saved, in a truncated form. After all, one of the biggest antitrust cases of the last century was the AT&T breakup, which happened under Reagan. Conservatives saw that as having a clear consumer benefit, and so it did.
Consumer benefit as a criterion is fine, but in retrospect, it was clearly too narrow, which is why Matt is writing his pieces here. There was the Microsoft case of the first Clinton term, but that was the last major antitrust case until very recently. The big collapse of antitrust happened under, not Reagan, contrary to myth, but under Clinton, specifically in his second term, when the alliance of the Democratic leadership and Wall Street solidified. It remained there all the way through the end of Obama's second term.
Even after the haze of neoliberal globalization, any decent economics text will have a chapter on the classic monopoly characteristics and how monopolies seriously distort not only markets, but society and politics as well. They are price makers, not price takers; they respond to average cost, not marginal cost; they restrict output at higher prices than the market-clearing situation; if monopsonists of labor as well, they hire less labor at a lower wage than the market-clearing situation; and finally, they end up throttling innovation and develop undue political and social influence. Conservatives see the last item and (some like George Gilder and Peter Thiel) see the second-to-last clearly.
But it's the whole picture that needs to be seen to fully assess the reality. We might say that no side has a monopoly on the truth here :)
These aren't Libertarians, they're lolbertarians who are cover for crony corporatism. Anyone claiming this title who isn't first & foremost all about sound money or has read Mises / Rothbard is not a Libertarian, they're calling themselves that to deceive because monopolies can't exist with sound money. They're incompatible, its the flipside of the coin for how wokeness is "Progressivism" but is just cover for anti-corporate policies. Key distinction Matt, the Ron Paul types are part of the solution not the problem.
Why is this evidence that the culture war is catalyzing broader Republican concern with corporate power? As far as I see, any such Republican concern begins and ends with culture war, that is, the portfolio of emotionally charged grievances whose redress would require no more than superficial changes to the economic relations between the state, corporations and the people (and that generally are not *intended* to be redressed but instead to be nursed in order to foster anger-motivated political action/voting/etc).
When Zuckerberg was hauled before Congress, Republicans wanted to know why Diamond and Silk weren't getting more likes. Was that emblematic of a sea change in Republican attitudes towards corporate power? No, they just wanted their preferred viewpoint to get more clicks and likes. And why would an FTC commissioner's view on Section 230 of a federal statute (that he didn't author, didn't vote for, can't repeal and doesn't enforce) matter, even if he were willing to say that he hated it?
The right has subsisted from time immemorial on a diet of rage porn with no real political agenda other than to retrench the privilege of rich white old men. Trump is going to start his own Gab/Twitter clone and 90% of the Republicans, Jordan included, will stop pretending to care.
I would like to read the 5 missing paragraphs that flesh out the reasoning behind the final sentence. I don’t disagree with it but I don’t understand how this article lead to that final thought and would like to understand it better.
Libertarians do have a problem dealing with monopoly and oligopoly. They will claim that all such cases arise from government intervention and protection, and in many cases, they are right or at least partly right. But it's not whole picture by any means.
As for the conservative movement, there was an attempt in the early 80s to eliminate all antitrust enforcement as redundant. Even many conservatives were uncomfortable with this, because people back then remembered why antitrust arose in the first place. So the criteria were narrowed to consumer welfare alone, and antitrust was saved, in a truncated form. After all, one of the biggest antitrust cases of the last century was the AT&T breakup, which happened under Reagan. Conservatives saw that as having a clear consumer benefit, and so it did.
Consumer benefit as a criterion is fine, but in retrospect, it was clearly too narrow, which is why Matt is writing his pieces here. There was the Microsoft case of the first Clinton term, but that was the last major antitrust case until very recently. The big collapse of antitrust happened under, not Reagan, contrary to myth, but under Clinton, specifically in his second term, when the alliance of the Democratic leadership and Wall Street solidified. It remained there all the way through the end of Obama's second term.
Even after the haze of neoliberal globalization, any decent economics text will have a chapter on the classic monopoly characteristics and how monopolies seriously distort not only markets, but society and politics as well. They are price makers, not price takers; they respond to average cost, not marginal cost; they restrict output at higher prices than the market-clearing situation; if monopsonists of labor as well, they hire less labor at a lower wage than the market-clearing situation; and finally, they end up throttling innovation and develop undue political and social influence. Conservatives see the last item and (some like George Gilder and Peter Thiel) see the second-to-last clearly.
But it's the whole picture that needs to be seen to fully assess the reality. We might say that no side has a monopoly on the truth here :)
These aren't Libertarians, they're lolbertarians who are cover for crony corporatism. Anyone claiming this title who isn't first & foremost all about sound money or has read Mises / Rothbard is not a Libertarian, they're calling themselves that to deceive because monopolies can't exist with sound money. They're incompatible, its the flipside of the coin for how wokeness is "Progressivism" but is just cover for anti-corporate policies. Key distinction Matt, the Ron Paul types are part of the solution not the problem.
Why is this evidence that the culture war is catalyzing broader Republican concern with corporate power? As far as I see, any such Republican concern begins and ends with culture war, that is, the portfolio of emotionally charged grievances whose redress would require no more than superficial changes to the economic relations between the state, corporations and the people (and that generally are not *intended* to be redressed but instead to be nursed in order to foster anger-motivated political action/voting/etc).
When Zuckerberg was hauled before Congress, Republicans wanted to know why Diamond and Silk weren't getting more likes. Was that emblematic of a sea change in Republican attitudes towards corporate power? No, they just wanted their preferred viewpoint to get more clicks and likes. And why would an FTC commissioner's view on Section 230 of a federal statute (that he didn't author, didn't vote for, can't repeal and doesn't enforce) matter, even if he were willing to say that he hated it?
The right has subsisted from time immemorial on a diet of rage porn with no real political agenda other than to retrench the privilege of rich white old men. Trump is going to start his own Gab/Twitter clone and 90% of the Republicans, Jordan included, will stop pretending to care.
I would like to read the 5 missing paragraphs that flesh out the reasoning behind the final sentence. I don’t disagree with it but I don’t understand how this article lead to that final thought and would like to understand it better.