To think that the iPhone’s popularity is owed to user lock-in due to Lighting seems misguided. To think that regulation is necessary to “correct” Apple’s 24% market share in the EU in favor of Android’s 75% is even more bizarre.

11/ This lens also invites us to rethink the evolution of antitrust: not as a battlefield of opposed values & class interests, but as a case study in legal pragmatism. Food for thought—and for future work. /end

10/ By contrast, the literature on US antitrust often highlights adherence to normative values or ideologies: progressivism, liberalism, populism, etc. I agree that philosophy is a powerful explainer, but maybe we're ignoring a crucial piece of that puzzle.

9/ It could even be argued that experimentalism and pragmatism constitute the quintessential American philosophy. It is what separates the US from e.g., Russia, which has traditionally been guided by dogma: whether religious or in the form of "secular" Theory. Czesław Miłosz:

8/ If this was the result of a neoliberal ideological takeover, it would be one of the most successful conspiracies ever pulled off. But Occam's razor advises against theories that require too many assumptions. A simpler explanation?

7/ Implication 2: The CWS may be a natural outcome of having antitrust laws in the first place. It may be the closest thing we have to a true antitrust universal and, indeed, most countries & political administrations have willingly adhered to it.

6/ Unromantic? I'm afraid so. There are no heroes or moustache-twirling villains in this story. Just the cold, piecemeal process of rationalization of a vague and otherwise unwieldy statute.

5/ The CWS narrows down the potentially infinite universe of facts that could be relevant in adjudicating antitrust cases. It has two filters: (1) what is relevant and (2) how it can be proven. But this isn't a clear-cut dichotomy: substance and process are interwoven.

4/ Instead, the CWS might have gained traction for practical reasons: it’s a comparatively clear, administrable framework that courts can use to decide cases with the evidence available. But there's more to this.

3/ Implication 1: The Critical Political Economy Theory of Antitrust may overstate the role of ideology and group interests in spreading and entrenching the consumer welfare standard (CWS). Neo-Brandeisians and LPE (but also others) rely heavily & uncritically on this theory.

2/ If true, this view challenges a prevalent narrative about ideology driving antitrust policy and has three intriguing implications—two from the paper, and a third that hit me while writing this thread. Let’s dive in. 👇