One way to settle the question of whether Khan is right would be for the government to simply make competing offers in these situations, buy the companies, and shepherd them to IPO, or a buyer with fewer antitrust issues if that's not possible.
If the government is net ahead after a decade or so, then we'd know.
This approach to antitrust wouldn't work in cases like the Apple case, where the power is worth it to the company only because they can misuse it, but it would be a very fair and accounting-transparent remedy for the "startup gets bought by competitor" case.
This is a terrible idea. The government should not be in the business of buying large pre-IPO companies.
There is no need to bikeshed a new solution here. Antitrust law solves this just fine, as exemplified by this case.
We've got an awful lot of history on the periods in which serious regulators without perverse incentives attached to revolving door industry jobs competently and diligently refereed markets, and when big business has been successful in achieving what I downthread called "Goldilocks" regulation: just enough friction to new entrants, plenty of pliant former and future employees doing regulation in the interests of the established players.
We've got a lot of history on what happens when technology is acknowledged as a natural monopoly and guided through it's development, evolution, and dissemination through society for the global welfare: that's the entire 20th century friend: the transistor, the Internet, the laser, fucking Velcro.
We're living through a time when that treasure trove of public wealth (paid for by taxpayers) is getting captured up by a caricature of gilded age kleptocracy at the front row of the fucking Inaugeration.
We know what the outcomes are. I don't know why people who hang out on Hacker News are fighting the data on this tooth and nail. Maybe it's because Trump threw her out, maybe it's because they own a bunch of NVIDIA stock and like the status quo, I don't know.
The outcomes are not in fucking dispute in this case or the macro situation.
Terrible terrible idea with incredible potential for corruption and theft of public funds.