EFF's roadmap for a 21st Century antitrust doctrine

40+ years ago, extremists from the Chicago School of Economics destroyed antitrust law, pushing a bizarre theory that the antitrust laws on America's books existed solely to prevent "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices; decades later, we live in a world dominated by monopolists who use their power to crush or swallow competitors, suppress wages, reduce choice, increase inequality and distort policy outcomes by making lawmakers and regulators dependent on their lobbyists for funding and future employment.

The Federal Trade Commission recently solicited comments on how it could update the Consumer Welfare Standard for the 21st century -- a move that represents an odd alliance of left-wing, latter-day trustbusters, and right wing operatives who woke up one day to discover that being blacklisted by 5 companies would make them disappear from the public eye forever.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted an excellent and cogent set of comments to the FTC on the subject, and in a highly readable, plainspoken post, EFF activist Shahid Buttar and EFF lawyer Mitch Stoltz explain the substance and background of the comments (disclosure: I am a special consultant to EFF).

EFF makes two main points here: first, that even if you're going to limit your antitrust analysis to "consumer welfare," that the power of the Big Tech platforms to surveil users, influence their behavior and censor their speech should be factored into "consumer welfare," because all of these activities materially and measurably reduce the welfare of the users of these services. Read the rest