@clacke We have a lightly regulated and lightly mixed market. Not as regulated as I would like for sure.
Definitely not a #free_market, because #USDoJ does not break up monopolies / oligopolies / monopsonies / oligopsonies aggressively enough. And very limited safety net.
This was in 2016, but I really think the case should have been a criminal case (ending with the dissolution of #Wells_Fargo's subsidiary if not the bank itself, plus prison for all involved managers).
#USDOJ's actions shield high level perpetrators from punishment.
@fu I know that anti-trust law is complex, but one doesn't need much more than a pulse to see that merging one of the biggest gaming software houses with one of the biggest gaming hardware and services houses is going to harm competition ... and that means it will harm gamers. I didn't follow the trial much, but the #FTC should have shown up with thousands of pages of exhibits, hundreds of experts testifying, and a timeline of past #Microsoft ( #MSFT ) anti-competitive acts to show a propensity.
Not that this should have been the first such merger they tried to block. The federal government doesn't really seem to get that "a free market" can only happen when neither individual buyers nor individual sellers have enough market power to force their chosen prices and terms upon the other party. Thus, in a situation where there are really only three gaming console hardware vendors worldwide and the software vendors have to contract with the hardware vendors for each specific game, there can never be a free market and governmental authorities have to whack the vendors with a stick periodically to make them play fairly with one another and with the gaming customers who buy their products and services. Or, you know, break those giant corporations up into multiple smaller organizations and prevent them from coordinating their pricing, promotion, production, etc in ways that hurt the gaming customers. I know that #USDOJ missed its chance around 1999-2001, when it had won its case against Microsoft and then came a change of administration and it punted on having the court impose an effective remedy.
As a business major, I feel like no one else was paying attention in their classes when this stuff was being discussed. It's covered in the two basic economics classes and also in business economics, business management, business law, and in legal environment of business, and those are just the ones I remember.
See the conversation at https://bae.st/objects/b2f916c7-8c8b-4e30-9ac0-011343217203 for a discussion of an apparent ongoing effort to crawl and index the Fediverse, then report illegal or questionable content to #USDOJ / #FBI. (I presume that instances based elsewhere might be reported to that nation's authorities.)
There's also one or more bad actors who show up, post illegal or questionable content, then report the content to hosting companies, domain registrars, et cetera.
> "Overnight, the Department worked with key partners here and abroad to disrupt Bitzlato, the China-based money laundering engine that fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime, and to arrest its founder, Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who led Wednesday’s press conference.
> "Today’s actions send the clear message: whether you break our laws from China or Europe – or abuse our financial system from a tropical island – you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom."
#StateFarm insurance hit with big racial discrimination lawsuit
Supposedly, the lawsuit is based on the company's own internal reporting ... if this is true, then the state attorneys general in #California and #New_York should also be suing to get vigorous restrictions placed upon State Farm and related companies.
I've said it before, but the whole country depends on those two states' attorneys to knock corporations in the head with a stick. #USDOJ is either too timid or too corrupt to intervene in most such cases, and smaller states don't have the clout even if they weren't also bought and paid for.
I think the #blockwars folks may have indirectly caused this. There are people who file complaints against client apps that don’t build in blocklists against specific servers whose moderation policies they dislike.
I think that #Matrix / #Element competes with one or more Google-owned chat-type services. Since they gatekeep the overwhelming majority of Android users’ software installation, a good antitrust lawyer would be helpful. I’ll bet that faxing a bunch of documents to #USDOJ and various states would suddenly cause Google to decide that Element doesn’t violate their policies anyway.
(Someone said it was “Boomers at Google that don’t understand federation”, but first of all, I’m certain that most GOOG employees are far younger than you and I, and secondly, I’m sure someone at Google understands federation, though they obviously dislike not being in control. Google Talk was federated with #XMPP, while Google Plus was basically #Diaspora with federation stripped out.)
I repeat more clearly: #USDOJ's absence from this lawsuit (and their failure to file it when the offending purchases occurred) has "corruption" written all over it. #DOJ lawyers should be the courtroom face of this trial, not some private firm that FTC has to hire because the so-called Justice Department refused to do its job.
The biggest question on everyone's minds should be where is #USDOJ? They should have sued back when Facebook bought #WhatsApp and #Instagram ... or at the least, been actively involved in prosecuting this lawsuit. It really does seem like DOJ's beef with #Google is that the bribes ^W political contributions weren't large enough or didn't reach the right person.
And no soldier wants to be told to shoot his / her own nation's citizens, so there's a huge risk of disobedience.
The better strategy would be to send #US-DOJ in with arrest warrants for the other police officers involved in #George_Floyd's death (and the police officers involved in #Breonna_Taylor's death) and keep them confined while building a case against them.
#Wells_Fargo pays #3B to avoid prosecution. This is #USDOJ abdicating their duty. There should have been officers and directors and CxO people perp-walking in orange jumpsuits on NBC news. This is not something to brag about. You failed America and its people.