The FTC is an independent federal agency, and the President doesn't have the same amount of control over it that he has over federal executive departments.

For example, the President could fire the Secretary of Labor at any time, for any purpose, because executive department heads serve "at the pleasure of the President." The same is not true for FTC commissioners, who are statutorily protected from firing except for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." SCOTUS held in Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935) that an FTC commissioner could not be removed by the President for policy reasons, because it was explicitly granted non-executive powers by Congress.

His power to issue Executive Orders to independent agencies is unclear, and often Presidents will "recommend" they do things, rather than "direct" them, as he would an executive department.

>> It sounds good as long as the White House doesn't try to use the FTC as a political weapon to disadvantage their opponents. Like going after Amazon for their union stance or Facebook for their censorship stance.

> The FTC is an independent federal agency, and the President doesn't have the same amount of control over it that he has over federal executive departments.

Isn't that the same as the FCC? We all know what happened with it and Net Neutrality during the Trump administration.

If it's staffed/led by the right people, it could act as a semi-autonomous political weapon.

It's difficult to staff with people who don't have opinions, and sometimes those opinions coincide with or bend towards other nexuses of power.

But finding an uncorruptible, unopinionated, independently-minded civil servant... who also values service over salary... is a pretty tough ask. ;)

There’s a difference between having opinions while sharing the goal of having a functional system and being Ajit Pai. There are many civil servants who put aside their personal politics trying to make the government succeed.

You're not wrong, but it's important to remember that Ajit Pai was not a civil servant – he was a political appointee. Civil servants are career government employees, whose jobs are not tied to an election, administration, or term in office.

Civil servants necessarily put their own personal politics aside, because in all likelihood they will serve under several different political administrations. That is not the case, nor the expectation, for political appointees.

Good clarification — I was thinking the appointee level because this thread was talking about the overall direction of the FTC, and I was looking for a comparison which most people here would be familiar with where you could see the difference between people who differ in priorities versus those who seem to think the agency should not exist.

I should have clarified that my next sentence was switching to refer to the people who implement policies set by the senior levels: there are many people who do not agree with all of those decisions but will try their best to implement them because they want to make the country more successful or believe that a law needs to be enforced even if someone on their side broke it.

> Anytime the government does anything, it is not to help you or me.

So you believe the government is entirely a self-serving, wholly corrupt organization, that does nothing to help the people?

This is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary proof.

Or are you assuming that everyone here is among the moneyed elite, and claiming that the government's actions are directed at reducing the power of that class to benefit the common people?

That would be much closer to the truth, but is certainly nowhere near as absolute as you make it sound.

Whatever your intent here, the absolutism you display makes your statement patently false to anyone who has any real understanding of how governments—or, indeed, nearly any large organization—work.

The dastardly National Parks system! (I’m also pretty happy with the FAA, Library of Congress, NOAA, NIH, NSF, etc)

>Anytime the government does anything, it is not to help you or me.

This is a Regan Republican era talking point. Government is supposed to work for the people but for the last 40 years it has been used as a boogieman to push agendas which are actively not in the interest of the people.

In the US much harm has been done by under staffing and purposely slashing budgets of organizations that benefit the people. The amplification of "government doesn't help" comes from those regulated by the government. OSHA enforcing safe working environments? "Government meddling in my business driving my costs up!" IRS auditing, catching tax cheats, and closing loopholes? "Government stealing my hard earned profits!" Look at the attacks on the EPA since they are trying to protect vulnerable waterways that property developers want exploit and manufactures want to dump into.

So let's fund and staff the FTC and let it go after all of them. We need government in our corner going after the Banks, Big Tech, Oil, Commercial Agriculture, Pharma, etc.

The narrative needs to change so we aren't dealing with these issues in a reactive way.

fyi, arguments become immediately less convincing when they include "m$"

(or make a lot of politically one sided claims without citation)

> fyi, arguments become immediately less convincing when they include "m$"

OK... but deviantbit's comment clearly presents Microsoft as the victim of corrupt government officials, which isn't really compatible with calling it M$. It seems more likely that the use of M$ in "Democrats were going to do anything they could to destroy M$" is to present M$ as a label given to Microsoft by the Democrats in order to make it easier to attack. He's trying to tell you that arguments based on the epithet "M$" are or should be unconvincing.

M$ was what Democrats would call Microsoft to demonize them. Just as Biden is demonizing the oil industry. Biden mocked the entire oil industry for making $100 billion dollars. Yet, Apple made $155 billion in 2021.

No democrat has asked Apple to turn those profits over, or wanted a wind fall tax. Why? Apple donates heavily to Democrats, and this is why you will never see an anti-trust suite.

You can be upset with this, but that is reality.

We all know that a sample size of 1 can prove anything.

Less well known: it only requires one exception to prove a proposition false.

Not to mention: individual citizens have next to no insight into what really happens within various governmental agencies. And culturally, the tendency is to assume that one's preferred beliefs are true.

Fortunately most of the worst examples the anti-net neutrality crowd used never made sense from both a business model and technology perspective.

Trying to turn the internet into tiered internet packages like early 2000s cable companies offered would be a disaster even without neutrality laws. There's probably a reason the only real-life example in history that Wikipedia lists was some bottom-of-the-barrel Portuguese mobile network that experimented with a discount plan that never took off.

The lobbyists either bought into the bullshit benefits like everyone else or more likely were just taking the default anti-gov interference position.

The internet is so far from ever being the extremely limited centralized platforms that cable offerings were that the analogies never made sense if you spent any amount of time considering them.

>Like going after Amazon for their union stance

why the fuck not? It helps the american people vs helping a company

Because it has no jurisdiction to do so, and there is no law being broken. You want to give a federal agency the power to discretionarily decide what vaguely "helps" the American people? And what about when a political party you don't favor gets into the presidency and appoints his own chairman to interpret that vague mandate?

Amazon is good for some consumers (people who value convenient shopping and fast shipping) and bad for others (people who really like independent shops). It’s also good for some employees (people who couldn’t have found a better job elsewhere) and bad for others (people who could have found a better job at a business that got outcompeted by Amazon).

Whether it’s a net positive or negative force is basically too complex a question to answer without resorting to an overarching unfalsifiable ideology like neoliberalism or socialism.

However, rule of law, predictability, and stability are unambiguously good for everyone. Attacking businesses or people on pretexts unrelated to the underlying reason a politician wants to hurt them is a hallmark of corrupt countries.

If we decide as a society to legislate stronger union protections then sure, enforce them against Amazon (and everyone else), but it seems bad for that to motivate selectively enforcing unrelated antitrust laws.

> good for some consumers (people who value convenient shopping and fast shipping) and bad for others (people who really like independent shops).

It's bad for them too once the monopoly is strong enough that Amazon can stop caring about those things.

Preventing monopolies isn't done because it satisifies some abstract sense of justice, it's done because they genuinely hurt consumers in the long term, even if the monopoly became a monopoly because they were really good for consumers to begin with.

Everything you describe is fair game for the FTC to consider.

Amazon’s stance on or relationship to unions is not a reason for the FTC to adjust its stance.

Amazon is a two-sided market. I don’t think “monopoly” is a good description of a company that’s also a monopsony.

There’s more of an argument that it’s a monopoly employer, but they’ve been raising wages.

The problem is that this two sided market is being regulated by a company.

I never argued against going after monopolies.

Independent shops can still exist… just not the useless ones. Amazon is known for more generic commodity items, but if you want premium brands you often still have to go direct to manufacturer. In fact the “independent” shop niche is probably why Shopify even has a market.

> Amazon is good for some consumers (people who value convenient shopping and fast shipping)

Amazon is awful for people who value fast shipping. They used to let you specify your shipping speed! Now the only option they offer is "it'll get there when it gets there". They also feel free to deliver things well after they claimed they would, once they're willing to give you a delivery date at all.

I actually canceled my Prime subscription this year specifically because Amazon's approach to shipping is so abusive.

It seems very tonedeaf to describe the welfare of Amazon employees in terms of the health of the job market. Have you considered the employees who can't find a better job elsewhere, but also feel insufficiently compensated for their time? I believe it likely that you'll find more in that group than either of the two that you described.

> insufficiently compensated for their time

You've just described the job market. If this employee cannot find better paying employment (assuming that the job market is operating efficiently) then it is either a skill issue (This hypothetical employee is not sufficiently skilled to demand a higher salary) or a demand issue (There is insufficient demand for your skills in the market).

We can have a fruitful discussion around job market efficiency (e.g. is Amazon a monopsony employer in some local markets), but objecting to the tone of the comment feels very out of place when this is the language that we use to describe the economy.

Why go after Amazon specifically, with a profit margin ~2%, instead of other companies like Apple, for example, with a profit margin of ~30%? It seems like the latter would have much more room to raise employee salaries.

I think that's a very easy question to answer, but I'm going to do so with another question: who do you think employs more stateside? Apple's profit margins obviously come from their use of overseas manufacturing - certainly an ethical problem too, but not the same problem. I'm concerned with the people building their phones as well, but Amazon employees are in my immediate vicinity.

I really can't think of a more apples-to-oranges comparison (pun not intended). The only thing Apple and Amazon have in common is that they're the A's in FAANG.

Presumably because Amazon is such a notorious neat grinder in how it treats its "boots on the ground". They don't exactly have the goodwill necessary to shake it off since mkst people's relationship with them is out of convenience rather than fanaticism. Also unlike some brands with the ability to conveniently ignore where or how their unsafe/underpaid sausage is made (in China) they also get shit for squeezing the hell out of their workers domestically where they can still complain about the mistreatment publicly.

> Have you considered the employees who can't find a better job elsewhere, but also feel insufficiently compensated for their time?

How would the FTC going after Amazon help these people?

Those are the people most in need of unions.

I never argued against the idea that Amazon should be forced to stop union-busting. I think you need to re-read my original comment.

Because that is what the National Labor Relations Board is for.

Or Tesla for their union stance, which famously halpened more than knce over the last two years?

The FTC is free to investigate whoever they want, but if it only ends up being companies the White House opposes then that doesn't seem to be furthering the goal of increasing competition. There is the obvious bad behavior of cable companies in uncompetitive markets or the recent consolidation of movie studios or even car dealerships. I will reserve judgment until the FTC announces their targets.

So basically you're saying "if he goes after my guys I'm against it even if there is evidence of wrongdoing?"

If not, then why not look at the merits of the case?

If police only gave speeding tickets to those with Trump bumper stickers, would that not be a misapplication of the law? I think most people would think that is wrong even if they all happened to be speeding.

The difference here is that these "Trump bumper sticker" cars are going 100+ over the speed limit -- why the fuck would you waste your time arresting 10 people going 5mph over instead?

The cable companies are much much worse than Amazon.

What you're saying makes it seem like you think that any big tech monopoly is a Trump bumper sticker, and that any enforcement against them is unfair.

> If police only gave speeding tickets to those with Trump bumper stickers, would that not be a misapplication of the law?

Surely that depends where you live. Seattle (where I live)? Yeah, that would be obvious discrimination. A few counties further inland? Probably not statistically significant.

I’m not sure how or if that reasoning applies to FTC purview, but my intuition is that corporations of the size that might warrant interest aren’t likely to be partisan targets in any stable or persistent way.

Sure, if there's a trend of abuse, there are remedies, lawsuits, elections, impeachment, etc.

That trend doesn't exist now, and you can't use it as a shield against the law and commit crimes as you please.

Both the previous administration and the current one have expressed issues with those companies, and they couldn't be more opposed to one another.

Most of these big companies are anticompetitive at the very least. Every acquisition over the past decade has been a move towards oligopoly. Add to that widespread union-busting behavior, manipulation of the American people by spreading political or foreign psyops, exerting control over self-contained markets, etc... there's a lot of behavior that's been allowed over the past few decades that should have been reigned in.

Sounds like what you're describing is that certain companies have become scapegoats. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Tesla, and Microsoft all add a lot of value to people's lives both through the products they sell as well as the tax revenue they provide for the greater benefit of all. They aren't the primary drivers of any of our society's largest problems. We could quibble about exactly what those are, but they'd probably include: the high cost of health care, the high cost of housing, climate change, immigration, pollution, crime, etc. And yet these companies occupy the headlines constantly, and evidently the mindshare of our legislators instead of those issues!

> Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Tesla, and Microsoft all add a lot of value to people's lives both through the products they sell as well as the tax revenue they provide for the greater benefit of all.

That's a very bold claim, and one that I think is generally untrue and possibly extremely so. That might be true for a wealthy software engineer, but I don't think it's true for most people. For example, anyone who doesn't own a Tesla has benefited exactly 0 from the company's existence. If you don't order from Amazon or aren't doing lots of Google searches... same. And in fact, some of these companies - like Amazon, Meta - take far more than they give back. Amazon has killed local stores nationwide, on demand delivery and packaging is awful for the environment, etc. Meta just consumes attention and spreads misinformation.

> They aren't the primary drivers of any of our society's largest problems.

Except in some cases they quite obviously are. Amazon is the case study for abusive workplaces. It's the poster child for foreign-produced, cheap knockoffs. Meta is credited for spreading misinformation that has resulted in the near-destruction of our democracy. Apple, Microsoft, and many others have been implicated for using slave labor in their supply chains. How many products sold on Amazon are products of such labor?

--

I think it's important that we examine these issues critically. These are not benevolent super-corporations. Sometimes they do good, sometimes they do evil, and either way it's generally on a huge scale due to the scale of the companies.

It's much more complicated than that. For one, you're conflating targeting industries vs targeting individual corporations.

One of the core jobs of the president is deciding which lawbreakers to go after. This is needed because (among other reasons) the government is far too small to enforce every law. In general the President is supposed to set general parameters but not pick specific individuals or companies. Deciding a specific sector's violations are more pressing is squarely within the traditional discretion of the executive branch.

Social Media and Online Retail are big nothings compared to Finance and Health Care. Finance shenanigans cause global recessions and health care is consuming 20% of GDP and growing. Since politicians and journalists love Twitter though, we get to hear more about that instead.

On the other hand, healthcare companies aren't an integral part of a cycle which leads to armed mobs.

The other thing to remember is that healthcare costs, while significant, are both familiar and legal, and the government uses the regulatory powers which Congress has granted it. Finance similarly has existing agencies and laws and while there are periods of lax regulation which end badly most people would say that the problem is regulators choosing not to use their powers or Congress underfunding staffing rather than an unclear question of how to handle a particular problem. In contrast, something like what should be acceptable on social media doesn't have public consensus and runs into thorny constitutional issues. It's understandable that this gets more attention, especially a time when one of the major political parties is making unfounded allegations in an attempt to keep their voters active.

don't forget news and oil and food.

> Amazon and Meta are both obviously engaging in "unfair methods of competition"

I don't think that's obvious at all. Give specifics.

From my casual understanding, Amazon is executing the same vertical integration strategy used by Standard Oil which resulted in its breakup.

My local pizza place is vertically integrating marketing pizza, making pizza dough, making pizza, selling pizza, and delivering pizza.

It’s not the vertical integration that matters but the amount of market power a company has. My pizza place: almost none. Amazon: significantly more than none.

Standard Oil was vertically integrating around oil -- what is Amazon vertically integrating?

The entire sales process from searching & reviews to delivery. There are allegations that Amazon uses their data to identify the most profitable areas to set up their own competing brands and may even force sellers to disclose information which is helpful in this regard. If true, it seems pretty clear that a sensible antitrust rule would be to split those functions into separate businesses with strict rules about what non-public data they're allowed to exchange so the Amazon Basics guys don't have any information about what's selling where which you couldn't get.

Basics; AWS; Prime Video; Advertising.

You don't get to deny vertical integration just due to them being involved in everything.

Selling things. Almost all the things.

Selling things is selling things. That isn't vertically integrating. A good example would be selling and shipping now that Amazon is getting into delivery as well.

Amazon ships more packages through its DSPs than anyone. But I don’t see them doing delivery as anti-competitive. It is highly integrated and streamlined however.

They put a absolutely massive amount of resources on solving delivery. And they probably do it better than anyone. You couldn’t split that out without totally breaking it.

>as the White House doesn't try to use the FTC as a political weapon to disadvantage their opponents. Like going after Amazon for their union stance or Facebook for their censorship stance.

Hm, lets think for a second and wonder why someone might consider Amazon or Facebook an "opponent" of the government. What's the argument here? That corporations should be immune from the government enforcing a level playing field?