With Darcy W.E. Allen. Available at SSRN.
Abstract: Ex ante digital-platform competition regimes designate specific firms as platforms and attach conduct obligations to them as a class. We locate the fundamental error one level deeper than existing critiques. Platforms are ongoing processes of capital recomposition whose apparent durability is produced by the capability activity that sustains them. We give dynamic-capabilities theory Austrian microfoundations: sensing is Kirznerian alertness, seizing is Knight-Mises judgment under genuine uncertainty, and reconfiguring is Lachmannian recomposition of heterogeneous capital. Each generates a distinct impossibility for the ex ante regulator. The designation form mistakes legal continuity and observed market position for stability in the economic object being governed.