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I understand that the standard measure of every legal bureaucrat/official's effectiveness is their record, but as a member of the public I could give a shit. Actually, I think the obsession with perfect judicial records creates a bunch of perverse incentives and overall is poor metric of effective governance.

>Filing these speculative long shot cases wastes the FTC’s valuable time.

You know what a bigger waste of the FTC's time is? Being completely unwilling to take on any big players for years at a time because you might lose, regardless of how blatantly the flout the spirit of the law. The public loses trust in and the business community loses respect for the institution, and society suffers as a whole. It's a free pass for abysmal behavior at the highest levels.

>There are important mergers which don’t get attention bc Lina is wasting her time with Microsoft and Google.

What are these mergers and how can you be sure they didn't get any attention? Were they yet another handful of guaranteed winners that would not move the needle whatsoever when it comes to societal effects of blatant abuse of monopoly power?




> public loses trust in and the business community loses respect for the institution

To the degree Khan has been successful, it’s in the former. She has been performative, which makes the public feel good. But also ineffective, which makes business happy. (Two corporate lawyers at national firms, familiar names in Silicon Valley, have advised me to rush mergers under this FTC. You’ll get sued. But they’ll drop the ball or settle, and then the deal is done.)




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