A few days ago, Lina Khan turned 34 years old. Khan was born in London to a British family of Pakistani descent. He spent his early years in the United Kingdom but moved with his parents to the United States at the age of eleven. Specifically, to Mamaroneck, New York, where he was a high school newsletter journalist. He was already pointing the ways. She studied politics at Williams College in Massachusetts, where, of course, she worked as an editor for the university newspaper and earned her Ph.D. with a thesis on Hannah Arendt. It’s 2010 and he still has seven years to write his famous essay during his third year as a law student at Yale. The Amazon Antitrust Paradox.
Khan argued, and continues to argue, that the current US antitrust legal framework, which focuses on keeping prices low for the consumer, does not serve to limit monopolistic and anti-competitive actions by big tech companies that do not sell products but, apparently, concede . If there is no price market, the legal system we have in place since the nineteenth century to prevent companies from abusing competitors, existing companies, and customers does not work. No one expected that a legal article in a prestigious but specialized journal, which proved breaking the Sherman Law, would have such an impact, not only in the closed legal world but also in business.
If this Pelican BriefWe were going to make Lena run from the evil Jeff Bezos who is trying to kill her to stop her from telling the truth. An inconvenient fact that legislators and regulators have failed to allow the growth of technology companies to acquire the size of many countries and have enough resources to control governments and the wills. At one time these behemoths were dogs laden with good intentions left to grow unchecked under the same will that let blood run unchecked during the conquest of the Wild West or heap the bodies of poor women and children around them. The Industrial Revolution: Let It Grow Then Regulate, Plot, and Protect.
The hyper-growth of technology companies started from this. What is now a cry, before was ‘put gates upon the field’, a stupid expression where they are because there is nothing more gates and fences, or anything more drawn, divided, or regulated than the field. One has only to go back before the pandemic to see the boos from politicians, zamoran blanket sellers, and idiots in general talking about the energy saving technology. alles uber, when it was already clear that the size of US and Chinese tech companies was a problem that we would not be able to solve simply through regulation. Because this technology creates addicts and changes minds in the long run.
But back to Lena Khan. Here her story is close to that of Erin Brockovich. In 2021, Joe Biden named 32-year-old Lena the youngest director of the FTC — overseeing competition in the United States — and with his appointment, Democrats made a statement: No more Silicon Valley embrace; It’s time to put them on the road. After her appointment, both Amazon and Facebook filed appeals against her understanding that her criticisms rendered her unbiased. This suspicion may have been grounded, but what is certain is laden with fear.
Since their appointment, both Republican advisers have resigned from their positions on the FTC. And Christine Wilson, the latter, announced on Valentine’s Day her intention to resign, although she did not specify when. Wilson accused Khan and his “accomplices” of “contempt for the rule of law and due process”. If Khan implements the Khan Doctrine, he could force Meta to cut himself or prove Zuckerberg personally responsible for what his company does, actions that were already on the table and weighing heavily on the feudal technologists. It’s no small thing.
We all know that European or Californian privacy regulations are insufficient to correct the neglect of the monopolistic, extractive and disruptive growth of big business innovation. technology. No matter how significant the punishments are for the one who imposes them, they are still small for the one who receives them. Our warrior Margrethe Vestager, the inspiration for the character Birgitte Nyborg in purgin For years as a European competition commissioner, she understands the importance of curtailing anti-competitive practices and has spent years cracking down on sanctions that would crash many countries’ economies but hardly change the position of Meta or Google. However, forcing Alphabet to split is a threat that changes attitudes.
So when Microsoft announced last year that it wanted to buy video game company Activision Blizzard for $70 billion, it found itself up against Lina. And not only to her, but also to the EU and UK regulators. Microsoft’s entry into the world of video games is a step in the direction of an ongoing metaverse, created with AI (which it already owned after its acquisition of OpenIA), that would create a new control scenario that would be impossible to beat. And the regulators are not in the business of making this happen again. Because, for the first time in modern US history, absurd Big tech It’s popular with the right, who think it’s censoring them, and the left, who know they’re controlling us.
Collaboration between antitrust regulators is nothing new, but opposition to Microsoft’s Activision deal is the biggest test yet of this new alignment among global antitrust authorities. Khan stands up for fighting even if you lose, bullying and cracking down on mergers and big tech. And she has stated that she is willing to take on hard-to-win cases to help push the boundaries of antitrust law. With Microsoft it’s winning, and with Meta it’s faced a setback: A federal judge rejected the FTC’s bid to block the purchase of Inside -a .start to fitness Virtual Reality – by Meta.
In a scenario where big tech lost $77 billion last year, laying off employees and closing projects, Lena Khan at the helm of the FTC is another thorn in their shoe they’re dying to remove. Lena, our heroine, grew up on The Darby Show.
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