Thread by @doctorow

One of the commonest ways for competitive market economies to turn into monopolies is when companies are allowed to merge with major competitors or acquire new companies that might grow to threaten them.

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This leads to "moneyball" markets where companies grow because they have money, not because they make things we love.

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In the pre-Reagan era, it was routine for the DoJ to block mergers on this basis but in the decades since, the DoJ has moved to a posture of permitting even the most indefensible mergers to monopoly.

eff.org/deeplinks/2019…

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The DoJ's position is that all it needs to do to keep monopolists from abusing their power is to tie merger permission to good conduct promises - like Facebook's promise that it would not combine Instagram and Whatsapp data with its other sources.

cbsnews.com/news/brian-act…

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This is a poor substitute for simply blocking monopolies.

Which is bad enough, but it gets worse.

Companies routinely lie about what they will and won't do after a merger.

Which is bad enough, but it gets worse.

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Even AFTER a company has lied in order to get a merger past the DoJ, the SAME companies are allowed to tell the SAME lies when they're attempting their next merger.

And their next.

And their next.

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As GW Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

In a new post for @EFF Deeplinks, I propose the absolute minimum standard of prudence in merger scrutiny:

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"If a company breaks a promise, and then it makes the same promise when seeking approval for a merger, we should not believe it."

eff.org/deeplinks/2020…

eof/