The FTC is free to investigate whoever they want, but if it only ends up being companies the White House opposes then that doesn't seem to be furthering the goal of increasing competition. There is the obvious bad behavior of cable companies in uncompetitive markets or the recent consolidation of movie studios or even car dealerships. I will reserve judgment until the FTC announces their targets.

So basically you're saying "if he goes after my guys I'm against it even if there is evidence of wrongdoing?"

If not, then why not look at the merits of the case?

If police only gave speeding tickets to those with Trump bumper stickers, would that not be a misapplication of the law? I think most people would think that is wrong even if they all happened to be speeding.

The difference here is that these "Trump bumper sticker" cars are going 100+ over the speed limit -- why the fuck would you waste your time arresting 10 people going 5mph over instead?

The cable companies are much much worse than Amazon.

What you're saying makes it seem like you think that any big tech monopoly is a Trump bumper sticker, and that any enforcement against them is unfair.

> If police only gave speeding tickets to those with Trump bumper stickers, would that not be a misapplication of the law?

Surely that depends where you live. Seattle (where I live)? Yeah, that would be obvious discrimination. A few counties further inland? Probably not statistically significant.

I’m not sure how or if that reasoning applies to FTC purview, but my intuition is that corporations of the size that might warrant interest aren’t likely to be partisan targets in any stable or persistent way.

Sure, if there's a trend of abuse, there are remedies, lawsuits, elections, impeachment, etc.

That trend doesn't exist now, and you can't use it as a shield against the law and commit crimes as you please.

Both the previous administration and the current one have expressed issues with those companies, and they couldn't be more opposed to one another.

Most of these big companies are anticompetitive at the very least. Every acquisition over the past decade has been a move towards oligopoly. Add to that widespread union-busting behavior, manipulation of the American people by spreading political or foreign psyops, exerting control over self-contained markets, etc... there's a lot of behavior that's been allowed over the past few decades that should have been reigned in.

Sounds like what you're describing is that certain companies have become scapegoats. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Tesla, and Microsoft all add a lot of value to people's lives both through the products they sell as well as the tax revenue they provide for the greater benefit of all. They aren't the primary drivers of any of our society's largest problems. We could quibble about exactly what those are, but they'd probably include: the high cost of health care, the high cost of housing, climate change, immigration, pollution, crime, etc. And yet these companies occupy the headlines constantly, and evidently the mindshare of our legislators instead of those issues!

> Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Tesla, and Microsoft all add a lot of value to people's lives both through the products they sell as well as the tax revenue they provide for the greater benefit of all.

That's a very bold claim, and one that I think is generally untrue and possibly extremely so. That might be true for a wealthy software engineer, but I don't think it's true for most people. For example, anyone who doesn't own a Tesla has benefited exactly 0 from the company's existence. If you don't order from Amazon or aren't doing lots of Google searches... same. And in fact, some of these companies - like Amazon, Meta - take far more than they give back. Amazon has killed local stores nationwide, on demand delivery and packaging is awful for the environment, etc. Meta just consumes attention and spreads misinformation.

> They aren't the primary drivers of any of our society's largest problems.

Except in some cases they quite obviously are. Amazon is the case study for abusive workplaces. It's the poster child for foreign-produced, cheap knockoffs. Meta is credited for spreading misinformation that has resulted in the near-destruction of our democracy. Apple, Microsoft, and many others have been implicated for using slave labor in their supply chains. How many products sold on Amazon are products of such labor?

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I think it's important that we examine these issues critically. These are not benevolent super-corporations. Sometimes they do good, sometimes they do evil, and either way it's generally on a huge scale due to the scale of the companies.

It's much more complicated than that. For one, you're conflating targeting industries vs targeting individual corporations.

One of the core jobs of the president is deciding which lawbreakers to go after. This is needed because (among other reasons) the government is far too small to enforce every law. In general the President is supposed to set general parameters but not pick specific individuals or companies. Deciding a specific sector's violations are more pressing is squarely within the traditional discretion of the executive branch.

Social Media and Online Retail are big nothings compared to Finance and Health Care. Finance shenanigans cause global recessions and health care is consuming 20% of GDP and growing. Since politicians and journalists love Twitter though, we get to hear more about that instead.

On the other hand, healthcare companies aren't an integral part of a cycle which leads to armed mobs.

The other thing to remember is that healthcare costs, while significant, are both familiar and legal, and the government uses the regulatory powers which Congress has granted it. Finance similarly has existing agencies and laws and while there are periods of lax regulation which end badly most people would say that the problem is regulators choosing not to use their powers or Congress underfunding staffing rather than an unclear question of how to handle a particular problem. In contrast, something like what should be acceptable on social media doesn't have public consensus and runs into thorny constitutional issues. It's understandable that this gets more attention, especially a time when one of the major political parties is making unfounded allegations in an attempt to keep their voters active.

don't forget news and oil and food.

> Amazon and Meta are both obviously engaging in "unfair methods of competition"

I don't think that's obvious at all. Give specifics.

From my casual understanding, Amazon is executing the same vertical integration strategy used by Standard Oil which resulted in its breakup.

My local pizza place is vertically integrating marketing pizza, making pizza dough, making pizza, selling pizza, and delivering pizza.

It’s not the vertical integration that matters but the amount of market power a company has. My pizza place: almost none. Amazon: significantly more than none.

Standard Oil was vertically integrating around oil -- what is Amazon vertically integrating?

The entire sales process from searching & reviews to delivery. There are allegations that Amazon uses their data to identify the most profitable areas to set up their own competing brands and may even force sellers to disclose information which is helpful in this regard. If true, it seems pretty clear that a sensible antitrust rule would be to split those functions into separate businesses with strict rules about what non-public data they're allowed to exchange so the Amazon Basics guys don't have any information about what's selling where which you couldn't get.

Basics; AWS; Prime Video; Advertising.

You don't get to deny vertical integration just due to them being involved in everything.

Selling things. Almost all the things.

Selling things is selling things. That isn't vertically integrating. A good example would be selling and shipping now that Amazon is getting into delivery as well.

Amazon ships more packages through its DSPs than anyone. But I don’t see them doing delivery as anti-competitive. It is highly integrated and streamlined however.

They put a absolutely massive amount of resources on solving delivery. And they probably do it better than anyone. You couldn’t split that out without totally breaking it.