🏛️ US antitrust is punitive politics, not competition policy - hot-button platforms carry the overhang

“But I'll tell you when it all began is that Biden had a press conference where he said that Elon needed to be looked at. ... So this was the signal to all of the ambitious apparatchiks in our law enforcement agencies who are looking for advancement that he's the target, go after him, find something. Now, in fact, they couldn't find anything. So they look at his relationship with other countries and what you would expect is that maybe he hired some foreign nationals he shouldn't have, but it was the exact opposite. They didn't hire foreign nationals. So then they make that the crime.”

“I think that when Elon bought Twitter, what effectively happened is the biggest PSYOPs organization for the Democratic Party was taken away from them. ... And so this is the sort of death by 1,000 cuts approach that the blob has of trying to bring him down. And so you see a DOJ lawsuit over here. It's nominal, but whatever. Then you're going to see the SEC investigation over $50,000 of glass.”

“if you're going to investigate Tesla over this, like people can buy and trade the stock however they want. Like there seems to be some Biden administration, you know, like jihad against Elon.”

“we've seen Lina Khan, we've discussed it many times, seems to be saying, all business equals bad. Any merger equals bad. She's going to, you know, attempt to throw cold water on any merger that's happening. So M&A seems to be being taken off the plate by not just Lina Khan, but also the EU seems to be turning the screws. So if we don't have an M&A market, then that means there's only an IPO market.”

“but I think she is absolutely doing Biden's bidding with an anti-tech, anti-wealth creation, anti-capitalism, frankly, pro-union punishment. I think this is punishment for tech being too successful.”

“They are giant monopolies and they do need to be restrained and controlled or they will basically consolidate the whole tech ecosystem and abuse their market power.”

“it's basically that they view themselves as a hammer, and every deal, particularly if it's done by Big Tech, is a nail”

“Look, you obviously have a very zealous administration and a very zealous agency leader who is testing the boundaries.”

“Because we've said to hyperscalers, you're not allowed to acquire any of these companies. So the unintended consequence of the regulation in Washington is that entrepreneurs and founders and venture capitalists who might otherwise have had a good idea, built something with some traction, they can't find a home for it”

“For Lina Khan, I know she listens to the pod. Hey, Lina. You want to go after tactics, not acquisitions. So if somebody buys something and they lower prices and increases consumer choice, that's great.”

“Yeah, it's very similar. What I said in the context of tech is that we should focus on the anti-competitive tactics and stop those rather than blocking all mergers.”

“So I think these guys are getting caught up in the dollar number, you know? So I think the problem is they see $28 billion, they're like, we need to stop it.”

“The FTC's claim in the filing, which I actually read and I was like, this is actually a pretty good claim, is that the way that Amgen sets the prices for their pharmaceutical drugs is they go to the insurance companies, the payers and the health systems, and they negotiate drug pricing.”

“Being a billionaire is the crime. Having great success is the crime. When in fact, the crime is much more subtle.”

“what Lina Khan has done is just go after quote bigness, which just means stopping these companies from doing anything that would make them bigger. The approach is just not surgical enough.”

“Amazon and Roomba, Facebook and this exercise app, but all of this other stuff goes completely unchecked. And I think that that is probably emblematic of what many of these government institutions are being run like.”

“this is the best thing that could happen for all of the monopolists in technology, because Microsoft taking five or six hundred basis points of share is the best way to ensure that the FTC has zero credibility in going after Google or anybody else in tech.”

“But it does feel to me like the government is lashing out against companies like Google because they're perceived as being too powerful. That's what's going on.”

“My position is I think they want to have an outcome. And their outcome is they want to stick it to big tech because it's too powerful. And then you just said yourself, square peg, round hole. They're trying to find something to get Google on. This is not it.”

“it's like killing the golden goose. I mean, this is one of the big job creators, innovators and taxpayers and employers and drivers of economic growth.”

“And so I just think it means that the DOJ is more focused on trying to punish these great American companies than it is in trying to be logical and reasoned. And so I don't think this is going to work.”

“I mean, it closes. It closes because it doesn't intrude on the hot buttons of Washington, not because the merits of the antitrust are superior to the Roomba deal or to that VR deal that Facebook wants to have. This is all about political and cultural hot buttons.”

“But if you want to feature a competition, if you ask me, if I was a betting man, I think this thing is going to close.”

“This feels very political. It feels like they're going after Facebook because of the downstream political issues Facebook causes and they're ignoring the Microsoft issue and they're ignoring issues like this.”