Academic economists get big payouts when they help monopolists beat antitrust

pluralistic.net

45 points·kaffeeringe··4 comments

This Kanter speech is more in-depth and thoughtful than the Doctorow article (which cites it):

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-genera...

I don’t understand these types of articles. They criticize capitalists for behaving like capitalists, and capitalism for being capitalism. It’s like society is trying to hitch itself to this predatory economic animal and then ends up surprised pikachu when said predatory animal acts true to its own nature.

Capitalism is going to prioritize what it’s designed to prioritize, CAPITAL, and those priorities don’t include labor, or even society as a whole, and definitely not the environment. If we want an economic system that prioritizes society and people, or the environment, we should choose something different with a different design and different priorities, rather than continuing to complain about capitalism acting like capitalism.

The article isn't a generic rant against capitalism. It is about monopolists' misuse of academic experts to protect themselves against antitrust legislation - which is designed to protect free markets, not replace them.

My argument is that paying academic experts to protect themselves against actions that might impact profits is a normal and expected outcome of capitalism. Monopolies are also a natural outcome of capitalism.

We keep trying to tame the breast that is capitalism, to domesticate it, but I do not believe, due to it’s natural design, that it can be tamed, and if we try to domesticate it, then it loses it’s teeth, so to speak, and will be unable to compete with other untamed capitalist systems.

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