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Competition Won’t Fix Big Tech
Antitrust regulators should block natural monopolies from acquiring their biggest threats: new potential monopolies
“All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.”
— Excerpt from Zero to One, by Peter Thiel
Against all odds, the companies that comprise Big Tech — Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the like — have become villains.
Most ideas about how to address the issues for which they’re being blamed — rampant online abuse, the mishandling of user data, radicalization of both individuals and groups along the political spectrum, and the erosion of democracy — have focused on reintroducing them to competition by breaking them up.
At first glance, this idea makes sense. Competition is the process by which the best companies win by maximizing consumer welfare, and sits at the core of our market economy.
Historically, American antitrust regulators have measured consumer welfare by the relative price of the goods they purchase. This is why companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have thus far avoided antitrust scrutiny. These companies are unlike monopolies of yesteryear, which used…
