I think this is probably normal for large gov agencies and prosecutions in general, but it just shows how arbitrary and political this stuff really is.
You don't get to the discovery stage of a lawsuit without a legitimate claim, especially not against a company like Amazon. It's just not realistic for the FTC to decide to investigate and immediately be granted access to everything. A "fishing expedition" wouldn't be likely to make it past a judge. Amazon has excellent counsel.
That said, unfortunately for Amazon, they are also built for an antitrust model that has been a corrupt perversion of the Clayton act. It's one Lena Khan, especially, has been trying to change since before she was in office. As a result, some of what they were doing in the open was in violation of the act - it just wouldn't have been successfully prosecuted 5 years ago.
Yeah huh, that’s exactly where they are. We can debate whether the current antitrust laws are broken, we can debate how much government should regulate big tech, but Lena Khan is testing theories and novel legal tactics after the fact. I put more faith in Amazon’s legal chops than government any day, they’re clear of violating. If anything, they’ve taken the existing laws and ran them to their conclusion, faster and more efficiently than any one else.
It’s easy to say, “imagine if there was no Amazon and we were all still living in Walmart and Sears’ retail landscape”, precisely because Amazon came in and changed the game for the betterment of all. Now, FTC seems to be saying, “imagine the little Amazons and Googles that are being suppressed!” It’s hypothetical and not how regulation should be done IMHO.
We’re in need of good regulation of big tech, this is ultimately going to damage that effort. It’s not in good faith.
The problem, I think, is that Amazon likely violated the law. They did this because normally they could get away with it - that doesn't change the violation, it means that prior enforcement sucked. It's like speeding; you do it, sometimes you get caught, normally you don't. If suddenly everyone got pulled over despite only going 5 over the limit people would be upset, but they would still have broken the law. It wouldn't be in bad faith.
So the FTC is indeed saying 'look at all the companies that are being suppressed,' precisely because that is the law. Section 2 of the Clayton Act, for example, makes it illegal for companies to engage in anti-competitive practices. The FTC is alleging that Amazon engaged in anti-competitive practices.
The funniest part to me on here is, nobody is even arguing that they didn't. The only argument people are making is "I like Amazon, it makes products cheap!"
That's fine, and courts should and do take that into account, but they still broke the law. They didn't break FTC regulations passed by Lena Khan, they broke a law that has been in force since 1914. The problem Amazon has now is that 'we make things cheaper' only works so long as they actually are making things cheaper, and it should only work so long as they aren't in the process of or have not completed monopolization. They are charged with anti-competitive behavior and price-manipulation and they have market power in the e-commerce market.
>We’re in need of good regulation of big tech, this is ultimately going to damage that effort. It’s not in good faith.
I completely disagree. This is what good regulation of big companies looks like. It's just foreign because we haven't seen it since before this era of mass concentration of industry.
IMO this is good. The biggest and most elite among us should be held to a higher standard than a random guy on the street or a small business, not a lower one.
Westley Snipes, Donald Trump, Hunter Biden, Amazon, Tesla, ExxonMobile, Amgen. I sorta want everyone and anything in that class of society on their best behavior at all times, lest the reins of government fall to a Party with reasons to make an example out of them. Unlike most, they have the resources to make it a fair fight too.