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Comment by nashashmi | Hacker News Reader

Only on HN would someone describe FTC as "disabled".

I think we are living in a time when companies are being frequently trusted. Because when they claim that mergers reduce costs, the automatic thought is the cost will trickle to the consumer.

The other outcome we are eager to see is the innovation that occurs at the extra large scale level. Do we see the more robots make it in to industry? Or intensive AI? The opportunities and imaginations have exploded after Facebook and Google utilized their dominance for the greater good.

Lastly, enforcement against unethical illegal behavior has become easier. Reducing the need of cynical and paranoid reasons to prohibit mergers. Only when there is actual concern of legal unethical actions negatively causing market consolidation and preventing startup incubation, the FTC will not be doing any of the things the paranoid want it to do.

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The FTC isn't even staffed fully, much less doing their jobs: https://theintercept.com/2018/01/31/trump-ftc-google-faceboo...

Highlights:

“It’s extremely odd for the FTC to operate with only two commissioners for this long,” antitrust attorney Reed Freeman told the National Law Journal. And even more so when the two commissioners are essentially lame ducks.

“The Justice Department’s antitrust division is doing stuff,” said Matt Stoller, a fellow with the Open Markets Institute, a leading antagonist of the tech platforms. “Ajit Pai is a bad man, but the [Federal Communications Commission] is doing stuff. The FTC’s silence is embarrassing.”

“The FTC really hasn’t used its authority in decades and has tried to rein in its own authority,” said Sandeep Vaheesan, a regulatory counsel for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

> Lastly, enforcement against unethical illegal behavior has become easier. Reducing the need of cynical and paranoid reasons to prohibit mergers. Only when there is actual concern of legal unethical actions negatively causing market consolidation and preventing startup incubation, the FTC will not be doing any of the things the paranoid want it to do.

Let me just reply instead of downvoting.

It is clear from a slew of radical movements by the new US administration that it has contempt for consumers and has zero interest in enforcing existing laws against big corporations. It's all about growth at all costs, and government agencies that have explicit charters to protect consumers, the environment, and the marketplace, have been or are in the process of being gutted.

You're being downvoted because you labeled everyone who offers resistance to mergers as paranoid and cynical. That's perjorative and unhelpful. Very many people have valid reasons for being distrustful of big, unrestrained corporations. Reasons based on a long track record of them stomping on consumers and their employees.

> It is clear from a slew of radical movements by the new US administration that it has contempt for consumers and has zero interest in enforcing existing laws against big corporations. It's all about growth at all costs, and government agencies that have explicit charters to protect consumers, the environment, and the marketplace, have been or are in the process of being gutted.

You reply to a comment and say it is pejorative and unhelpful but then politicize your own response as well. Your paragraph here is equally unhelpful.

> Because when they claim that mergers reduce costs, the automatic thought is the cost will trickle to the consumer.

Please explain how trickle-down nonsense can work when the cost is already zero.

No, the cost benefits will go to investors. That's why the investors approve the merger.

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