Warren's Tech Breakup Plan Raises Questions About Digital Coordination Rights
Elizabeth Warren's proposal to break up major tech companies goes beyond traditional antitrust concerns by questioning how digital platforms allocate coordination rights. The plan frames these rights as a public resource rather than a purely corporate asset.
Elizabeth Warren proposes breaking up Amazon, Google, and Facebook by sounding a familiar antitrust alarm about Gilded Age levels of market dominance. She argues that these big tech companies use mergers and proprietary marketplaces to squeeze out small and medium-sized businesses, limit competition, and stifle innovation. Even when these firms provide reliable services at reasonable prices, their monopolistic control allows them to become lazy about protecting user privacy because no viable competitor threatens their market share.
Beyond standard economic efficiency arguments, Warren signals a deeper concern that big tech companies hold too much power over society and democracy. This perspective invites the public to view antitrust as a mechanism for allocating coordination rights, not just a tool to promote market competition. The fundamental question becomes how society wants to distribute these coordination rights across platform utilities in the technology sector.
Professor Sanjukta Paul provides valuable context for this debate by analyzing the intellectual posture of the "firm exception" in antitrust law. Her key insight reveals that the prevailing interpretation of antitrust law privileges intra-firm coordination while limiting opportunities to expand horizontal coordination beyond firm boundaries. This legal framework ultimately shapes how digital platforms operate and who holds the power to coordinate economic activity online.