Comment by gjsman-1000
3 days ago
> we are self-preferencing, and the FTC should really take a look at us, even if we're technically not a monopoly right now
Tell me you have zero clue what a monopoly is or what the law is, without telling me.
Monopoly law relies on broad categories, not narrow ones. You can’t call Microsoft a monopoly because they are the only company that makes Windows. You can’t call Amazon a monopoly because they are the only company that makes AmazonBasics. You can’t call Anthropic a monopoly because their product is 20% better for your use case, otherwise by definition no company has any incentive to do a good job at anything.
Somehow this was coming up a few years ago where people kept saying that Apple could face antitrust because they were the only company who made iOS and controlled the App Store. Given that android exists, and has roughly equal market share, that didn’t make much sense to me, but I kept seeing it being discussed.
And Apple did lose that case now so they were correct; sometimes, one can be a monopolist in the market they created.
> Tell me you have zero clue what a monopoly is or what the law is, without telling me.
Monopoly law is subject to reinterpretation over time and anybody who has studied the history of it knows this. The only people argue for "strict" interpretations of current monopoly law are those who currently benefit from the status quo.
> Monopoly law relies on broad categories, not narrow ones.
And this is currently a gigantic problem. Because of relying on broad categories to define "monopoly", every single supply chain has been allowed to collapse into a small handful of suppliers who have no downstream capacity thanks to Always Late Inventory(tm). This prevents businesses from mounting effective competition since their upstream suppliers have no ability to support such activities thanks to over-optimization.
To be effective on the modern incarnation of businesses, monopoly law needs to bust every single consolidated narrow vertical over and over and over until they have enough downstream capacity to support competition again.
Well, Apple did recently lose as they're the monopolist in their walled garden for app distribution.
Oh, give me a break. I know the law around this incredibly well. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the law is appropriate. The whole point of laws is that they should match intent – and as for '20%': "tell me you don't understand how a small quantitative gap can result in a step change in capability."
> Oh, give me a break. I know the law around this incredibly well.
Then don’t make BS up like implying Anthropic is a monopolist for the crime of competence.
> tell me you don't understand how a small quantitative gap can result in a step change in capability
The law does not give a darn about this. Being a good competitive option does not make you a league of your own. If I invent a new flavor of shake, the Emerald Slide, am I a monopolist in shakes because I’m the only one selling Emerald Slides? If you go and then start a local business reselling shakes and I’m your only supplier, am I a monopolist then? Absolutely not.
You do realize that I called out in my post they are absolutely not a monopoly by the law, right? I know all-too-well what the definition is.
We have a similar situation in mobile where Apple may not be considered a monopoly, but people have walked around for a decade with a supercomputer in their pocket that is wildly underused.
Things have gotten faster; things are different than they were decades ago when a lot of this was devised.
The reality of the matter is that some of us just want to see innovation actually happen apace, and not see 5, 10, or 30 years of slowdown while we litigate whether or not such a company is holding all the cards, while everyone is collectively waiting at the spigot for a company to get its shit together because we're not allowed to fix the situation.
For what it's worth, I'm hopeful that the other model providers will catch up and put us in a situation where this conversation is irrelevant.
What I'm afraid of is a situation where we see continued divergence, and we end up with another Apple situation.
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