> price controls really are bad,

Citation needed and not from some ooga booga free marketer.

Price control schemes exist in almost every country and in the US, every subsidy is a form of price control. Price controls are not just ceilings and floors. The Prime Interest rate is a price control for money. Ration cards are price controls.

The reason that price controls are dangerous to an economy (esp. a capitalist one) is typically that if you're controlling for price (via floor and ceiling) you have to also control for distribution. Price controlled goods must be distributed as a nonprofit service with limits rather than a for profit enterprise. That's often the "fuck up" that's most cited but that's a "learn basic economics" issue.

Literally that was Nixon's entire fuck up, and it was compounded by the death of Bretton Woods. Price controls worked just fine before/during/after WWI and WWII.

Public transit is the most obvious form of price controls that work because the distribution and the commodity/service are both run as a nonprofit service.

Also if you care about the whole 'OMG BLACK MARKETS' thing, see distribution, and understand that if you have a price that actually represents the cost of delivering a commodity to a consumer, a black market forming around that commodity is the same kind of market as a "free market". It is simply dudes trying to get the most amount of profit for arbitrage of a good they get at cost.

Also "subsidies don't work", the subsidy often not a consumer subsidy it's a producer profit subsidy. See EV's which all have subsidies built into their price except the Leaf.

You see the problem here? In order to actually do this correctly and have the desired effect on consumers, you need everyone to open their books. That's not going to happen in a capitalist system. So their alternative is "get lucky". Private profit guides economic policy more than the actual data or methodology.

The more interesting thing of "regulation" here. Is if the government can effectively regulate a company's backlog. Apple's walled garden is intentionally constructed on their side such that there cannot be competition because the controls for such competition are unbuilt. The PWA issue in the EU shows that if you take them at face value which I would having worked with Apple products and done a bit of jail breaking back in the day. So effectively they need to create public features for supporting alternative wallets in a secure way.

Outside of iMessage, wallets are the only real thing the gov has to stand on.

Super apps are just a semantic exercise.

Cloud-streaming is a non-issue Apple doesn't compete in a cloud streaming vertical. Apple Arcade is just a subscription to an app store. They don't stream the games.

The Smart Watches thing is also bunk. Samsung does the same thing, with watches and headphones. If I switch to a Google Pixel my headphones lose features. Unless the government is in the mood to create and regulate open tech standards this a nothing burger.

It's in practice arguing that Apple cannot have a private SDK which I would be fine with but they're not actually arguing that.

The reason that this is not like US vs MS is because MS's settlement did not result in forcing MS to CHANGE the code, only allowing OEM's to bundle other browsers. US vs MS in practicality was just a big nothing burger. Not even the EU government is in a place to regulate and enforce Open APIs.

Also speaking of ooga booga free marketers. Milton Friedman predicted that US vs MS is going to be a dark age of government regulation of tech and prevent innovation. Lmao.