I was aware of Robert Bork, but couldn't have pinned down his relevance to the media (de)regulation issue before I'd read this excellent article by John Naughton, intriguing enough to interrupt a time out in the fading sunshine!
The news hook is that the EU have announced an investigation into Google's practices, giving them 10 weeks to respond to an accusation of monopolistic strategy. Naughton highlights the stark contrast with the US, where the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), faced with the same data as the EU's competition commissioner (the US actually passed it on!), decided not to take a case ... despite several staff apparently arguing they should.
This is where Naughton draws on the writings and influence of Robert Bork, one of the foremost theorists of the neoliberal, deregulatory ideology that has slowly gained hegemony since the New Right movements of Thatcherism and Reaganomics took hold in the early 1980s.
