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Comment by armedgorilla | Hacker News Reader

A theory behind busting trusts is that monopolies stifle innovation, and thus growth, in the long term. When it comes to "competing with China" (which, to be naive, I'm not sure the meaning of), many nationally competing firms will have a better result for future consumers than if there were a single "national champion."

Here is an hour long video where Lina Khan makes this point to the Council on Foreign Relations much more cogently than I can: https://www.youtube.com/live/L_QaZk5iJOA?is=rk192CuSIBHLemsi

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That's how the theory goes but I would argue the observable evidence says otherwise. TSMC is Taiwan's national champion and effectively a global monopoly, Samsung is the same for Korea and is highly effective on the world stage, same again with ASML.

When a country does what it can to support its key industries those companies often out compete their global rivals and this is exactly the strategy China is using against the west with their support of domestic electric car manufacturing, solar panels, battery tech.

Alternatively the west is often anti big business and we've repeatedly seen national championions go under.

I will watch this. Generally I think you raise a fair concern, and I appreciate the shade of nuance.

By "compete with China" I mean at least have parity of competition with China in the essential technologies of the future, rather than falling behind into some sort of obsolence or inability to shape the global economy we all on the whole benefit from. If China becomes the dominant economic hegemon without a viable American competitive check, I think the world (and certainly Americans) will be worse off.

Meanwhile, a balanced competition between the US and China I think will benefit almost everyone on the planet, for reasons likely not that unlike what I expect Lina Khan will say in that video. There is no perfect solution, so I will look forward to hearing more of her perspective on this issue, thanks.

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