clcaev

The "consumer welfare standard" and related contestability doctrine is often used to challenge anti-trust action. However, requiring consumer harm neglects the loss of economic opportunity for providers (eg stores and gig workers).

If contestabilty, not marketshare, is the appropriate test of economic power, then laws may be needed to increase contestability, such as "data portability" rules for store owners so they don't have to key-in product description, availability, and pricing multiple times.

In your example of a new delivery platform entrant who bootstraps using its direct competitor, what legal framework protects that startup? This seems another contestability consideration.

From a marketshare perspective, it meets test of a monopoly in many localities. There is a "network effect" moat: the app is a storefront, payment gateway, and delivery network. The merger eliminates platform contention, giving customers perhaps greater choice of retailer but foreclosing the next largest platform alternative.

Their platform scopes and coordinates a market. They even recognize this in their announcement: "DoorDash and Instacart believe that communities benefit when Main Street competes"

Could we have more discussion of our current legal/business environment, specifically, the economic opportunities it affords/constrains?

If this merger is approved via consumer welfare standard, should it be contingent upon some constraints? For example, should DoorDash be restricted from participating in the market it coordinates? If it’s a near monopoly in some regions, how will price be controlled without market pressure?

Historically, antitrust action also considers economic opportunity: Bell/AT&T licensed Unix source code for a nominal fee, largely because the 1956 consent decree restricted Bell/AT&T from selling products outside telecommunications.

> Weights aren't IP so the licenses are bunk.

This is not yet a given, I expect rule-making or copyright law expansion if courts rule otherwise.

Things also change. In the 80s lawyers carefully suggested white pages phone listings came under copyright but "sweat of the brow" was rejected by US supreme court in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)

The burden of proof seems backwards; how about we maintain list of approved safe materials and their threasholds?

Thank you. This seems a good start to a desperately needed credible "externalities report" to ground political and economic discussion.

The flood of anecdotal thumping seems to distract and undermine deliberation. The sad lack of peer reviewed data and impact analysis hinders thoughtful policymaking.