With respect to Lina Khan attacking Nvidia for monopolistic behavior: I don’t think this is so clearly “the right hand not talking to the left”. To say that innovation will be halted by blocking the merger is to say that competition hampers innovation: a strange proposition indeed. To argue as Lina Khan argued, after the merger between Nvidia and Arms was blocked in December 2021, the stock prices for both companies still skyrocketed. The lack of merger hardly stopped innovation.
Moreover, I struggle to see the economic intuition. Even assuming ideal business practices, a monopoly and several competing firms are equally incentivised to innovate to lower production costs and thereby increase profits (by lowering revenues and also by selling to more customers). Assuming more realistic business practices, if only one of many competing firms chooses to innovate and develops new technology, then all the other firms are forced to adopt it or else be outcompeted and die. A monopoly can survive and choose not to innovate, since no one can compete with them, no one can threaten their position (if some schmuck does, the monopoly can buy them out). More than any of that, monopolies make profits by under-producing, because doing so allows them to keep prices artificially high. The AI arms race is surely made worse if we have the technology but don’t integrate it sufficiently because a company with monopoly power decides to keep the quantity low to maximize profits (wikipedia explains it well enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopoly_and_efficiency).
Respectfully, Keller reminds me of a lot of neoliberals or anarcho-capitalists who are heavily associated with business. They have a warped understanding of economics as a field, but use the cursory knowledge to gain legitimacy so that when they make economic claims relying on merely semi-plausible intuition, the audience takes them more seriously. But be for real for second. Anti-trust laws protect competition; competition is necessary for a functioning free market. In Prospera like everywhere else, consumers are not medically trained and don’t know the value of experimental medical treatments; accurate knowledge of the value of a good is necessary for functioning markets (again, wikipedia explains it well enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons#Thesis).
Markets didn’t come down from mount Sinai on stone tablets, rules made enforced by states make them work or not work. Among those rules is not just property, but competition, and accurate information. Prospera letting people sell what buyers cannot know the value of is not a free market. Nvidia acting as a monopoly is not a free market. People wishing for these rules to be laxed can’t then turn around and use “free markets” and “Adam Smith” as a defense when their desires are actively contrary to these tools.
With respect to Lina Khan attacking Nvidia for monopolistic behavior: I don’t think this is so clearly “the right hand not talking to the left”. To say that innovation will be halted by blocking the merger is to say that competition hampers innovation: a strange proposition indeed. To argue as Lina Khan argued, after the merger between Nvidia and Arms was blocked in December 2021, the stock prices for both companies still skyrocketed. The lack of merger hardly stopped innovation.
Moreover, I struggle to see the economic intuition. Even assuming ideal business practices, a monopoly and several competing firms are equally incentivised to innovate to lower production costs and thereby increase profits (by lowering revenues and also by selling to more customers). Assuming more realistic business practices, if only one of many competing firms chooses to innovate and develops new technology, then all the other firms are forced to adopt it or else be outcompeted and die. A monopoly can survive and choose not to innovate, since no one can compete with them, no one can threaten their position (if some schmuck does, the monopoly can buy them out). More than any of that, monopolies make profits by under-producing, because doing so allows them to keep prices artificially high. The AI arms race is surely made worse if we have the technology but don’t integrate it sufficiently because a company with monopoly power decides to keep the quantity low to maximize profits (wikipedia explains it well enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopoly_and_efficiency).
Respectfully, Keller reminds me of a lot of neoliberals or anarcho-capitalists who are heavily associated with business. They have a warped understanding of economics as a field, but use the cursory knowledge to gain legitimacy so that when they make economic claims relying on merely semi-plausible intuition, the audience takes them more seriously. But be for real for second. Anti-trust laws protect competition; competition is necessary for a functioning free market. In Prospera like everywhere else, consumers are not medically trained and don’t know the value of experimental medical treatments; accurate knowledge of the value of a good is necessary for functioning markets (again, wikipedia explains it well enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons#Thesis).
Markets didn’t come down from mount Sinai on stone tablets, rules made enforced by states make them work or not work. Among those rules is not just property, but competition, and accurate information. Prospera letting people sell what buyers cannot know the value of is not a free market. Nvidia acting as a monopoly is not a free market. People wishing for these rules to be laxed can’t then turn around and use “free markets” and “Adam Smith” as a defense when their desires are actively contrary to these tools.