For decades, antitrust regulators evaluated mergers and other corporate actions by one metric, based on a theory promulgated by Robert Bork: consumer welfare. The key question: Would prices go up if two companies became one?

But academics and some policymakers for years have been pushing back, noting that when companies become bigger and bigger, gaining monopolies in certain markets — there are other harms to consider, including to workers, small businesses, and entrepreneurship.

Even citizens feel the consequences if a company grows so large as to have outsized political influence.

Perhaps most famously, now FTC chair Lina Khan, as a law student, wrote a paper describing how Amazon ran afoul of antitrust law despite offering lower prices.

Flashback: When the DOJ sued to block the merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster in 2021, it was based on the idea that the combined company would harm authors — they are workers, too — since fewer publishing houses bidding for their work would mean they’d earn less money.

The last week cemented the strategy. The Federal Trade Commission for the first time in 50 years enacted an “economy-wide” change — moving to ban noncompete agreements.

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