> The old antitrust laws weren't, but they've been narrowed so much over time through court decisions that they're no longer effective, as evidenced by all the industries dominated by less than a dozen major companies.

That's endemic to new markets though. The internet crushed incumbents, the winner of which then became incumbents, and so the cycle continues.

One could argue that this is exactly the point in the cycle when antitrust should start being used. Any earlier and you preemptively regulate.

> The first sale doctrine is the thing the industry keeps chipping away at with anti-circumvention laws and ebook licensing etc.

I'd have gone with rent-instead-of-own and converting purchases into platform subscriptions.

But point being that the original law was against the wishes of the largest players in that sector.

> Telecoms are probably the textbook case of regulatory capture.

I'm sure old ATT would have something to say about that...

> A lot of aspects of airlines are actually not that heavily regulated, it generally operates as a fairly competitive market.

The explicit deregulation of the carrier market and substitution of new rules promoting competition.

I'd say the incumbents were pretty upset about that, considering Southwest spent the first 3 years of its existence in court...

> Food safety is the thing where this happens:

A pile of examples does not an argument make. Otherwise, I'd just be able to link here and call it a day: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety...

What's your argument?

> Transportation safety is pretty thoroughly captured by automakers. [...] and we make dumb responses [...] instead of actually effective responses like building more housing near jobs so people drive fewer miles or don't need as many cars (obvious negative effect on automakers).

You're suggesting the NHTSA solve the US housing market?

That's a bit outside their remit, which is ensuring that vehicles pass these standards: https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/statutory-authorities

And let me tell you, automakers aren't thrilled about CAFE standards...

> Environmental safety rules don't seem to apply to oil companies.

Citation needed.

If your point is that the EPA is under-matched against some of the largest companies on the planet, yes.

But to say say they get a free pass is simply wrong. There are multiple court cases where the EPA is currently fighting to uphold and enforce regulation.

In addition to new rules being enacted. E.g. https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-12/epas-fina...

> Fish and wildlife rules are commonly structured to give large incumbents the right to harvest the disproportionate share.

That's called grandfathering, and it exists because there's a realpolitik recognition that if you didn't give the current incumbents a juicy cut of the quota they'd just ignore it.

That's the way the world works.

> Also, this is one of the cases where the industry wants the rules, because over-fishing is a harm to them

Ha! If there weren't fishing quotas, companies would happily deplete fisheries as quickly as they could get them on the boat.

Industrial fishing doesn't care about long term.