Hacker News Reader

Comment by snapplebobapple | Hacker News Reader

What happened to antitrust is you guys had an antitrust system that was going way too far (think breaking up regional gas stations too far) and then nixon appointed Rehnquist to the supreme court in 1972, then Reagan appointed him chief justice in 1986. Rehnquist made decent arguments for reforming that that were then taken too far over his tenure (and continuing to this day) and now we have multinational oligopolies. Taking a good idea too far, making it an extremely bad idea is basically the theme of the pendulum swings of human history.

View on HN

I meant more recently. Lina Khan was making progress and even Tr*mp seemed to be taking a harder line on the tech companies in particular.

Yeah even chuds like Josh Hawley and Matthew Gates were pushing for anti trust

They were for breaking up primarily only the corps that they believe harm(ed) their political party and ambitions. Now the mega corps can just bribe them and/or partner with them and get rewarded with not just not getting broken apart but consolidating even more.

Any hard line taken by Trump is just a cudgel to extract concessions or bribes. Break up Big Tech [unless they follow my orders].

Khan was from Biden. Purged like everyone else.

Trump was just shaking them down. He was never going to actually fight money.

My personal take is you are mistaking progress with a shake down in progress. Lina is operating within the highly restrictive framework the supreme court put in place on Rhenquist and under that it is extremely difficult to break up anyone. it is, however, possible to be enough of a pain for a company that they elect to pay you off in some manner (i.e. campaign contribution, cushy job upon leaving government, outright bribe,etc). Everybody knows an at&t style breakup isn't going to happen when that is what is really needed for most of these oligopolies and they are playing it in a rent seeking manner.

You guys?

How many people on HN do you think were around so that they could vote for Nixon in 1968?

Given demographics of HN they probably is British and talking to Americans

British North American sir! Aka Canadian.

I think that referred to Americans

It did, but I was so pleasantly surprised they were choosing to be offended due to incorrectly attributing my statement to ageist biases rather than racist biases that I was going to just let it slide. It was so nice to get some variety in the incorrectly offended miasma that is the modern internet....

Don't forget Bork! Rehnquist was ready for the message, but Bork wrote the book and made the argument.

Regan really is the beginning of all of this.

Money. Too big to fail; too big to resist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com