来源：《华盛顿邮报》
原文刊登日期：2021年7月11日
The Federal Trade Commission was frequently criticized in recent years for doing too little to rein in technology and other companies. Now it appears that for the next few years at least, the FTC will be criticized for doing too much.
近年来，美国联邦贸易委员会(简称FTC)经常被批评在约束科技企业以及其他企业方面做得太少。但现在看来，至少在未来几年，联邦贸易委员会将会因为做得太多而受到批评。
New agency chair Lina Khan has wasted no time in acting on the principle she articulated in her pre-appointment career as an academic: Modern competition law as interpreted by the courts is inadequate to address modern markets. The most controversial of the reconfigured FTC’s early moves was to rescind a 2015 policy statement limiting the commission’s ability to go after unfair conduct not in clear violation of existing antitrust legislation. The change itself is minor — but it could signal a major shift to come.
FTC新任主席莉娜•汗毫不浪费时间，按照她在任职前的学术生涯中阐明的原则行事：法院解释的现代竞争法不足以应对现代市场。在重组后的FTC的早期举措中，最具争议的是撤销了2015年的一项政策声明，该声明限制了FTC追究未明显违反现有反垄断立法的不公平行为的能力。这个变化本身是微小的，但它可能预示着一个重大的转变即将到来。
There was never a statutory limit on the FTC’s ability to pursue these types of cases. By repealing its self-constraining guidance, however, the agency is making it clear that we’re about to see a lot more of them. The idea is that the Sherman Antitrust Act has made it almost impossible for enforcers to win cases without proving harm to consumers, usually through price increases — a poor fit for the free services that have come to dominate our daily lives. The surest way, then, for the FTC to strike at anticompetitive conduct by monopolistic firms is to rely on the authority Congress granted the agency at its birth to go beyond what the law lays out.
对于联邦贸易委员会追查此类案件的能力，从来没有法定的限制。然而，通过废除其自我约束的指导，FTC清楚地表明，我们将看到更多FTC追查此类案件。FTC的想法是，谢尔曼反垄断法使得执法者几乎不可能在不证明对消费者造成伤害的情况下打赢官司，通常是证明涨价——这与主宰我们日常生活的免费服务不相适应。因此，对于联邦贸易委员会来说，打击垄断企业的反竞争行为最可靠的方法是依靠其成立之初国会就授予它的超越垄断法规定的权力。
Ms. Khan has a point. These companies benefit from network effects that make their services more valuable the more people use them. Trying to reduce these firms’ power by breaking them up is a dubious proposition, but trying to ensure they don’t abuse that power is essential. Gatekeeper businesses with the greatest ability to box out any competitors that do emerge, or to leverage control in one market to gain control in another, require close scrutiny. Some behavior should indeed be off-limits — from predatory pricing to some forms of self-preferencing.
Khan女士说的有道理。这些公司受益于网络效应，使用它们的人越多，它们的服务就越有价值。试图通过拆分这些公司来削弱它们的权力是一个可疑的提议，但试图确保它们不滥用权力是至关重要的。那些最有能力将任何竞争者排除在外，或者利用一个市场的控制权来获得另一个市场控制权的“看门人”企业，需要严密的审查。有些行为确实应该被禁止——从掠夺性定价到某些形式的自我优待行为。
The problem is, precisely what behavior the FTC considers off-limits remains unclear. This leaves businesses liable to be punished for conduct they didn’t know was punishable, and it also leaves the FTC able to institute standards that are unreasonably restrictive. President Biden, in a sweeping executive order intended to promote competition across the U.S. economy, directs the FTC to establish rules clarifying exactly this question. That’s good, and those rules should take care not to stifle even the biggest businesses’ legitimate right to compete. Even better than the FTC mapping out forbidden conduct that federal law allows, however, would be for federal law to stop allowing it.
问题是，究竟什么样的行为被联邦贸易委员会认为是禁区，目前还不清楚。这使得企业在不知情的情况下可能会受到惩罚，也使得联邦贸易委员会能够制定不合理的限制性标准。拜登总统在一项旨在促进美国经济竞争的全面行政令中，指示联邦贸易委员会制定明确阐明这一问题的规则。这很好，而且这些规则应该小心制定，不要扼杀即便是最大企业的合法竞争权利。然而，比联邦贸易委员会禁止联邦法律允许的行为更好的办法是，联邦法律不再允许这些行为。
Bipartisan antitrust bills remain pending in the House of Representatives. Anyone concerned that an overzealous group of unelected officials are wrongly taking matters into their hands should also want Congress to stop sitting on its own.
两党反垄断法案仍在众议院等待表决。任何人如果担心一群过分热心的未经选举的官员错误地把事情掌握在自己手中，都应该希望国会不要坐视不管。