Mark Meador’s Nomination to the Federal Trade Commission Is Bad News for Consumers
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday his intention to nominate Mark Meador as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If confirmed, Meador would take over the commissioner slot currently held by FTC Chair Lina Khan, whose term expired on September 26.
Meador is an accomplished antitrust litigator, but his antagonism toward Big Tech, and bigness per se, will compromise Trump’s stated goals of maintaining America’s economic and technological dominance.
He has long opposed big business, from Google to Ticketmaster, and regards the free market as merely a means to the end of human flourishing, not as an end in and of itself. Meador’s stance on economic freedom reflects his explicitly anti-libertarian conception of freedom as “requir[ing] order and restraints upon our passions.” Achieving Meador’s vision of freedom apparently also requires restraints upon trade.
Meador helped write the Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability (AMERICA) Act to break up Google’s ad tech stack while serving as deputy chief counsel for antitrust and competition policy to Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah). Meador’s animus toward Big Tech was confirmed by The Heritage Foundation heralding his visiting fellowship at its Tech Policy Center as “a significant milestone in our mission to hold Big Tech accountable for its anticompetitive practices.”
If confirmed, Meador would be the de facto anti-Big Tech commissioner at the FTC. Andrew Ferguson, a current FTC Commissioner and Trump’s nominee for agency chairman, has also vocalized opposition to Big Tech. Ferguson has pledged to “end Big Tech’s vendetta against competition and free speech” while also promising to “make sure that America is the world’s technological leader,” per The New York Times. Ferguson, like Meador, fails to realize that prosecuting Big Tech for acquisitions disincentivizes innovation by removing profitable exit opportunities for startups.
Meador’s antitrust stance
Article from Reason.com
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