It's not that far. A bureaucrat will decide if you can exit the way you want to. Still want to fund this venture?
> And we are soooooo far from having a shortage of tech startups.
Because there hasn't been a fear of them blocking exits.
It's not up to the bureaucrat but to the courts. The FTC doesn't "approve" or "reject" deals--it can just take legal action to try to stop a deal, but that still gets adjudicated either in a federal court or in an FTC administrative law court to a judge which is appointed independently.
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/administrative-law-...
FWIW, I think there are good reasons to limit tech consolidation, including this one. But anyone should realize that it will reshape the industry in unpredictable ways, including some that harm "real" consumers and builders.
In fact, there are all kinds of things you can't arbitrarily do because it hurts consumers, both physically and financially. This includes strengthening industry monopolies which has time and time again demonstrated that it causes incredible harm to entire segments of society.
I don't think you can take a hypothetical worst case and make it apply here. You could also say that we shouldn't have governments, because look at WW2 and all the war they declared.
Adobe buying Figma wouldn't cause incredible harm to entire segments of society. It's barely even a monopoly, in that Adobe doesn't really do what Figma does already, and there is incredible potential in just making another Figma competitor if Adobe ruins Figma.
