Monopoly Power

Corey Docterow has a twitter thread about how anemic monopoly enforcement may result in many thousands of deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic.

40 years ago, a fabulist named Robert Bork dreamed up an imaginary history of US antitrust law in order to justify dismantling it.

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— Bernie Beats Trump (@doctorow) March 29, 2020

You can follow the whole thing, but the short version is that the US government funded a small company to make an inexpensive and portable ventilators, and as they were getting near to a product, Covidien (now Medtronic) purchased the company and shut down the program because they did not want it to compete with its more expensive ventilators.

Robert Bork's theory was that, "monopolies are only a problem when they raise prices in the short/medium term."

We are now literally choking on Robert Bork's dishonesty.

May Robert Bork's perfidious work be effaced.

Docterow's full twitter thread below: