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vundercind

Because we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in the 80s :-(

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> Because we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in the 80s

My kids have never known a time without the DoJ rubber-stamping every monopoly-building merger it could.

I can offer this napkin to wipe off the trickle down if you need it

Yeah, it’s not just failing to break up monopolies, it’s allowing mergers to go through that would’ve been laughably doomed to fail to pass regulatory muster in earlier decades.

Stock buybacks didn't used to be allowed either, but trillions of dollars have been pulled out of companies to pump stocks in the last several years.

Well, there was arguably a point to be had in the 90s for relaxing standards.

The web was new.

It was allowing over the top and disruption of a lot of legacy businesses.

It wasn't clear what constituted a market in those times.

However, by 2009, standards should have been reimposed. That largely didn't happen. Regulators simply got used to letting things go through, and so they kept doing that.

If that was the reason, they should have restricted it to tech companies. Instead, things like traditional media and food became harmfully consolidated over the same time.

The thinking was, and IMHO there's some merit to this, "giant new tech companies are going to be created by this thing called the web, so maybe legacy companies need to divest / merge to meet the competition."

And I'd argue a lot of non-defense government philosophy was also following DoD's "the Cold War is over, budgets will shrink, so defense companies need to merge to survive."

Would the Adobe + Figma merge failure count?

> Sources familiar with the matter said that while the two companies had been in constant touch with antitrust agencies in the UK, EU, and United States to work out a path to close the deal, the UK regulators have in recent weeks indicated that it would require remedies for Adobe to divest Figma design, a core asset of the acquisition.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/adobe-figma-terminate-20-...

> On December 18, 2023, Figma and Adobe both announced they were mutually agreeing to abandon their merger,[17][18] with Adobe citing that there was "no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figma#Attempted_acquisition_by...

Only if you count UK/EU regulators.

here's one landmark case in 1992. There have been more since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak_Co._v._Image_Tec....

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