Venkatesh Rao

I suspect trying to apply industrial-era antitrust and common carrier ideas to internet tech will break the idea of a liberal democracy. The “public utility” endgame only makes sense in an illiberal nondemocracy like China, and even then requires extreme cultural homogeneity.

This is one of my opinions that people suspect is insincere tech shilling but really is not. I just don’t think antitrust logic works at all on distribution aggregation. It works in production and buying (monopoly, monopsony) because of rivalrous physical goods.