Anti Trust Law in America.

Anti Trust in America.

• FTC lawsuit against Amazon for abusing monopoly power. Huge thing for antitrust law.
• After US civil war, private companies were becoming huge. Large companies called trusts where a couple of small companies combined together: wine trust, barb wire trust, sugar trust...etc
• Standard oil (around the 1900s)- 
• John Dean Rockefeller, one of the richest people on the planet. Many court copies of the cases were gone, Rockefeller had huge power. Something dark to his story: a small group of railroads got together with oil refiners, essentially colluding. He conquered industry by using the railroad power. Standard oil had unfair competitive power.
• 24/38 refineries were bought just by Rockefeller. He owned so much of the industry, he could just set prices. Rosavel saw this and files a lawsuit. Restraint of trade, sheer size of standard oil made it great but needed to be split up. They broke up but these companies were broken up but still co-operating with eachother -> became an oligopoly. 
• Tension in free market -> can lead to alot of competition but also the opposite, and hence why government intervention is necessary. David (underdog) vs Goliath (big guy). Anti-trust law may have gone too far. Bork wanted people to change their perspective.
• Sometimes its not not bad if companies merge. Encouraging competition but sometimes may harm competition. Stop focusing on competitors and instead focus in on consumers. (Lower MC is good for consumers). Start focusing on consumer welfare. Reagan in 1980 elected as president. Gov got more aggressive, and there was a backlash.
• Assumption gov intervention is good flipped, small number of firms started to gain power over the markets: google facebook and amazon. 
• The paradox-
• The 1970s was a turning point in the other direction. In the decades leading up to the '70s, the government had grown increasingly aggressive, intervening in the free market to defend competition in more and more ways over time
• Then a lawyer named Robert Bork completely transformed the way courts would interpret antitrust law. The approach to enforcement reversed direction away from protecting firms and toward a consumer focus, paving the way for today's tech giants.
• Early on the sympathy was for the little guys. Supreme court was pushing anti trust laws further and further: brown shoe company and grocery stores. Problem was that they were reducing efficiency- expanded the definition for anti-trust. 
• Borg goes through cases and shows how the laws have gone too far. Competetion is being limited by not allowing efficiencies. Threshold for market share that can be deemed dangerous is far less than 100%.
• Big Tech-
• Amazon Anti trust paradox- current Borg approach tackles consumer welfare, yet there are things that are bad for Anti-trust competition.
• Should we be looking at anti-trust law to ensure that companies like Amazon don't harm consumer welfare in the long run? 
• There needs to be more investigations to amazon, look at how it uses its data. Potential conflicts of interests. Amazon is many things, a market place is the main thing but its scary if one company has a large influence over a platform.
• However, platforms also increase competition. Amazon basics. These can be seen as a good thing for competition as Amazon is the platform but also competes and can push there products on the people.
• A product may be new and innovative, someone may have taken a risk. A third party will put their product on the market but then Amazon will copy and paste their idea which is unfair and reduced incentives to innovate. So, yes greater investigation is really required.
• Big tech- facebook and instagram needed to be investigate why someone decided that this would be a good idea. Maybe privacy is being compromised as a result.