49 Comments
Jul 11, 2021Liked by Matt Stoller

I’m a conservative and happy with this move by President Biden. We need to break up the monopolies and oligopolies. Big Tech in particular.

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I am not optimistic. Matt is too kind to the federal bureaucracy, suggesting that they are just resistant to change. They are a captured interest of large corporations. I don't expect the non-enforcement of anti-trust laws to end any time soon. If the Robinson-Patman Act were rigorously enforced, Amazon would cease to exist. Google's business model is built around wholesale and blatant violations of the Sherman Act. If you were constructing a fictional case study of ways to violate the Sherman Act, when you were done you would look up and say, "Oh, that's Google". Most the the "regulatory" reforms of the past few decades have been massive gifts to large corporations at the expense of their smaller competitors - Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, etc. If Biden's handlers can turn this around it will be one of the most miraculous things in the history of American government.

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Jul 11, 2021Liked by Matt Stoller

Matt, Great column. You have helped a lot of folks, including me, to understand the depth and breadth of the monopoly/monopsony problem in America. A problem that became evident with the consolidation of banking in the 1980s has now infected every aspect of our economy. Goliath provides the history of how it happened. BIG gives us the ammunition to bring to our representatives. I have no doubt that your good work made a significant contribution to Biden's executive order. Thanks.

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Jul 12, 2021Liked by Matt Stoller

After being off the internet for a week and returning I decided to unsubscribe to all newsletters EXCEPT for BIG by Matt Stoller. Great work! I think that hardest thing about anti-trust laws and policy is that it is complicated and our politics is all about simplicity and 255 character sound bites. Add to that that the monopolies own publishing (yes, Facebook is a publisher of journals and auto-biographies). How to proceed when the messenger is the problem?

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Jul 12, 2021Liked by Matt Stoller

Speaking as a former Republican (charter member of the limbaugh letter when I was in college), I am tickled pink w/ Lina Khan & pleasantly surprised w/ President Biden EO on competition.

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Good reporting, Matt. I would like to be hopeful that at least some of what you discuss will come to pass but as Lilly Tomlin said, "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." The problem, as I see it, are the democrat and republican parties who are the real forces for the government in this battle. Both are thoroughly corrupt and work mainly to support their major donors not the people. At worst, this may be an attempt to squeeze more dollars out of their contributors. At best, it may be the realization that they are losing power to these business goliaths and it is their last ditch attempt to right the ship and maintain their power. I think the Chinese government saw this happening in their country and is, in their own way, doing something to correct it. We live in interesting times, indeed.

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Jul 11, 2021Liked by Matt Stoller

Mat: Enjoy your blog very much. Any thoughts on this development? https://mikedavis.substack.com/p/bigtechframeworkresponse

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You asked "what else"? Not a new topic, but we need to invest into *human* infrastructure - not just by paying for child care and education and training, but by investing directly in training people to do these jobs and paying them wages that reflect the long-term value they will create in the next generation of citizens. Talk about exponential returns! Mental and physical health and productivity are the basic assets of human civilization.

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The government should fill the role of rules and ref in a football game. The game must have enough rules to ensure fair competition and the rules must be enforced, but if there are too many rules there will be no action and nobody will want to play.

Remove all the rules and it dissolves into a violent free-for-all not resembling football at all - the most violent players and the best cheaters will prevail, not the most talented players who will be intentionally injured and forced out. That's what we have now, crony capitalism. On the other hand, a game with rules against running and throwing and 20 refs blowing their whistles constantly and grabbing the ball wouldn't work either.

The free market needs rules to keep it free - open/free to all participants (to maximize competition) and free from fraud and monopolization.

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And there was Bernie, standing behind the President and Khan. Great article, thank you!

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I love your blongI love your optimism.

"The same day as the order, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $500 million program to build new meatpacking capacity in areas where there is only one packer. "

This is likely a political stunt as it is a political victory.

It wasn't Robert Bork that sent us astray, it was Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan and the subsequent foursome that made it impossible to produce surgical masks when we needed them. And Trump added to the madness with further quantitative easing and tariffs.

If you believe that we've a new day coming where monopolies shall be brought to heel like the Trusts of yesteryear , with Rough Riders to the rescue, you've not watched the aggragation of money and power the last 20 years. Big Tech is to brought down? 80% of their political donations went to the Dems in 2020. Obama got elected in 2012 with Big Tech"s ability to pinpoint the precinct level massage that needed to be delivered and which crushed Romney's ( there's nothing there but the hair) chances, the polls be damned.

Joe Biden. like Obama before him , is a Wall Street widget. You've a bureaucracy , which by your own admission is not yet staffed and is likely to look to its own interests.

This will not end well.

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A huge issue is licensing. EMT and paramedics for instance are licensed by individual states. That creates a problem when like my company you operate in multiple states as an air medical provider. Our medics have to maintain five state licenses. As a pilot I only have to maintain one. Another is work hours. As a pilot I can’t log more that 8 flight hours per day or 14 hours on duty. There is no limit on medical personnel. This seems ridiculous to me. Medical errors kills hundreds of thousands of people per year. If I can’t fly a plane for 8 hours straight or more than 14 hours of duty they can’t give medical care for 16-18 hours straight. My Med crews have told me this and said how lucky I am that the Feds regulate my hours.

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Typo: "big-rigging" -> "bid-rigging"

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Resurrecting Robinson-Patman? To paraphrase, "Please, God, let it be so."

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While the reforms that are being considered by USDA will be useful, they will not by themselves solve the problems in the livestock markets. Only Captive Supply Reform as first proposed by the Western Organization of Resource Councils in a 1997 Petition for Rulemaking or as later proposed in a bi-partisan Senate bill in 2007. This approach is completely market driven requiring that beef and pork packers purchase their supply in a public competitive market. This was what was what was required in the consent decree accompanying the passage of the Packers and Stockyards Act in 1921.

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Excellent work Matt!

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