Why conservatives care about antitrust enforcement
As a conservative, I embrace antitrust law as both a necessary law and as a time-tested, light-touch, free-market arbiter mechanism to prevent potential monopolization in the marketplace.
I also embrace antitrust enforcement as a conservative, because it is an outstanding mechanism to preserve free market competition and protect it from the natural inclination of Big Government to over-reach with its heavy hand of regulation.
Greg Sidak of Georgetown University and Hal Singer of Criterion Economics have produced an outstanding editorial in the Washington Times on this subject concerning the proposed XM-Sirius merger. I recommend that every conservative who cares about limited government should read it.
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In one sentence, Greg and Hal bring tremendous clarity of thought to this important marketplace distinction:
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"...conservatives should also reject the idea of taking two unregulated competitors and creating in their place a brand-new regulated monopoly through the merger approval process."
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In other words, soft antitrust enforcement is raw meat bait for the ravenous regulatory appetite of those who favor Big Government.
This explains why as a conservative, I have been so focused philosophically on highlighting the anti-competitive effects of the Google-DoubleClick merger and why I believe the FTC will ultimately block that transaction.
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Advertsing is the only proven business model for monetizing content on the Internet.
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If Google-DoubleClick is approved, there will only be one practical choice, Google-DoubleClick, if a company wants to optimize the monetization of their content on the Internet.
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See my analysis at www.Googleopoly.net to better understand the stakes (pages 25-31).
What I fear, is that if the FTC does not step up to protect competition on the Internet, the Government will be compelled later to come in and regulate the Internet. Ugh!!!
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What an obscene tragedy that would be because the Internet is the greatest de-regulation success story of time.
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Let me repeat. The Internet is the greatest de-regulation success story of all time.
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Let's keep it that way!
Sirius and XM echo Google's Goodness
Sirius and XM are playing the same "we're the good guys" card that Google has been playing for years. XM and Sirius have promised everyone in town a free lunch to get them to look the other way. At the same time, they've failed to show that anything else constrains their prices, they've failed to show that there are merger specific efficiencies that would flow to consumers, and now they are arguing that they should be allowed to become a regulated monopoly. In the unfortunate circumstance that the XM-Sirius merger does go through, how long before they are back in Washington arguing that the world has changed and they need to raise prices? I trust competition over a company's good intentions any day.
P.J.