“If it’s true that huge platforms hinder market competition and engage in monopolistic behavior, there are two solutions. The key is whether to dominate them through competition, or whether to admit they are monopoly or oligopoly and regulate them.
If you choose the former, you need to reform the antitrust law. To choose the latter, we have to introduce regulations that take advantage of the scale, yet undermine our ability to abuse our dominance.”
‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox’ is the argument at the end of the paper. This is a thesis published in the 2017 Yale Law Journal by Lina Khan, a senior at Yale University Law School. (☞ Go to’Amazon’s Paradox’ paper)
In this paper, Lina Khan affirms that “the current antitrust laws cannot solve the monopoly problem in the 21st century.” It is necessary to understand the dynamic structure or situation of the market in depth, and the regulatory framework of the antitrust laws created in the industrial era is not suitable for this work. This is because it sticks to the method of regulating only the share revealed by numbers.
Since then, Lina Khan has been called the’Amazon Sniper’. The New York Times described Lina Khan in 2018 as an’Amazon Antitrust Antagonist’.
■ Participated in last year’s US House of Representatives’ report on’Competitiveness in Digital Markets’
‘Amazon sniper’ Rina Khan seems to be joining the leading US regulator. President Joe Biden nominated Lina Khan as a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the 22nd (local time).
Biden showed his strong will to check the IT giants by appointing Professor Tim Woo of Columbia University, who is the’foundation of net neutrality’ to the National Economic Commission (NEC), and also nominated Lina Khan as a member of the FTC.
In particular, Khan is rated as a more powerful card to contain FANG than Team Wu.
Lina Khan, a professor at Columbia Law School, is one of the leading antitrust experts in the United States. Besides, he is not a scholar who stays in the pulpit. While engaging in various activities, he is engaged in activities to break the monopoly of US IT giants.
Currently, Lina Khan is a legal director at the Open Market Research Institute. The Open Market Research Institute is an institution focused on combating the monopoly practices of companies.
Last year, the US House of Representatives published a 450-page’Investigation of competition in digital market’ report. The antitrust subcommittee under the House Judiciary Committee is the result of an investigation into the business practices of four major IT companies for 16 months.
This report provides a naked picture of how Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon have wiped out competition in the marketplace.
Facebook has solidified its monopoly status through the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Google and Amazon operated both platforms and commercial services at the same time, causing conflicts of interest. Apple thwarted market competition through the App Store.
Lina Khan was also deeply involved in writing a report to the US House of Representatives that focused on the FANG monopoly issue. Obviously. This is because few people in the United States are as well aware of FANG’s competition-disrupting behavior as Lina Khan.
■ Criticism of “the antitrust law is not playing its role”
In the’Amazon Monopoly Paradox’ introduced earlier, Lina Khan argues that “to measure the real competition in the market in the 21st century, it is necessary to analyze the structure and dynamics of the market floor.” In particular, he stresses that this new approach is essential when regulating platform operators such as Amazon.
In particular, he argues that antitrust laws created by the US Congress to prevent monopolistic tyranny are not working. As a result, they criticize that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods were approved by regulatory authorities without any problems.
The recruitment of Tim Wu and Lina Khan made it clear that President Joe Biden’s will to contain big IT giants is stronger than expected.
“Biden didn’t launch a strong attack on the IT giant during the campaign. But the initial move is sending a much more powerful message than words.”
TechCrunch, an American IT media, begins with the first sentence of the article conveying the news of the nomination of Lina Khan. As such, Lina Khan is a dreadful presence for monopoly giants.
Rina Khan shouts, “The antitrust laws are out of date.” What kind of performance will he show as a member of the FTC, who is no less than an underdog to monopolistic companies? Can we break the monopoly chain of big IT giants that have consistently advocated since’Amazon’s antitrust paradox’?
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It doesn’t seem easy to answer this question. However, as TechCrunch says, it seems clear that President Biden has shown a strong determination to solve the monopoly of the IT giant represented by FANG by recruiting Lina Khan. In addition, Biden still has one more FTC nomination right.
Tim Wu and Lina Khan are excited about what they will do in the future. In addition, attention is focused on who Biden will fill the remaining FTC seat with. Perhaps with the expectation that President Joe Biden will be more powerful than former President Barack Obama.