Noticing the market effects of taking out one major player while ignoring the others doing similar things isn’t a fallacy.
It’s noticing that as long as you stay somewhat low profile you can get away with almost anything, as apparently they can only notice/do something about one big player at a time.
Doing one thing today and portraying that as never doing anything else is a fallacy. Acting like it would do no good and have no effect on everyone else even if they never do the exact same thing to everyone else is a fallacy. It's fallacies all around.
It’s a fallacy because it’s based on some kind of idealism and not reality. Let’s see how it works for other aspects of life:
“Unless cops ticket every single speeder, they should not ticket anyone”
“Unless doctors can cure a patient’s cancer, they should not set a broken bone”
“Unless you’re going to track down everyone you’ve ever wronged, you should never apologize.”
I don’t think those work. The reality is that doing something is almost always better than doing nothing. And in a complex business and legal environment, insisting on simultaneous and equal action really is suggesting we do nothing.
Regulators should go after companies that break laws. Someone looking at company X should never, ever decide to forego enforcement because they people looking at company Y are not taking action.
Yes. An antitrust suit against Google is itself welcome. But if it stops here, or Alphabet mysteriously gets away very lightly after appointing a few more "ex"-intelligence people to its board, we should see through it.
As other replies noted, no one is looking for or setting the bar at simultaneous and equal action.
Nearly any action in proportion to the harm would be sufficient.
It’s a common principle in law, actually.
For instance, with speeders - if literally no one including folks going 20 over the speed limit get a ticket for years in a town, and then the Sheriff’s political opponent gets a huge ticket and his car impounded for going 5 over, would that be ok?
What about if the Dr. treated everyone, except for his childhood bully which was dying of cancer?
Monopolistic and anti-trade behavior is going nuts everywhere, in almost every industry. From meat packing to shipping to tech.
If there is an antitrust finding and a real, and impactful outcome, they’ll at a minimum be distracted with 5+ years of reorganization BS and lose their ability to leverage what they have now.
It’s noticing that as long as you stay somewhat low profile you can get away with almost anything, as apparently they can only notice/do something about one big player at a time.
Which is concerning.