Last week wasn’t great for competition, at least not competition properly understood. On Tuesday, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission and the head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division announced that they were reviewing how they approve mergers and acquisitions since their previous leading indicators—anti-competitive price increases—somehow (magically) did not seem to apply to free products offered by so-called Big Tech companies like Facebook/Meta and Google/Alphabet. It’s worth noting that the FTC is currently suing in federal court to break up Facebook/Meta over its previous acquisitions of Snapchat and Instagram. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said “we need to understand why so many industries have too few competitors.” When FTC Chair Lina Khan made her first on camera appearance the following day to discuss the move, she
Anti-capitalists typically condemn capitalism because it IS a process, because its not a frozen Platonic Form known by mindless intuition. Mises is especially clear on this, even claiming that equilibrium is always a changing potential that never actualizes. But, then, anti-ideological, anti-capitalists condemn capitalism because its static. Note the anti-capitalist consistency.
Another, influential, false view of competition is that it is, properly, communist, i.e., a market of many, equally small firms. There can be no pseudo-math, Gini-coeefficient that measures the proper number of firms in a market. And, of course, which market? Does Coke compete against Pepsi, coffee, liquor, tap water, bottled, enchanced water. Only arbitrary trust prosecutors know. As Hayak said, capitalism is continuous discovery.
In fact, Joseph Schumpeter, Frank Knight, G.L.S. Shackle, and Rand, with their stress on economic change or innovation, should be more central to economic thinkng. Knight went further, with uncertainty. Shackle even denied the possibility of a science of economics. I believe, however, that Shackle was implicitly discussing the free will of entrepreneurs as invalidating government economic regulations.
Anti-capitalists typically condemn capitalism because it IS a process, because its not a frozen Platonic Form known by mindless intuition. Mises is especially clear on this, even claiming that equilibrium is always a changing potential that never actualizes. But, then, anti-ideological, anti-capitalists condemn capitalism because its static. Note the anti-capitalist consistency.
Another, influential, false view of competition is that it is, properly, communist, i.e., a market of many, equally small firms. There can be no pseudo-math, Gini-coeefficient that measures the proper number of firms in a market. And, of course, which market? Does Coke compete against Pepsi, coffee, liquor, tap water, bottled, enchanced water. Only arbitrary trust prosecutors know. As Hayak said, capitalism is continuous discovery.
In fact, Joseph Schumpeter, Frank Knight, G.L.S. Shackle, and Rand, with their stress on economic change or innovation, should be more central to economic thinkng. Knight went further, with uncertainty. Shackle even denied the possibility of a science of economics. I believe, however, that Shackle was implicitly discussing the free will of entrepreneurs as invalidating government economic regulations.