Why Judges Let Monopolists Off the Hook

Americans have gotten far too used to the idea that corporate behemoths are free to acquire any company they want, engage in predatory behavior, and bully, squeeze out, or demand kickbacks from smaller rivals. Indeed, the U.S. government’s decision to let Facebook buy an obvious rival, Instagram, looks so wrong in hindsight—especially now that have revealed Facebook’s seeming indifference to the many problems that its products cause or exacerbate—that Americans should utterly disavow the complex legal framework that allowed the Federal Trade Commission to rationalize that decision. Over the past several decades, establishing that a company has violated antitrust law has become an extraordinarily difficult process. And when violations of the law are hard to punish, authorities will usually give them a