All of this also assumes that government can do its job well.
That breaking up a monopoly (and how do you define one, anyway?) is good is not obvious (economies of scale, etc). But even taking this as given, that sometimes monopolies are bad, it is far from clear whether allowing government to intervene will be better.
You have to weigh the costs and benefits. Anti-trust law is extremely subjective. It's existence incentivizes companies to use it against each other to gain a competitive edge rather than real value-added approaches. Anti-trust law creates uncertainty that can deter innovation (should we develop this technology if we can't fully profit off of it?)
Government institutions are like all other institutions - they want to survive. And to survive, they need to grow. Mission creep is inevitable. So even if you have identified a narrow area in which government intervention can help, it is not obvious that we should allow government to intervene.
I know people on HN are very liberal, but this is extremely cynic about institutions. I mean: I know we are not living in wonderland and this is close to true. Here in France I even have the impression that key institutions have mostly been overtaken by private interests. But in theory we are supposed to try to get closer to something called democracy, where those institutions should reflect our common goals and hopes by some collective decision-making process (the difficult part!). Even if it is extremely tough at the scale of countries, and even if we are far from it, I though we were at least trying...
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All of this also assumes that government can do its job well.
That breaking up a monopoly (and how do you define one, anyway?) is good is not obvious (economies of scale, etc). But even taking this as given, that sometimes monopolies are bad, it is far from clear whether allowing government to intervene will be better.
You have to weigh the costs and benefits. Anti-trust law is extremely subjective. It's existence incentivizes companies to use it against each other to gain a competitive edge rather than real value-added approaches. Anti-trust law creates uncertainty that can deter innovation (should we develop this technology if we can't fully profit off of it?)
Government institutions are like all other institutions - they want to survive. And to survive, they need to grow. Mission creep is inevitable. So even if you have identified a narrow area in which government intervention can help, it is not obvious that we should allow government to intervene.
I know people on HN are very liberal, but this is extremely cynic about institutions. I mean: I know we are not living in wonderland and this is close to true. Here in France I even have the impression that key institutions have mostly been overtaken by private interests. But in theory we are supposed to try to get closer to something called democracy, where those institutions should reflect our common goals and hopes by some collective decision-making process (the difficult part!). Even if it is extremely tough at the scale of countries, and even if we are far from it, I though we were at least trying...