Comment by ckastner
2 years ago
Like a sibling comment of yours, you are arguing principles. I'm not arguing those principles; I already stated that I'm 100% behind them [in favor of the GP].
> Only the most hardcore market fundamentalists/objectivits tend to disagree about this principle, in my experience.
Even if the court agrees in principle, it still needs a adequate legal basis to issue an order. Violation of a law, or a contract, or whatever. I asked the GP, who seems to have experience with such cases, what this legal basis this could be.
The EU, and especially some of the member countries, tend to go harder on cases where monopoly power is either misused or cause some harm to the general public.
The legal basis to intervene is there, but may be vague and open to interpretation.
For instance, a near-monopoly position might cause other regulations, like laws against unfair business practices to be interpreted more strictly than for other intermediaries:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02...
As long as the population within a jurisdiciton univerally supports the principles behind a ruling, finding some regulation to support it usually can be done.
In the US, there seems to be two factors that make it a lot harder to enforce such regulation (to the extent that they even exist there) - The fact that these companies are American and able to buy influence through lobbying and contributions - The current division in American politics, where virtually any position supported by one side automatically will be opposed by the other, causing paralysis