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Comment by HillRat | Hacker News Reader

Not totally sure this is eventually going to survive a Twiqbal appellate review, and even then it's hard for me to buy the judge's "first step" harm analysis here. I'd love to see the bar for private antitrust suits loosened up, but the fact pattern (Sprint was not a particularly stable company at time of purchase, and no one's alleging any kind of price-fixing, collusion, or monopoly of essential facilities) and legal framework in this case don't feel like a great opportunity to do so.

In general, I'm skeptical that we should punish a company, especially one that isn't the largest player in the market, based on (pretextual IMO) actions taken (or not taken) by its competitors. I don't think the merger should have been approved, but once that bell is rung I think the standard for judicial intervention needs to be very high, and I don't think bare market forces apply.

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> I don't think the merger should have been approved, but once that bell is rung I think the standard for judicial intervention needs to be very high

Why? What particular harm are you worried about here? If there's harm to market participants then why should the players be immune? Why is a merger approval so inviolate?

> and I don't think bare market forces apply.

Why _wouldn't_ they? What forces _would_ you invoke to achieve justice? Or are you saying that because it's too inconvenient, we have to ignore the harms?

Market's don't exist for the benefit of companies. They exist for the benefit of citizens who both participate in them as consumers and as laborers. We wrote a lot of anti monopoly law for very good reasons, if shareholders are inconvenienced by having to unwind bad deals that shouldn't have been approved in the first place, I see no reason to afford them greater protection or deference than the fundamental participants of that market.

Exactly. Companies should be the servants, not the masters, of civil society.

You may want markets to exist for the benefit of citizens as labor and consumers only. But that's not an agreed upon position. If there is no benefit for humans as investors, markets won't exist. Companies are legal fictions created for humans as investors to pool their capital today and turn it into more capital for tomorrow.

> If there is no benefit for humans as investors, markets won't exist.

This is so breathtakingly wrong, that 'Earth is flat' is more accurate.

Ten thousand years ago, before investors, central banks, before currency, before the concept of money, primitive people had Markets

Primordial market consists only of two peope - labourer and a customer. I trade my sheep for your fish.

Even in the modern day, many companies have no investors - for example limited partnerships.

The idea that markets would disappear without investment reads like an attempt by the pope to take credit for creating the world in 3 days.

Sheep for wheat?

We are talking about the modern world here, the comment was about companies and their role in a society where companies exist.. in a thread about a merger between two telcos. Comments should be read in context.

So, sure, not literally every market would disappear without investors. But the overwhelming majority of current GPD would not exist without capital. It's quite hard to name a single current business that would exist without any investors in the world. Does your business require a computer? An office? A store front? A phone? Running water? Electricity? Investors, investors, investors, investors, investors. There are various stakeholders in any business - workers, customers, capital providers, suppliers, folks who feel externalities, and so on. The idea that companies are there just for the workers and the customers is misunderstanding the complexity of the modern world. It isn't the same place it was 10,000 years ago.

And... it appears there is confusion about what a limited partnership is... Many limited partnerships exist so they can raise money from investors who want nothing more than a return on their capital. Here is a decent intro on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_partnership .. An enormous amount of current law is written to make the aggregation of capital possible and an attractive proposition. Society generally understands how important it is to make investment attractive.

Primitive people had markets but they didn’t have limited liability corporations.

The very existence of these companies is a privilege, a state provided fiction. The people get to determine the scope of that privilege.

Corporations have no innate natural rights.

> Why?

Because changing rulings is by itself a bad thing that harms economic predictability

Why is economic predictability good if it has bad outcomes?

If the outcomes were shown to be worse across the board, sure, it would be worth sacrificing predictability for better outcomes. But if we set the precedent of rolling back merger approvals after the fact, I see good reason to believe that the effects on the market would be worse overall than if we just let this bad outcome be a single bad outcome.

If we want mergers to be undoable, that needs to be clear at the time of approval. We could probably fix this going forward to strike a better balance between predictability and other outcomes, but we have to make the contingencies known in advance, not pull rugs three years later.

Yeah but why.

What about the idea that unlawful things remain unlawful even if someone gets away with them for a little while.

That seems pretty logically consistent too.

Are there any allegations of unlawful behavior here? If so, sure, let's make sure there are consequences! But those consequences should be consistent for any company engaging in said behaviors, regardless of whether they were recently merged.

Yeah what’s what a lawsuit means, that someone is alleging unlawful behavior.

It’s a lawsuit, litigated by lawyers, in a court of law. You may see a three letter word reappearing if you look closely.

Every court case starts with a document that lists the actions of the defendant while citing the specific laws (statute or tort) alleged to have been violated.

As a general rule laws are enforced after the fact by a harmed party asking courts to provide a remedy. In the case of criminal law the party is the people, represented by the state, in the case of civil law it’s often a private individual, group, or organization.

This is the normal way laws are applied. People break them and then someone takes them to court to unwind the damage and seek redress.

You missed my actual point, but the sarcasm is noted:

> But those consequences should be consistent for any company engaging in said behaviors, regardless of whether they were recently merged.

The consequences are consistent. If they engage in an illegal merger and someone sues them they'll be subject to the remedy of that court.

It's really not that complicated. That's how civil and business law is typically enforced.

Your premise is that when a business deal is "approved" it's all set. But that's not really how things generally work, your premise is dubious. The real way things work is people do things and then if they cause unlawful harm they end up getting sued, sometimes by the justice department sometimes by a class action sometimes by someone else.

There is a better case against the airlines since like you said, Sprint was clearly about to go bust had the merger not happened, and there still would’ve been three cell phone companies.

Pre consolidation airlines were not any more stable than Sprint. Even now, JetBlue is about to get merged with Spirit.

JetBlue and Spirit are both profitable.

IIRC the deal is more about the fact that they share a common aircraft type, and Airbus’ order backlog is measured in years.

JetBlue and Spirit do not have profits in recent years:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JBLU/jetblue-airwa...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SAVE/spirit-airlin...

I am not an expert in airlines, and I am sure there are COVID effects, but it seems like the other domestic airlines have bounced back quicker since they are showing profits.

But more importantly, I remember Jetblue wanting to provide a better than average flying experience when the airline started, so I presume the only reason they would want to merge with Spirit, a company who does the exact opposite, is because they are facing financial headwinds.

Plane availability.

Jetblue and Spirit both have a strategy of lowering costs by only running one aircraft type, the Airbus A320 family, which means that their pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, only need training on one type of aircraft and can be flexibly deployed, they only maintain one set of spare parts, etc.

The Airbus order backlog is several years long. If you need planes earlier than that, your only recourse is to buy someone else's planes.

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FWIW, Q2 2023, JBLU reported highest quarterly net profit: https://simpleflying.com/jetblue-record-quarterly-revenues-q...

That's the strategy that Southwest pioneered right?

Southwest, Ryanair, EasyJet etc.

At this point it is the bread and butter of a low cost carrier. JBLU originally started as one. Legacy carriers are more likely to get different types of planes for different missions, and pit the duopolists against each other to secure better pricing.

JetBlue has been flying the E190 for like two decades now.

They’ve also committed to phasing them out by 2026 to go all in on Airbus.

Still, the two aircraft fleet is a lot smaller than what you would see on a legacy carrier.

JetBlue also has pretty limited landing slots on the west coast, and missed out on purchasing Virgin Atlantic to Alaska a few years ago, which would have allowed them to diversify more outside the eastern US.

Spirit isn't a perfect match (different market segments), but otherwise they use the same model of aircraft and have some operational efficiencies. I'd hazard a guess Spirit's branding and low cost model will be tossed out in favor of JetBlue's operating model, and that segment of the market will be left to Frontier.

Spirit is a fine airline if you fly and travel lightly(belongings in book bag)!

Per my ten flights this year with them (out of BWI, Miami, Vegas & Reno) it's a Pay less and get out the airport quickest experience. Their planes i flown on are new planes with seats that are a bit less comfortable. Their refund policy is awful ..just don't cancel.

Theres tons of negative press about them and I bet a lot of it is stirred up by fake news marketing via their competitors. TikTok has lots of influencers / social media professionals trashing them with their fake news marketing videos (like a few such tikTok(ers) have millions of followers).

If JetBlue buys them no more cheap good flights and that cuts out a lot people who can afford to fly with them now and that's crap..flying/traveling should be affordable for many not just middle to upper class!

> Theres tons of negative press about them and I bet a lot of it is stirred up by fake news marketing

What are some examples of this "fake news marketing" that you're claiming?

Spirit is very hit or miss depending on the route. I flew from Orlando to Pensacola and back three times in two weeks earlier this year and was delayed an average of 3 hours every single flight. The reported cause of the delay was "aircraft maintenance" although in two cases the aircraft had been at the airport overnight. The pilot explained to us during announcements that sometimes they skip longer maintenance when planes are there overnight.

Otherwise, I've had okay experiences with Spirit prior to this year but I won't be flying with them again since it is shorter to drive than suffer their constant delays.

> Sprint was clearly about to go bust had the merger not happened, and there still would’ve been three cell phone companies.

Or alternatively, Sprint's shareholders would have been wiped out, and its creditors could have continued operating it after taking a loss on their loans, preserving competition in the cellular service market.

My source is that they reported they were set to be cash flow positive (meaning profitable outside of servicing debt) in 2019:

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3413933-sprint-cfo-sees-t-mobi...

That still might have been untenable for their shareholders, but it is misleading to say the alternative was still three cellular service companies.

Or the creditors would have sold assets to TMobile anyway.

There's not three: do not forget Dish. They bought a ton of spectrum prior, and got Boost, spectrum, and partnership with TMo after the merger.

Despite a brutal earnings call yesterday, they are expanding network aggressively. They have the bankroll to ramp up, unlike Sprint who was circling the drain. I think ultimately there will be 4 healthy competitors, not 3.

I legitimately did not know Dish had a phone network. (I also don’t have TV.)

Best of luck to them, some disruption would be nice. I would like at least one cell provider to not have dead zones in my area.

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