Senate Confirms Progressive Tech Critic Lina Khan To Become an FTC Commissioner (cnbc.com) 122
The Senate confirmed President Joe Biden's nominee to the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, the young progressive who helped launch a reckoning amongst antitrust scholars and enforcers, in a 69-28 vote. From a report: At 32, Khan will become the youngest commissioner ever confirmed to the agency. Her confirmation also signals a bipartisan desire to impose more regulations on Big Tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple. Khan received the support of several Republicans, including Commerce Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who participated in her confirmation hearing. Still, others like Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, opposed her confirmation. Lee has tended to be cautious about certain types of regulation despite concerns about tech companies' influence and previously expressed apprehension about Khan's experience.
Khan became a well-known figure in antitrust circles after writing "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" for the Yale Law Review in 2017, while a student at the university. The paper made the case for using a different framework for evaluating competitive harm than the popular consumer welfare standard. That standard essentially says that antitrust law violations can be determined based on harm to consumers, which is often measured based on prices. But Khan argued that standard could miss significant competitive harm in the modern economy, such as predatory pricing that lowers consumer prices in the short term but allows a company that can afford it to quickly gain market share. She also argued that both owning and selling on a marketplace, like Amazon does, could allow a business to exploit information across their ecosystem to undercut the competition. Update: Biden Names Lina Khan, a Big-Tech Critic, as F.T.C. Chair.
Khan became a well-known figure in antitrust circles after writing "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" for the Yale Law Review in 2017, while a student at the university. The paper made the case for using a different framework for evaluating competitive harm than the popular consumer welfare standard. That standard essentially says that antitrust law violations can be determined based on harm to consumers, which is often measured based on prices. But Khan argued that standard could miss significant competitive harm in the modern economy, such as predatory pricing that lowers consumer prices in the short term but allows a company that can afford it to quickly gain market share. She also argued that both owning and selling on a marketplace, like Amazon does, could allow a business to exploit information across their ecosystem to undercut the competition. Update: Biden Names Lina Khan, a Big-Tech Critic, as F.T.C. Chair.
ok (Score:5, Insightful)
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As
Does the Subject influence the discussion? (Score:1)
Actually I suppose the Subject is sufficient unto the off topic.
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I think the point he was making is that "until you see the results of their labor" applies to pretty much anybody anywhere. More generalized, "you can't know the future".
Uh, yes, that's true. I suppose since government affects us all and has the obligation for transparency, there's bias confirmation that applies with respect to aptitude vs private sector leadership.
Oh shut up shanen (Score:3, Funny)
Khaaaann!!!
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What's with the vacuous Subjects? Yet another aspect of the FP problem? (The FPs actually seem to be better these days. What's up?)
Slashdot. Home of constructive criticism since 1997!
Oh yeah. I'm replying to an FP. But what's to say about that? The FP was almost as vacuous as its Subject. Didn't even offer a reason to limit the caution to government employees. Perhaps something about getting paved by good intentions?
On the original story I'm going to see if she wrote a book about her good intentions. But I need to read another book like a hole in the head. (Just borrowed Kernighan's latest retrospective. Third latest on his Wikipedia page.)
Really? Is that such a sore nerve it needs to be requoted against the censor trolls? Even I have to acknowledge it was a flat joke.
Oh well. If it squanders some of their mod points, I suppose it's worth it.
More wasted mod points, eh? But who's counting?
The problem with breaking tech monopolies (Score:5, Interesting)
The Internet user wants, roughly, give-or-take, ONE way/place to do each essential thing they need to do online.
Find anything at all? Google it. obviously. If they don't know that thing, why the hell not? You think I have time to hunt around at random other directory.com for some information?
Interact with all my (admittedly old-ass) friends casually online? Well, they're all on the fb, so no choice there.
Finding what to watch online used to be so much easier, when it was:
a) Longer stuff: Netflix
b) Short, random, or dumb stuff, or earnest lessons: Youtube
Now I've got to load up on a half dozen lame streaming sites? Yuck.
Bottom line, unless there is going to be a smart aggregator service sitting at a meta-level on top of all the separated out non-monopoly services, and unless the smart aggregator service knows how to navigate the bizarre incidental differences in how you log into and navigate the different splinter services, then I *don't want* the splintered situation. I want universality of content, and trivially easy and uniform ease-of-use.
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Something better came along and the masses moved. People wanting simplicity and a single place to do X does not mean they won't migrate when something comes along that does X better. When the price to the end user is free, most people will all use whatever works best. There is no reason to compromise on features to save some money. A minority of people will choose alternatives based on hidden costs (privacy) or principals.
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Haha. Not quite. Democrats hate big tech when it is bad for them. Republicans, on the other hand, are completely the opposite: they hate big tech when it is bad for *them*.
Re: ok (Score:2)
I'd be surprised if it were a coincidence, at least under the present circumstances.
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One should try to be mindful of their own bias.
That being said, history is full of examples where the ones I would consider myself opposed to were undeniably evil.
I.e., one should be careful to label the opposition evil, but one should not be so naive as to assume that the opposite isn't evil. That's how republics die.
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Wow, from big tech to the Nazis and the Weimar Republic. Your really are deluded.
It's a complicated topic. Try to keep up.
Look, I understand that I made you look stupid in another post somewhere else, and now you think that by stalking every post I make and posting as an AC, you're getting some kind of coward's justice for being called out for whatever dumb fucking thing you said, but no one else sees it that way.
You're just some sad little human who can't even confront the person who hurt your little feelings directly. Instead you're leaving shit on their door at night, in cover of
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history is full of examples where the ones I would consider myself opposed to
Skipped the reading comprehension part of your primary education, I see.
Grist (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Grist (Score:5, Informative)
Grist for the mill--something to discuss. I haven't read the article, but Robert Bork's theory of antitrust is what lead to narrowly tailored enforcement of antitrust. Another theory of antitrust is that it encourages small businesses: movie theaters can't be owned by the studios, so regional theater chains exist; states that require auto dealerships so have owners who live in the state; limits on the number of broadcast stations you can have in a market. The first two prevent vertical integration and probably increase consumer costs, but the consumers are paying the extra money to people who live, buy, and pay taxes near them.
Amazon, Walmart, and almost every major retail and food chain enjoy a nationwide economy of scale, and all of the profits are siphoned out of communities and end up where the employees, executives, and shareholders are. Though obviously you'll have some local employees--so it isn't quite like offshoring jobs where the increased profits benefit only the executives, and shareholders.
Re: Grist (Score:1)
Other comments here appear to be likely correct regarding the meaning of "grist".
But, since I am kind of a big fan of etymology for understanding words, you could possibly consider that GrieÃY is the German word for a type of grain that was, in older days, absolutely ubiquitous.
My guess is grist and GrieÃY are directly related.
Re: Grist (Score:1)
The word is: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And pretty much means anything that gets ground in a mill.
Re: Grist (Score:2)
The old English word Corn is similar.
It doesn't mean Maize, it means the local grain that everyone grows in this area.
So, in Scotland, corn was different than in Devon.
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What a piece of shit that paper is. First, there is no antitrust doctrine against non-monopolies/trusts using "predatory pricing" to _become_ a monopoly or dominant player. The idea is nonsensical. You would look at "predatory pricing" on an existing monopoly, not on some company looking to grow who isn't currently a monopoly. Now, 4 years later, it would certainly be viable to look if Amazon is using pricing power to drive out competitors. In 2017? No.
Second, they didn't discover some amazing loophole abou
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The Reagan administration made a change in anti-trust enforcement that for some reason has stuck around since. They de-emphasized the harm to competition and began requiring evidence that the monopoly harmed consumers. Unsurprisingly, it's more difficult to prosecute monopolies under those
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The reason to worry about lack of competition is to look out for the consumers. What is the point of exercising government control over a company if it will make no difference to the consumers? It's just spending government and company resources for no real gain. It's a waste of time and money.
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Facebook's issue is the network effect. Technically, there are services that offer similar features to Facebook, but I can't use them, because it's pointless to be the only person I know on that service.
Amazon's issue is that there are a lot of products that I need, and that I can only buy from Amazon. Some ebooks and Audiobooks are only available on Amazon, for example. Even when I find them on a different
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Beware of politicians bearing bipartisan agreement (Score:3)
The only things the two parties seem to agree on these days are new ways to screw the public harder. Usually that means new ways to keep incumbents in office, but I was originally quite suspicious in this case until I realized she wasn't actually a bipartisan pick. These days "bipartisan" has been insanely redefined to mean that at least one politician from the other party didn't go berserk on the issue.
But now I'm suspicious that even a few of the so-called Republicans voted for her.
By the way, I tried to read her major piece on Amazon, but the formatting of the Yale website makes it quite difficult to read. For my weak eyes it was close enough to unreadable that I'll wait for her book.
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Basically the ACK, but the overwhelming evidence is that today's politicians would be hard pressed to care less about the voters' opinions. That's the natural effect (or perhaps the point?) of picking the voters first (through gerrymandering and selective disenfranchisement).
(But why didn't Slashdot notify me of your reply?)
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A better definition would be "supported by a reasonable percentage of ownership of both subsidiaries of the Party."
FTFY
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Incompetence is demonstrated... I'll wait (Score:5, Interesting)
I will WAIT and see if this pick is incompetent; can't be sure now, unlike Trump's who usually demonstrated it BEFORE they were appointed if not before even being nominated.
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+1 Funny
Re:Student to Commissioner (Score:5, Informative)
Khan researched and published on market consolidation issues at the New America Foundation until 2014, when she began law school at Yale. . . . After completing her studies, Khan worked as legal director at the Open Markets Institute, which was spun off from New America after Khan and her team criticized Google's market power, prompting pressure from Google, which was a funder of New America. . .
Khan joined Columbia Law School as an academic fellow, where she pursued research and scholarship on antitrust law and competition policy, especially relating to digital platforms. She published The Separation of Platforms and Commerce in the Columbia Law Review, making the case for structural separations that prohibit dominant intermediaries from entering lines of business that place them in direct competition with the businesses dependent on their networks. In July 2020, Khan joined the school's faculty as an Associate Professor of Law. . .
In 2018, Khan worked as a Legal Fellow at the Federal Trade Commission in the office of Commissioner Rohit Chopra.[11] In 2019, Khan began serving as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, where she has been leading the congressional investigation into digital markets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Exactly.
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She has to wait until she is 35 to run for President.
Politics is about popularity (Score:2)
not competence - just a statement of fact, not a reflection on whomever this is. This is true everywhere, not just government. Amazon is the second biggest private-sector employer behind Walmart. [wikipedia.org] Nothing substantial will happen. This is a simple political move meant to pander, how else could this have received bipartisan support?
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if they had appointed a young white man, I bet you'd flip your shit of someone claimed he got appointed because of race and gender. Probably bleated about SJW or some such nonsense.
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I don't care that she is female or non-white. I guess if we take those away then 'attacks big tech' is the hiring criteria?
Look, I remember when I had a just a few years of experience and thought I knew it all. I find it hard to believe that there are not more experienced candidates. I'm questioning the motives of the folks choosing this person, not trying to be racist or misogynist. A woman of color is a valid choice but there is probably one with more experience and experience in more areas than 'attack
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I don't care that she is female or non-white.
Except you do:
Not male, Check. Not white, Check.
When have you ever mentioned gender when a young white man was hired? Here's when: never.
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Like I said, I'm questioning the motives of the folks choosing this person. Excluding qualified candidates based on race or gender is a problem, no matter which way you choose to go. In this case by biggest concern is lack of broad experience, or experience in only one area.
Re:Student to Commissioner (Score:4, Informative)
Student in 2017 to Commissioner in 2021. How is this person qualified?
You make it seem as though she was a high school student in 2017 when in fact she earned a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School that year, followed by multiple years of working for the FTC and as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law.
Progressivism is for the Young (Score:1, Offtopic)
Because as they get older, they learn it doesn't work.
Generic brands of home goods (Score:2)
This is how more and more supermarkets are operating. Big popular brand of locally produced foodstuff "A" gets strong-armed into becoming a producer of a white label version of the product "a" that the supermarket sells under a generic or home brand. As consumers split into two camps who buy A or a based on either perceived quality
Paid for by.... (Score:1, Troll)
Meanwhile, all over America . . . (Score:2)
. . . monopolies and duopolies in regional broadband markets continue to plague the United States with no end in sight. Is that more an issue for the FCC? I'm not so sure. Business is business, and the FTC can get their hands dirty with broadband providers strangling competition and offering dated/slow service to customers for top dollar.
Also if Khan wants to make an issue out of "owning and selling in a marketplace", perhaps she should be looking at the way streaming services are owned, operated, and pop
Bah (Score:2, Troll)
Big tech monopolies can quite properly be said to have gotten Biden elected.
Biden and the Democrats love having big tech monopolies to do their censorship and propaganda for them.
Khaaaaaaaaan! (Score:1)
Let the arms race begin (Score:2)
Let's see who wins the arms race to buy her off.
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Re:So she's a whiney token (Score:5, Insightful)
You keep using that word, "token." I don't think you know what that word means. See, someone is only a 'token" if they are the only representative of their group, in a larger group. Biden has hired plenty of women and people of color. She's not even the first American of Pakistani descent in his administration.
I also object to your characterization of her as "whiney." She's outspoken in her opposition to big monopolies, but that hardly qualifies her as "whiney." And it's a popular position, are you objecting to trust-busting?
Finally, who is this group you refer to as "our?" She's not really the typical neoliberal that Biden likes.
I mean, I get that you are sad about her appointment, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why. Surely you can't dislike her merely for her gender and lineage, can you?
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Surely you can't dislike her merely for her gender and lineage, can you?
You are being generous. Yes he can.
Re:So she's a whiney token (Score:5, Interesting)
I know. Often times the best way to disarm sexism and racism is to simply act as if the other person couldn't possible have meant it that way. If they did not mean it that way, it gives them an out which saves face and reinforces the norm that civilized people don't act that way. If they did mean it that way, it doesn't give them the fight they were looking for while still reinforcing the norm that we don't act that way.
Effective propaganda always assumes the premise rather than stating it outright.
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Effective propaganda always assumes the premise rather than stating it outright.
Surely you didn't mean to imply that everything you say is propaganda, did you?
I ask because I wouldn't have expected any honesty or admission of anything.
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Admit it? I'm proud of it. Because I'm good at it.
Don't pretend you aren't trying to sway people to your way of thinking. Everyone uses propaganda. Some just use it more effectively than others. Pull up a chair son, maybe you'll learn something.
Now, ask yourself "WHY would he admit it?" If you can understand that, you will have learned the intended lesson.
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The fact that you think in terms of leftists and rightists .. what can I say .. shades of grey.
Of course there are shades of grey. But there are people who all seem to read from the exact same script, all using the exact same buzz words. Any objective reasoning is never intended, only 'swaying others to our line of thinking', like our propagandist here.
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Perhaps you are confused by all the times that leftists admitted that their narratives were propaganda, and were decent enough to admit that the conclusions they immediately jumped to was baseless after there was actual time for evidence to emerge. Yeah, probably not.
For as often as leftists make accusations as if they are actual mind readers, it's funny when they play dumb.
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Uh huh. You're really confused by such a simple concept as the political spectrum that ranges from the far left, to centrists, to the far right.
Here's a good example of a leftist scumbag [youtube.com] They'll condemn violence and hate in the strongest possible terms but still wear clothing with the face of a murderous tyrant such as Mao Zedong [twitter.com]. They'll gaslight in defense of Antifa, even as people in the city get murdered because of political affiliation.
It's the sort that'll come onto internet forums and brag about what
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Uh huh. You're really confused by such a simple concept as the political spectrum that ranges from the far left, to centrists, to the far right.
First you missed the point. The political spectrum that you talk of is complete bunk. People can be liberal on some things, conservative on others. Moreover there are things like the horseshoe theory of politics which give a very different version of the conventional political spectrum.
Second as far as I can see, people who subscribe to this whole left-right dichotomy can never be part of the solutions needed in the US (or indeed in any country). Such people, and you appear to be one of them, run around
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So you'll claim the political spectrum is bunk, but then also claim that horseshoe theory is just a different version of the convention political spectrum. Do you know what the people that are liberal on some things and conservatives on others tend to call themselves? Centrists.
I don't need to be told the nature of reality, thanks. It's pretty simple concept that ideologies can be mutually exclusive. "no borders no wall no usa at all" and "abolish police" and "believe women" are just a few of the narratives
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I agree with horseshoe theory. Leftists seem to be very much alike the self-righteous religious authoritarians that threatened me with eternal damnation for demonstrating a capacity to think for myself.
The most popular 'political spectrum' test I know of isn't a sliding scale between left and right, but also includes the dimension of authoritarian vrs. libertarian. 'Leftists' defines the scope of the authoritarian left, while 'liberals' I believe best describes the portion that isn't cancer to a free and j
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It's something special when a leftist admits something. It's very surprising to see a break in this pattern: Lie, deny, admit nothing, double down, project.
You're lost.
You want the Fox News comment section.
I mean seriously though. Leftists? what the fuck does that even mean.
All "leftists" are a cabal of denialist liars who project their own insecurities on everything around them?
Come on. You can't be that fucking stupid.
I know you try really fucking hard to appear to be, but you can't.
Do better, man. Or if it resonates better with you- Be Best.
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"You"
Come on. Troll harder, fuckstick.
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Is your entire life's worth of "success" defined by you thinking you've beat someone else by hiding and leaving shit on their doorstep at night?
I guess that actually explains quite a lot.
I imagine being an incel sucks. But you don't have to continue doing so. You can change at any time.
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Which one is the sad person? You or the guy you were talking to? Either way, you are definitely the snowflake.
I'm pretty sure you have no idea what the word snowflake means.
I'm not angry, I'm mocking fucking morons.
That being said there is two of us trolling you, not one. We are taking turns debating you mostly because you seem to be an immensely angry person and we have a bet going about which one of us will make your head explode from rage first.
What in your tiny brain makes you think that's relevant?
1, 6, 100- You're a bunch of trolls posting AC, stalking through my comment feed. You're all 1 unit, and you've said as much.
I wouldn't know but thanks for sharing your personal experience with incelism.
I highly doubt that.
Have you ever met a troll that wasn't somewhere on that spectrum?
Me neither.
You don't gotta lie to kick it.
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If I had to imagine you, you'd be one of those typical downtown Portland hipster dipshits with thick black glasses, the beard to compensate for high estrogen levels, and hubcaps dangling from your earlobes. It takes someone of that caliber to default to insult attempts of 'hurr durr fox news' and 'incel'.
I don't hide behind AC. Your clown friends with their mod points aren't a deterrent when I have something to say.
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That's so alpha of you.
Well I've met you now and you are right in the middle of it.
Eyeroll.
The person stalking someone and trolling as an AC because they had their little feelers hurt is calling the person who puts his name to everything a troll...
So clever.
Go get me some fries, you fucking peon.
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Quality debate this.
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The best way to STOP sexism and racism is to NOT PICK PEOPLE FOR JOBS BY GENDER AND RACE.
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Okay, you first. Stop favoring white guys and we won't need any affirmative action. Duh.
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Men get ahead of women because they work more hours for more years before getting a pension at a later age and dying at a younger age, and despite being three times as likely to die violently and twice as likely to commit sucide as women.
Men they have to work much harder to get jobs than women because of SYSTEMIC SEXISM: https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]
Just like the SYSTEMIC SEXISM that got the VPOTUS and the rest of Biden's tokens their positions.
What a hateful SEXIST you are.
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The argument you present here only works on morons. So either you don't believe it yourself and are using it dishonestly, or you are stupid.
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You can throw facts in the face of a stupid, sexist SJW shit, but you can't make them accept them and stop their all-consuming hatred.
None can fight discrimination heartily, but good men; the rest fight not discrimination, but facts. -- John Doe
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Sounds rough buddy. How do you handle it?
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No, I can oppose her being picked BECAUSE of her gender and race because *I* oppose discrimination by gender and race.
Are you being disingenous or you just fucking stupid ?
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+1 Insightful.
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Token means they picked someone by Gender and/or Race to fulfil their quotas of given categories of people.
Just like Biden promised his VP would be a Black Woman and then went out to find a black woman he could accept.
It means they DISCRIMINATED by Gender and/or Race. It means good people of one race or gender were denied the job so they could pick people of another race of gender.
Like the Nazis denied public jobs to Jews, so they could give them to pick people of another "race".
I oppose discrimination by G
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Except that's bullshit and you have no evidence she was picked to fulfill a quota. Biden picked her because progressives demanded it.
You WANT it to be true because that plays into your persecution fantasies. White men still hold most of the power in this country. Stop pretending you're some kind of victim.
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"White men still hold most of the power in this country."
So you ARE a racist.
I am not.
Fuck off, RACIST.
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Don't be stupid. Racism is all about who holds power, but pointing that out is not, in itself, racist
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No, of course. None of the hateful racism and sexism of the SJWs is atall racist or sexist or discriminatory in any way.
It's the OTHER PEOPLE'S racism and sexism that's wrong.
What if you're both wrong ?
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You keep using those words "racist and sexist." I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
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How would that pertain to the FTC? I agree that critical race theory is bunk, but . . .