It sounds good as long as the White House doesn't try to use the FTC as a political weapon to disadvantage their opponents. Like going after Amazon for their union stance or Facebook for their censorship stance.
For example, the President could fire the Secretary of Labor at any time, for any purpose, because executive department heads serve "at the pleasure of the President." The same is not true for FTC commissioners, who are statutorily protected from firing except for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." SCOTUS held in Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935) that an FTC commissioner could not be removed by the President for policy reasons, because it was explicitly granted non-executive powers by Congress.
His power to issue Executive Orders to independent agencies is unclear, and often Presidents will "recommend" they do things, rather than "direct" them, as he would an executive department.
> The FTC is an independent federal agency, and the President doesn't have the same amount of control over it that he has over federal executive departments.
Isn't that the same as the FCC? We all know what happened with it and Net Neutrality during the Trump administration.
If it's staffed/led by the right people, it could act as a semi-autonomous political weapon.
But finding an uncorruptible, unopinionated, independently-minded civil servant... who also values service over salary... is a pretty tough ask. ;)
Civil servants necessarily put their own personal politics aside, because in all likelihood they will serve under several different political administrations. That is not the case, nor the expectation, for political appointees.
I should have clarified that my next sentence was switching to refer to the people who implement policies set by the senior levels: there are many people who do not agree with all of those decisions but will try their best to implement them because they want to make the country more successful or believe that a law needs to be enforced even if someone on their side broke it.
It will be used in ways not intended. The Sherman Act has been used by many politicians to go after their political advisories.
If the FTC wants to do this, then they need to go after the banks for their anticompetitive practices. How about Apple?
In the 90s, Janet Reno went after Bill Gates. It wasn't because of the browser in Windows. It was a result of Microsoft's reach into Congress, helping turn Congress over to the Republicans. Microsoft's execs didn't want the tax increases that were coming, so they went all in for Republicans. After the election, Reno directed the DOJ to prosecute M$. What a circus that was to see. Then, you know what really hit the fan, Microsoft backed Dave Stirling in California. Democrats were going to do anything they could to destroy M$.
Can you imagine someone going after Google, or Apple, because they won't let others put software on their devices? How anticompetitive is the Apple Store? Can I please remove Chrome off my Chromebook, and use Firefox? Google and Apple donate heavily to Democrats, as does Microsoft today. You're not going to see it used where it needs to be, related to technology, IMHO.
I'm not picking on Democrats, there are plenty of anticompetitive right leaning companies as well (The Banks, Oil & Gas Industry, Agriculture...).
So you believe the government is entirely a self-serving, wholly corrupt organization, that does nothing to help the people?
This is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary proof.
Or are you assuming that everyone here is among the moneyed elite, and claiming that the government's actions are directed at reducing the power of that class to benefit the common people?
That would be much closer to the truth, but is certainly nowhere near as absolute as you make it sound.
Whatever your intent here, the absolutism you display makes your statement patently false to anyone who has any real understanding of how governments—or, indeed, nearly any large organization—work.
This is a Regan Republican era talking point. Government is supposed to work for the people but for the last 40 years it has been used as a boogieman to push agendas which are actively not in the interest of the people.
In the US much harm has been done by under staffing and purposely slashing budgets of organizations that benefit the people. The amplification of "government doesn't help" comes from those regulated by the government. OSHA enforcing safe working environments? "Government meddling in my business driving my costs up!" IRS auditing, catching tax cheats, and closing loopholes? "Government stealing my hard earned profits!" Look at the attacks on the EPA since they are trying to protect vulnerable waterways that property developers want exploit and manufactures want to dump into.
So let's fund and staff the FTC and let it go after all of them. We need government in our corner going after the Banks, Big Tech, Oil, Commercial Agriculture, Pharma, etc.
The narrative needs to change so we aren't dealing with these issues in a reactive way.
(or make a lot of politically one sided claims without citation)
OK... but deviantbit's comment clearly presents Microsoft as the victim of corrupt government officials, which isn't really compatible with calling it M$. It seems more likely that the use of M$ in "Democrats were going to do anything they could to destroy M$" is to present M$ as a label given to Microsoft by the Democrats in order to make it easier to attack. He's trying to tell you that arguments based on the epithet "M$" are or should be unconvincing.
No democrat has asked Apple to turn those profits over, or wanted a wind fall tax. Why? Apple donates heavily to Democrats, and this is why you will never see an anti-trust suite.
You can be upset with this, but that is reality.
Not to mention: individual citizens have next to no insight into what really happens within various governmental agencies. And culturally, the tendency is to assume that one's preferred beliefs are true.
Trying to turn the internet into tiered internet packages like early 2000s cable companies offered would be a disaster even without neutrality laws. There's probably a reason the only real-life example in history that Wikipedia lists was some bottom-of-the-barrel Portuguese mobile network that experimented with a discount plan that never took off.
The lobbyists either bought into the bullshit benefits like everyone else or more likely were just taking the default anti-gov interference position.
The internet is so far from ever being the extremely limited centralized platforms that cable offerings were that the analogies never made sense if you spent any amount of time considering them.
why the fuck not? It helps the american people vs helping a company
Whether it’s a net positive or negative force is basically too complex a question to answer without resorting to an overarching unfalsifiable ideology like neoliberalism or socialism.
However, rule of law, predictability, and stability are unambiguously good for everyone. Attacking businesses or people on pretexts unrelated to the underlying reason a politician wants to hurt them is a hallmark of corrupt countries.
If we decide as a society to legislate stronger union protections then sure, enforce them against Amazon (and everyone else), but it seems bad for that to motivate selectively enforcing unrelated antitrust laws.
It's bad for them too once the monopoly is strong enough that Amazon can stop caring about those things.
Preventing monopolies isn't done because it satisifies some abstract sense of justice, it's done because they genuinely hurt consumers in the long term, even if the monopoly became a monopoly because they were really good for consumers to begin with.
Amazon’s stance on or relationship to unions is not a reason for the FTC to adjust its stance.
There’s more of an argument that it’s a monopoly employer, but they’ve been raising wages.
Amazon is awful for people who value fast shipping. They used to let you specify your shipping speed! Now the only option they offer is "it'll get there when it gets there". They also feel free to deliver things well after they claimed they would, once they're willing to give you a delivery date at all.
I actually canceled my Prime subscription this year specifically because Amazon's approach to shipping is so abusive.
You've just described the job market. If this employee cannot find better paying employment (assuming that the job market is operating efficiently) then it is either a skill issue (This hypothetical employee is not sufficiently skilled to demand a higher salary) or a demand issue (There is insufficient demand for your skills in the market).
We can have a fruitful discussion around job market efficiency (e.g. is Amazon a monopsony employer in some local markets), but objecting to the tone of the comment feels very out of place when this is the language that we use to describe the economy.
I really can't think of a more apples-to-oranges comparison (pun not intended). The only thing Apple and Amazon have in common is that they're the A's in FAANG.
How would the FTC going after Amazon help these people?
If not, then why not look at the merits of the case?
Surely that depends where you live. Seattle (where I live)? Yeah, that would be obvious discrimination. A few counties further inland? Probably not statistically significant.
I’m not sure how or if that reasoning applies to FTC purview, but my intuition is that corporations of the size that might warrant interest aren’t likely to be partisan targets in any stable or persistent way.
That trend doesn't exist now, and you can't use it as a shield against the law and commit crimes as you please.
Most of these big companies are anticompetitive at the very least. Every acquisition over the past decade has been a move towards oligopoly. Add to that widespread union-busting behavior, manipulation of the American people by spreading political or foreign psyops, exerting control over self-contained markets, etc... there's a lot of behavior that's been allowed over the past few decades that should have been reigned in.
That's a very bold claim, and one that I think is generally untrue and possibly extremely so. That might be true for a wealthy software engineer, but I don't think it's true for most people. For example, anyone who doesn't own a Tesla has benefited exactly 0 from the company's existence. If you don't order from Amazon or aren't doing lots of Google searches... same. And in fact, some of these companies - like Amazon, Meta - take far more than they give back. Amazon has killed local stores nationwide, on demand delivery and packaging is awful for the environment, etc. Meta just consumes attention and spreads misinformation.
> They aren't the primary drivers of any of our society's largest problems.
Except in some cases they quite obviously are. Amazon is the case study for abusive workplaces. It's the poster child for foreign-produced, cheap knockoffs. Meta is credited for spreading misinformation that has resulted in the near-destruction of our democracy. Apple, Microsoft, and many others have been implicated for using slave labor in their supply chains. How many products sold on Amazon are products of such labor?
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I think it's important that we examine these issues critically. These are not benevolent super-corporations. Sometimes they do good, sometimes they do evil, and either way it's generally on a huge scale due to the scale of the companies.
One of the core jobs of the president is deciding which lawbreakers to go after. This is needed because (among other reasons) the government is far too small to enforce every law. In general the President is supposed to set general parameters but not pick specific individuals or companies. Deciding a specific sector's violations are more pressing is squarely within the traditional discretion of the executive branch.
The other thing to remember is that healthcare costs, while significant, are both familiar and legal, and the government uses the regulatory powers which Congress has granted it. Finance similarly has existing agencies and laws and while there are periods of lax regulation which end badly most people would say that the problem is regulators choosing not to use their powers or Congress underfunding staffing rather than an unclear question of how to handle a particular problem. In contrast, something like what should be acceptable on social media doesn't have public consensus and runs into thorny constitutional issues. It's understandable that this gets more attention, especially a time when one of the major political parties is making unfounded allegations in an attempt to keep their voters active.
I don't think that's obvious at all. Give specifics.
It’s not the vertical integration that matters but the amount of market power a company has. My pizza place: almost none. Amazon: significantly more than none.
You don't get to deny vertical integration just due to them being involved in everything.
They put a absolutely massive amount of resources on solving delivery. And they probably do it better than anyone. You couldn’t split that out without totally breaking it.
Hm, lets think for a second and wonder why someone might consider Amazon or Facebook an "opponent" of the government. What's the argument here? That corporations should be immune from the government enforcing a level playing field?