Disappointing article in the Economist about antitrust. https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2020/08/08/what-more-should-antitrust-be-doing

It only reports the rather populist debate between "Chicago school" style libertarians, one one side, and "neo-Brandesians" on the other, and opposes that to the "consumer welfare" (cw) paradigm in the middle, which it favours, without really considering any other options...

The problem I think is the quality of the debate among antitrust scholars in the US, which has now reached new low levels, one side accusing the other of being "captured" by material interests of different sorts or for being ideologically biased...

The fact that most articles are published in the US by law student-run journals with little knowledge of the vast literature and sensationalist titles and claims without a proper critical genealogical type (a la Foucault) assessment abound also contributes to this sorry state...

For instance, I find a sweet irony the reference in the paper to Chicago's view about predatory pricing without commenting on the effort of those in the libertarian camp to "baptize" as "predatory" any possible theory of harm regarding platforms...

and realizing that this emphasis on predation (even outside price-conduct) and renaming of theories of anticompetitive exclusion really serves the initial purpose of denying the legitimacy of competition law enforcement in this context...

unless the authority of course has shown predation, which is as the author acknowledges a difficult to impossible standard, and meant to be interpreted that way per the Chicago school, which believes that predation almost never happens...

Hence, you have conceded the whole debate about exclusion just by accepting only for all types of conduct the epithet "predatory" next to the noun that really counts: exclusion...

The intellectually sterile opposition between libertarians and neo-Brandesians, and the slow agonizing death of the cw paradigm, the debate being radicalized & serving other purposes, impedes the process of sound dialogical formation of a new consensus...

and the possibility for antitrust to take advantage of new learning, in complexity theory, economic sociology, cybernetics, data science etc. instead of repeating the old mistakes. The demise of the field is near if we do not get out of this impasse...

More on that in, among others I hope, my new book on 'Competition law and the intangible economy' (in preparation, OUP, 2021)