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Originally Posted by Fluribus
Why does the government want to foster competition? The consumer. Happier voters lead to happier incumbents.
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This is too idealistic. What about the felt need by approximately half our legislators to cash out on their influence, by becoming lobbyists, after their time is Congress is over? Happier consumers won't help there.
And even if the legislators who originally passed the US antitrust law were more idealistic than those of today -- which is dubious -- antitrust has been shaped by a century of case law created by judges who don't face re-election:
http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/century.pdf
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Among American statutes that regulate commerce, the Sherman Act is unequaled in its generality. The Act outlawed “every contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade” and “monopolization” and treated violations as crimes. By these open-ended commands, Congress gave federal judges extraordinary power to draw lines between acceptable cooperation and illegal collusion, between vigorous competition and unlawful monopolization.
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Originally Posted by bgalbrecht
However, I fail to see how the introduction of the closed garden retail system of Apple's benefited anyone other than Apple.
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If Amazon gains too much market power, they will use it to push down the prices paid their suppliers. I think the publishers will then have less ability to accept book proposals and pay advances. By lowering Amazon's market share, agency made it more likely I'll continue to have a great choice in new well-researched and carefully edited history and journalism. This is especially important given the decline of investigate journalism in newspapers.