Hacker News Reader

A few of those suggestions seem a lot more "barbaric" than the government enforcing anti-monopoly laws. Imagine administrators, researchers, or whomever else works for the government having to change up their entire work routines and use a search engine they may ethically oppose because the government is trying to force fairmindedness. And the government should pick and choose patents to invalidate because the inventions described are too popular?

View on HN

Imagine a 60 year old lady with stock in a company that has had its value destroy by anti-monopoly laws...

Imagine how much money flows out of investors' pockets and into the pockets of government insiders and lawyers during a big antitrust lawsuit..

You could make the same argument about any company breaking laws and regulations or at least operating in grey (eg. AirBnb, Uber,...)

Well, poor them. Regulatory risk is just one of the risks of investing. Yes, it sucks that some of them are going to be the retirees of the world, but again, that applies generally to all investing. When you're making public policy, you have to put the individual aside and focus on the macro impact.

Now imagine all the value and money-making opportunity created for those investors by having a healthy and active competitive marketplace.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com