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Comment by andrewhillman | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is quick to bring up President Trump. If you don’t think about the media landscape (big scary picture) and are quick to say this is lawsuit is a political move you are naive and uninformed. If this isn’t blocked overtime you will see companies like Google and FB attempting to gain more power and control in the same way. The DOJ had no other choice. They had to sue to protect the interest of consumers. They see where things are heading and its not good.

These deals are never good for consumers. When a few companies have too much power and control their only goal is to get more at the expense of the consumer. This is dangerous and should not be taken lightly.

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everybody is quick to bring up president trump becuase this so so opposite to everything else the administration has done.

I absolutely agree, this merger should be blocked. It's against the interest of the consumers. The DOJ is doing their jobs. But everything else the federal government is doing lately isn't. They've been repealing regulations left and right. Anything to increase corporate freedom is an immediate go, except this merger. If they want to work in the interest of the consumers, how about protecting net neutrality? Instead, they only work in the interest of the consumer when it's also working against the interest of an entity that the president has declared an enemy, which makes it hard to believe that they're doing the right thing for anything other than the pettiest of reasons.

That’s malarkey. That’s not why it’s happening at all. The Trump admin has no problem with consolidation. They are just challenging this merger because it competes against Fox.

They just let Sinclair buy most regional tv stations and also changed the the rules to favor them: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/11/fcc-sinclair-media-...

You don’t get to enforce the law selectively against your political opponents and then grandstand about protecting the market.

Consolidation can be both good and bad for consumers. Consolidation can permit economies of scale which can drive down prices of sufficient competition remains in the market. Amazon, for example, just couldn’t offer the same services at the same price if it were say, 20 different competing companies. Same thing for Wal-Mart, or Google.

Comcast... Verizon...

Increased profits come from somewhere. Nothing is ultimately good for consumers, they are just misled to believe it is.

Increased jobs, in the case of walmart, come at the price of workers having to apply for foodstamps to live. Cheaper prices come at the cost of driving local stores out of business. Google and amazon are shitty companies too, no matter how much they pay for good PR.

Amazon, Walmart, and Google were each one, focused company that got to where they were that way. Mergers of companies that scheme on their customers with oligopoly or monopoly tactics have almost always been bad for their customers. Also, if they were so great, they wouldn't be lobbying to block taxpayer-funded alternatives because it's always better when it's the private sector. The municipal versions would be slower, have worse service, cost more, and fall apart due to red tape. Yet, many that occurred despite Comcast et al's bribes to politicians were delivering better and faster service at same price or cheaper.

Better to split them up even further with regulations on things like sharing lines to force them to improve speed and service.

That reasoning makes no sense. Consider the article on the front page today about taxpayer-funded cafeterias in India. Everyone rightly pointed out that these cafeterias could crowd out privately owned restaurants. There is no real “competing” with a government-backed service. (The postal service, for example, is subject to elaborate rules to prevent unfair competition with private carriers. And countries like the UK and Germany have privatized their postal services for good reasons.)

That is not to say that municipal alternatives don’t have a place. My view is that state and local governments should get rid of build out requirements that restrict the development of competition while building municipal service to areas left unserved by the market. That’s a traditional government function: serving as the safety net. But that’s not what’s usually proposed.

> postal service ... elaborate rules

Such as that the USPS must be self-sufficient and doesn't take tax revenue.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/10/25/postal-regu...

Economics of scale in this instance are not applicable. But they do lower the providers cost. They never pass along the savings. Media companies like this do not decrease prices as output increases. If this were true cable boxes would be free in 2017. Looking around my house I pay for 1 Hub, 1 router, 3 boxes and 4 remotes. My provider just did an “upgrade” now all homes use 1 hub and 1 router per house and x number of “child” boxes. This means the provider is benefiting not the consumer. In fact, if my hub goes out, all my child boxes go out by design. I asked for 4 hubs and no “child” boxes and they said this upgrade is to reduce their cost, not mine. I’m not the only one complaining. My monthly fee is higher than before the upgrade. All these companies care about is power, control and profits. While this deal is considered a “vertical acquisition” it is not bc the media landscape is changing and the lines are more blurred than ever.

Everyone is quick to bring up President Trump. If you don’t think about the media landscape (big scary picture) and are quick to say this is lawsuit is a political move you are naive and uninformed.

Throwing out ad hominems before you've explained any reasoning is protesting a bit too much.

We're bringing up President Trump because this deal is being blocked and Sinclair (essentially a propoganda arm of the GOP) is getting a free pass.

People are quick to bring up donald because his incompetence will almost certainly result in the lawsuit failing and this merger being allowed to go through. That's sad.

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