Letters to the editor

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Caution on competition law

Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s commissioner for competition, posits that competition law has not addressed “the structural entrenchment of companies holding market power”, and that sweeping regulations like the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) are therefore justified (By Invitation, June 3rd). She compares the case-by-case approach of competition enforcement to “playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole”. However, enforcement is often slow and complex, especially in the kinds of “abuse of dominance” cases that have been brought against large online platforms. This deliberate pace is necessary, as the companies’ business models and the consequences of their behaviour are themselves complex.

One need only see the unfortunate changes forced upon Google Maps in the EU, where users can no longer click map locations from their search results, to understand that platform design entails complex trade-offs among usability, safety and competition. In ignoring these trade-offs there is a genuine risk that heavy-handed enforcement will do more harm than good.

The case-by-case approach that prevails under most competition law allows enforcers to separate the wheat from the chaff and condemn only those business practices that ultimately prove harmful to consumers. This cautious approach has arguably helped America to become a global leader in digital markets, by nurturing promising firms rather than imposing overbearing rules upon them.

Unfortunately, the DMA ignores these lessons and categorically prohibits conduct, such as “self-preferencing” by online platforms, that can benefit consumers.

Geoffrey Manne
Dirk Auer
Mario Zúñiga
International Centre for Law and Economics
Portland, Oregon

Baby boomers and savings

Does your assertion that “a proliferation of old folk means more people saving for retirement” get the logic upside down (Free exchange, May 25th)? A rising ratio of pensioners to workers means that there will be fewer people toiling to save for their old age, and more older folk will be happily spending their retirement nest-eggs. The balance of savings to investment will be skewed towards lower savings and thus a higher neutral interest rate.

In the same vein, the balance of aggregate demand (all people consume) to aggregate supply (only those who still work) will shift towards less supply and hence more price pressures. At the margin, low birth rates helped explain why inflation and interest rates were so low over the past 15 years while the baby boomers were still working and saving. But that will be over very soon. With ever more pensioners around, brace yourself for somewhat sticky inflation and higher rates for longer.

Holger Schmieding
Chief economist
Berenberg
London

Save London’s lungs

It is an unpopular opinion these days, but green belts are doing their job well (“Labour’s growth plan”, June 8th). The nearest bit of green belt to central London is about 30 minutes by Tube and most of it is over an hour’s commute. People don’t want to live out there. They want to live 15 minutes away from their work, in places with good infrastructure and connectivity.

I sometimes take the train into Paddington. The last 20 minutes of this journey travels through seemingly endless areas of low density, low-rise Victorian or post-war housing sprinkled with industrial parks and lonely office blocks, aka urban sprawl, exactly what the green belt was created to arrest. Rather than allowing this monotonous concrete kudzu to resume its inexorable outward creep it is much more sensible to densify and modernise the urban areas that people already reside in. The quest to build on green belts has become an end in itself and its proponents have lost sight of the real aim, which is to provide affordable housing in places where people want to live.

Britain’s cities don’t need to grow wider, they need to grow taller.

Nick Lott
South Hams, Devon

Driving in the Big Apple

You characterised critics of congestion pricing in New York as “back-seat drivers” or a “handful of people who have a windshield view of everything” (“Jam today”, June 8th). That is dismissive of the millions of working-class and blue-collar New Yorkers who do not conveniently live next to subway lines or work perfect nine-to-five jobs. Congestion pricing would be devastating to those workers who need to schlep their equipment into the city, work the overnight shift, or have to drive across town for their second job.

In fact, the only ones who are excited about this half-baked idea are affluent people who don’t need to punch a clock and have the luxury of working from home. Before we go dipping into the working man’s pocket (again) to fix the transit authority, how about we conduct a thorough audit to ensure our money is being spent properly first.

Patrick Lindie
New York

In praise of the lowly worm

“Wormageddon” (May 25th) noted that Charles Darwin’s book on worms, “The Formation of Vegetable Mould”, did not enjoy the same success as his “On the Origin of Species”. Darwin’s interest in worms was sparked by reading Gilbert White’s “The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne”. In that study White records, in minute detail, the flora and fauna of the village of Selborne in Hampshire and makes a life-affirming statement about the lowly earthworm, “though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm”.

Unlike Darwin’s study of worms, White’s “Natural History” is one of the most published books in the English language, with some 300 editions since its first publication in 1789.

Gerald Smith
Wellington, New Zealand

The equality enforcer

Dystopian cultural extremes (“Dummy business”, May 25th) were a constant subject of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. In his short story, “Harrison Bergeron”, Vonnegut created the Handicapper General, who is charged with enforcing equality laws, such as having athletic people wear weights and attractive people don masks. Your review of Lionel Shriver’s “Mania” speaks of a cancel culture where calling someone “stupid” is banned. There was no need for that in Vonnegut’s story, as clever people had to wear radios blasting loud noises to dumb them down.

Richard Rosenbaum
Boston

Woolly thinking

Bartleby dismissed sheep as passive “followers” (May 18th). In truth, sheep are highly attuned to the needs of the flock, move around together according to weather and time, and become audibly distressed when one of them is lost or in trouble. I lived for many years next to a field of sheep. Human societies would be greatly improved if they learned to respect, and even imitate, the animal’s communitarianism.

Sylvia Rose
Totnes, Devon

Bartleby’s discourse on the overlooked benefits of followership called to mind Dilbert’s unforgettable quip: “Change is good. You go first.”

Zubin Aibara
Bülach, Switzerland