In 1883, Otto von Bismarck, the brilliant Iron Chancellor of Germany, enacted a law to provide health insurance to German factory workers. Bismarck didn’t care about the law’s policy goals, but he wanted to stem the rising tide of socialism supported by Germany’s Social Democrats.
Perhaps Attorney General Bill Barr has been re-reading his history. A few weeks ago, the Department of Justice filed its long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit approaches Google with a scalpel, rather than a sledgehammer, and at most may result in a handful of minor changes to Google’s business model, rather than Google’s wholesale dismemberment, a goal sought by many progressives. As an added bonus, the lawsuit likely slows progressive momentum to rewrite the nation’s antitrust laws to promote social goals and fuzzy notions of fairness.
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