Counterintuitive antitrust

Really interesting point from Chamath Palihapitiya regarding antitrust laws and modern “big tech” — from the 11:01 mark on the All-In Podcast. (Bold emphasis mine.)

Chamath: You have the first principle body which is called the Sherman Act, that's the thing that everybody's looked at and that's, you know, sort of where most current antitrust enforcement action has failed on tech companies because it largely looks at the predatory nature of pricing power that certain companies have. And you have to remember this thing was written in the 1800s, and so, you know, what did people do when they control things? They just, they drove prices up. Tech does the exact opposite, right? They constantly drive prices down. And what's counterintuitive is it turns out that, in the olden days… driving prices up, drove out competition. Today, driving prices down, drives out competition.

Jason: Yes.

Chamath: Right. So, you know you make Gmail infinite storage, nobody else can compete with you.

Jason: Why switch, why switch?

Chamath: You make, you know, photos completely subsidized. You make certain music products effectively free, and you subsidize that you know, you create enormous amounts of content…