I appreciate Iain Murray’s response to my article about the tech monopolies. I don’t have a ton to add — the question of when a monopoly becomes a problem worthy of government action is highly subjective, so it’s an agree-to-disagree type of situation. But I did want to clarify a few things:

‐ At the end of my piece I laid out a variety of actions that analysts have suggested which fall short of breaking these companies up. I said these were “gentler” than demolishing the companies, which is undeniably true; I didn’t say they were “gentle,” and I explicitly avoided endorsing a specific combination of them. Generally speaking, I think it’s good to target specific bad practices by monopolies rather than smashing up or taking over businesses that gained their market share legally. I do, however, think it’s important to stop companies from abusing their monopoly power, and sought to give a lay of the land of what measures are possible.

‐ I specifically noted that it’s not illegal simply to have a monopoly, and quoted Judge Learned Hand only as to the definition of what a monopoly is, which is kind of important to spell out in an article about monopolies.

‐ I also didn’t claim that Amazon’s deliberate destruction of its upstart rival Quidsi was illegal under current law (though I did point out that predatory pricing is banned in certain circumstances); the question is whether such behavior should be legal. I tend to think consumers would be better off if they still had Diapers.com competing with Amazon in the realm of online shopping for baby products, but of course it’s impossible to prove what the world would look like in a different timeline — again underscoring the subjectivity noted above.