George Will Bites into Progressive Busybodies

December 7th, 2023

George Will has an entertaining piece on FTC’s and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s war on Big Sandwich.

He dissects the antitrust freakout over Roark Capital’s bid to acquire Subway. Between the barbs, Will notes that “Subway is basically a brand,” with sandwich stores that are small businesses owned by people who buy franchises, benefiting from the chain’s national advertising.

“Can a monopoly be riven by internal competitions, while surrounded by external competitors” like Jimmy Johns and your neighborhood sandwich maker? (Not to mention Mom, who always respected my desire to cut off the crust.)

George Will dredges up interesting facts, including an FTC proposal to redefine the Big Sandwich market by excluding those with beef or chicken, removing McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A. I would add that this kind of fine slicing of markets could also create for the FTC a Big Hamburger and Chickenburger market to control as well.

Will dismisses this as “busybody progressivism.” He concludes: “The current FTC’s apparent belief, and Warren’s, is that when an enterprise (Apple, Google, etc.) becomes big by satisfying many customers, these customers have created something worrisome.”

Hey, now there’s an idea, letting consumers decide what’s acceptable or not by voting with their dollars. Somebody ought to codify that into a legal standard. We could even call it the consumer welfare standard.