By: The American Prospect
October 7, 2020
The most important line in the sprawling, 449-page investigation of competition in digital markets from the House Antitrust Subcommittee isn’t new. It actually comes from the very beginning of the 16-month investigation, reiterated here. In front of the American Antitrust Institute, Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), the subcommittee chair, said in a speech in July 2019, “Congress—not the courts, agencies or private companies—enacted the antitrust laws, and Congress must lead the path forward to modernize them for the economy of today, as well as tomorrow.”
I would have added “economists” to the litany of groups who did not enact the antirust laws; in fact, they’ve ruined them as much as anyone. But the signal from Cicilline then, and now, is that he wants Congress to be Congress again, to wield the power granted under the Constitution, and to start writing the laws that guide commerce in America. This report offers a brief window into that possibility, and it’s glorious.
Let me start by saying something that might be a little controversial: This is not a report about the digital economy. Superficially it is: It covers Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple (though, bizarrely, not Microsoft, a company that flits around the edges of the report and holds market power in a number of areas). But the self-regard of the tech press, that they occupy the center of the universe, has blinded them to the reality that this is just a document about monopoly. The industries are in a sense interchangeable, and the recommendations for action would affect all companies with market power.