Smith 2: constraints, which make markets work DIFFERENTLY, like minimum wage. But that's all there is, policy isn't a thing, I don't consider books. Law is applied to fact, and facts are characterised by law, and this is where experts come in. Developing economic understanding on the part of the court goes hand in hand in what is received from expert economists. [OK I understood this part :-)] Economists often articulate facts from scratch, assume courts know nothing–inefficient. #antitrust
Smith: So to what extent should a court listen to new policy, though he thinks anyway he heard people say it's all same old same old. But anyway courts shouldn't listen to policy. the role of the market, and how it should operate is at the heart of competition law, so the role of the market implies two important legal classifications, which are ideological. 1: laws needed to make the market work (no market is free, always need contract law, property, money, persons, facultative!) #antitrust
Smith: So the question is, to WHOM does the court listen. Parties argue their own cause, the court should only...
The CMA investigates and addresses. The price of this power is the court's stringent oversight. Even his court is overseen by the UK SC. In terms of penalty, why should courts supervene on regulators? Cats do not need to reinvent the wheel, for example. (Cat = CMA in a metaphor I missed. My respect to those who can follow judges' detailed decisions, and speeches!) #antitrust
"the loadstar of efficiency is over" – Cristina Caffarra @twitter@Caffar3Cristina kicking off her annual #antitrust meeting https://www.bruxconference2024.com/event/f79d717d-15c4-485a-a60b-4c718e9490b0/summary Actually, at the beginning she said "people are asking me whether this is geopolitics NOT antitrust" and I laughed – enforcement is hard because companies are transnational. This is also why the EU is in the position to lead – centuries of war has brought us to establish expertise in transnational governance / regulation. Note: it's live streamed!
CC: "but 5 years ago you wouldn't have worried about disadvantaging vacuum cleaners" she doesn't know about amazon & robots? cf previous toot. #antitrust Olivier Guersent: (her interviewee) we messed up whatsapp, the US messed up Microsoft, we've learnt more, know more.
Andreas Schwab no, it's still about efficiency, nothing is changed. Blames digital being "beyond what we thought they could" as if digital is big exception. I doubt this.
CC: "I want to go to the Amazon / iRobot deal" everyone laughs. I guess because roombas are seen as silly? "Don't go and buy a toy, just make it. If you can."
There was a time when Google bought up Boston Dynamics and several others where they were seen as going after Amazon's robotics / delivery. But Google figured out robots are hard and are just trying to get their cars to work, AFAIK. Though cf Ocado, who fund robots research through grocery delivery. #antitrust
Luigi Zingales has a lot of amazing zingers, I can't record them fast enough. But basically he sounds like @helenamalikova on steroids. #antitrust Outside China, Apple & Google outside of China have 95% of apps, AI does not have much of a shot of being better (excuse me – all of GAFAM are based on AI, core to all their (software) products & all their services.)
CC to her next panel: #antitrust is not apolitical and pure, it is about power. Right? We cannot be apolitical, it is not neutral.
Luigi Zingales: nice quote from some guy in 1947 about our job being dissipating power. Lots of name dropping I don't know & can't recognise through French accent sorry. "I'm opposed to both nazis and socialists, so I'm opposed to monopolies which helped spur both movements." So how did we get to technocracy from here?
Tommaso Valletti: So the practice of economics has become very narrow, and focussing on a couple of unproven models.
If you believed the economics models, then no merger ever hurts prices, because either there is an efficiency or there isn't. He read an "academic meta study of approved mergers" the researcher she only looks at vetted mergers "she does the right thing" in 55% of cases the prices go up (is this our paper, @helenamalikova ?) Tossing a coin is a cheaper way to get this result :-)
Zingales sounds properly liberal, he wants everyone to be able to get a job regardless of their Israel/Palestine stance; #antitrust should facilitate this. In fact, antitrust is not enough, we need proper competition policy.
Zingales: The EU should ally with India (! what about Africa?) it's the largest market. Dispersion of power
Tommaso Valletti now gives a less exciting recital of the same history, but notably focusses on consultancy concentration & subsequent loss of innovation.
But Mundt is confusing #generativeAI with #AI which is problematic given the #AIAct is still getting contested. AI IS THE CORE TECHNOLOGY OF SEARCH AND RECOMMENDATION. IT IS CORE TO GOOGLE AND AMAZON, and ubiquitous in Apple and Microsoft! #antitrust But he's right that they will win, but he's very wrong that we don't need to regulate our own digital experience with the #DSA and #DMA. GAFAM do not monopolise AI, Europe is working, cf https://online.ucpress.edu/gp/article/2/1/24803/117647/Is-There-an-AI-Cold-War see the figures there.
OK now really Andreas Mundt who agrees with the previous speakers of this panel, it's about power, economists are overly surprised they can't just do what they want (he was funnier but I was still editing my mistakes and forgot the line). But there's more ways to do things now. Foreign competition / domestic subsidies. He thinks the DMA matters, we are making markets fairer but not contestable. #antitrust
Slaughter: competition is core to governance, and we will effect competition whether with eyes open or shut.
She again confounds AI with genAI, says everyone is trying to make sure they don't make the mistakes they made with social media, that's why they are talking about it so much (and that's what GAFAM wants them to do -- they are hemorrhaging money with genAI and don't really care where it goes, they care about their core products, which are entirely AI (search, recommendations). #antitrust
How can someone say that we need regulation and also say we need no regulation in the actually functioning economy? This is the kind of regulatory interference that broke the US economy. Really angry about Mundt.
But now we're on to Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, US FTC.
She says we need competitive, honest markets that treat customers fairly. She doesn't think competition is a side dish, contra something I missed Olivier say earlier. #antitrust
Cass-Gottlieb says in already concentrated markets, we need to ensure the risk is on the dominating companies, not the consumers / tax payers. CC praises her.
Mundt quotes CEO of Palantir, that we are already somewhere you have no idea about. So we really need to be vigorous about merger control now, so we don't wind up in the abuse cases. Abuse cases used to be rare, now it's the key effort. We don't have time for this, can't blame the courts, but it's too slow 8-10 years.
Smith: It's useful if economists took into account what judges have said, ex post should be the new ex ante, the experts should accept or explicitly differ with what was said by judges before.
CC thinks there was some reason for hope in what they said and calls up the next panel.
Zucman is missing it because Eurostar :-/ Doha Mekki is calling in from the US. Mekki: interesting to hear Euro judges, US has concerns about the Chicago school "radical departure." #antitrust
Mekki: As AG, showing power to judges has worked, they are doing a better job of this. The courts are not having trouble understanding the point of antitrust laws, a judge said something about "doing violence" to the spirit of antitrust, talks about some successes, the agencies have indeed changed as the judges said they needed to, the US agencies now know that they have found hardworking judges who will listen if the justice department explains the cases in a compelling way. #antitrust#justice
@pettter I’ll let the icj decide if it’s genocide, but I think there are some pretty clear war crimes on both sides, I really hope the ICJ ruling helps clarify and mitigate that asap.
Still tweeting too https://twitter.com/j2bryson, Twitter is essential comms for a lot of the world e.g. activists in the developing world now, future historians… But increasingly here, on https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryson/ (barf!), and reading physical books.