TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on Antitrust’s Uncertain Future: Visions of Competition in the New Regulatory Landscape. Information on the authors and the entire series of posts is available here.
About earth’s creatures great and small,
Devices clever as can be,
I see foremost a ruthless power;
You, their ingenuity.
You see the beak upon the finch;
I, the beaked skeleton.
You see the wonders that they are;
I, the things that might have been.
You see th’included batteries
I, the poor excluded ones.
You, the phone that simply works;
I, restrain’d competition.
’Twould be a better world, I say,
Were all the options to abide—
All beaks and brands of battery—
From which the public to decide.
You say that man the greatest is
Because he dominates today,
But meteor, not caveman, drove
The ancient dinosaurs away.
If they were here when we were new,
We might the age not have survived;
They say some species could outwit
The sharpest chimps today alive.
Just so, I say, ’twould better be
Replacement batteries t’allow
For sales alone can prove what brands
Deserve el’vation to the Dow.
Designing batt’ries switchable
Makes their selection fully public;
It substitutes democracy
For an engineering logic.
For only buyers should decide
Which components to inter;
Their taste alone determines worth,
Though engineers be cleverer.
You: The meaning of component,
We can always redefine.
From batteries to molecules,
We can draw most any line.
Of cogs, thus, an infinitude;
Of time a finitude to lose.
You cannot interchange all parts,
Or each one carefully to choose.
Product choices corporate
We cannot all democratize,
At least so long as consumers
Wish to get on with their lives.
Exclusion therefore cannot we
Universally condemn;
Oft must we let the firm decide
Which components to put in.
Power, then, is everywhere—
What is is built on what is not—
And th’elimination of it
Is no cornerstone of thought.
Of components infinite
We must choose which few to free;
Th’criterion for doing that,
Abuse-of-power cannot be.
Power and oppression are,
In life and goods ubiquitous.
But value differentiates—
Build we antitrust on this.
Alone when letting buyers say
Which part into a product goes
Would make those buyers happier,
Must we interchange impose.
Batt’ry brand must matter much,
Else, we seriously delude,
To think consumers want to hear:
“We the batt’ries not include.”
The same is true for Amazon.
If it knows which seller’s best,
Let it cast the others out for us—
Give our scrolling bars a rest.
If Apple knows which app’s a dud,
Let Apple cast it out as well.
Which app’s a fraud and which a scam,
Smartphone users cannot tell.
If Google wants to show me how
To get from A to B to C,
I’d rather that she use her maps
Than search for others separately.
A rule against self-preferencing
No legal principle provides;
For what opposes power’s role
Can’t be neutrally applied.
What goes for all third-party sales
Goes for Amazon’s front-end.
Self-preferencing alone prevents
My designing a new skin.
We cannot hire its warehouse staff;
We cannot choose its motor fleet;
We cannot source its cargo planes;
Or its trucks route through our streets.
But this is all self-preferencing;
And it cannot all be banned;
Unless we choice’s value weigh,
We strike with arbitrary hand.
So say you and differ I:
’Twixt dinosaur and man must choose.
If one alone fits on this earth—
Wilt for man our power use?
These verses are based in part on arguments summarized in this blog post and this paper.
