https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Concluding-Comments-The-Weaknesses-of-Interventionist-Claims-FTC-Hearings-ICLE-Comment-11.pdf
Price and output are metrics (and relatively easily identifiable ones, at that) that aggregate the decisions of countless individuals who are performing their own hedonic calculations, using all their own subjective values, with respect to the conduct of firms in the economy. The price and level of output that arise from those individual calculations necessarily takes account of the various preferences—albeit relatively imprecisely—of all those subjective, multidimensional calculations. Importantly, price and output offer the best means available to evaluate the effects of many non-price factors, including innovation. In other words, although imperfect, measurements of market price and market output are (generally) reliably informative, at the very least of the direction of likely changes in consumer welfare along all dimensions in response to changes in firm conduct
BTW, later in the report they say
Many ...voiced concerns about the potential for data to enable more price discrimination. Perplexingly, this issue was largely discussed as a presumptively harmful outcome. On the contrary, in industries with high fixed costs, price discrimination can increase total output and produce benefits for previously unserved segments of the market.
We shall cover this last point in class next week.
