Biden Puts Antitrust Revolution Into Practice
His selection of competition officials shows the conventional thinking about monopolies is changing, and that puts tech giants on the chopping block.
Antitrust busters.
Photographers: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg (Wu); An Rong Xu/Washington Post/Getty Images (Khan)
Few things are as intellectually thrilling as watching an idea spring to life, capturing more and more minds until it becomes conventional wisdom. And there are few areas of law where this has been as pronounced as antitrust.
Forty-three years ago, Robert Bork, who was a professor at Yale Law School at the time, wrote “The Antitrust Paradox,” which argued that antitrust enforcement should focus primarily — if not solely — on whether consumers were helped or hurt rather than whether a proposed merger diminished competition. Many antitrust economists found themselves persuaded by Bork’s logic, and within a decade courts, including the Supreme Court, were making antitrust rulings based on the “consumer welfare standard.”