Perhaps the tide is turning. I hope so. This excerpt is from this article on Matt Stoller’s Antitrust website: “The Most Boring Conspiracy is Big Law.” Did you ever wonder where most of America’s competition went?
As I’ve worked through politics, I’ve come to realize that giant conspiracies are far less interesting than they seemed to have been when I was younger. Don’t get me wrong. There are conspiracies, and they are far-reaching. It’s just that most of them, at least when it comes to corporate power and antitrust, are not run by titanic cackling geniuses, but by middle aged slightly overweight lawyers with bad posture who live in and around Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco and love talking about wine clubs.
A few weeks ago, New York Times reporters Cecilia Kang and David McCabe published a useful article on the hot market for antitrust lawyers. “Antitrust work — once a relatively sleepy area of the legal world — is now providing a windfall for the big firms,” they wrote. “Top partners at a large firm often bill $1,000 to $2,000 an hour, and the scores of young associates who help them charge hundreds of dollars an hour.”Restoring anti-monopoly policy will be a slog, because corporate lawyers are intimidating, and policymakers and judges tend to believe what they say. They have been trained for decades to look credible, and they do. But ultimately, what they are doing is helping their clients violate the law, and in doing so, make a mockery of democracy itself. And that should not stand.
. . .
Anti-Monopoly Midterm Election Candidates Begin to Emerge: I’m noticing a trend of candidates who are starting to talk about big business on the campaign trail. What’s interesting is that, like the anti-monopoly movement, it doesn’t break down by party. Here are the candidates I noticed.
Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Tom Nelson has talked about why it’s so “crucial to fight corporate power.”
In his first ad, Ohio Republican J.D. Vance in Ohio called Jeff Bezos and Google members of “the ruling class.”
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who is running for reelection in 2022 to the Governor spot, wrote a long blog post attacking meatpacker consolidation.
Here’s Republican Blake Masters in Arizona, attacking “corporations that have gotten so big they think they are bigger than America.”
Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Lucas Kunce, is pledging to “end monopoly domination of our economy.”
And here’s Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Dave Muhlbauer, going after meatpackers and “corporate farms.”
Both Odessa Kelly and her opponent Jim Cooper in a Tennessee Democratic primary race praised Biden’s executive order on competition.
My concern is the flavor of the bipartisan support. From the far left I hear echos of Occupy Wall Street which used language expressing hatred for business in general, the bigger the worse. From the far right I hear echos of Jim Crow, substituting leftist for black. The center position is one that has my full spport.
Here’s another contender other than anti monopoly and anti trust laws. Consider food transportation cost; Naturally prices increase in grocery stores when gas prices peak. On the other hand food prices did not seem to “naturally” drop when the gas prices bottomed out. If this is not a monopoly nor a trust then what is it? Has there ever been a law to ensure food prices fluctuate with transportation costs? Hypothetically competition among grocery stores should reflect the costs but for some reason prices seem to remain at peak costs once there. Is there a general rule of thumb accepted among grocery stores to keep costs high; Knowing many consumers have no concept as to why prices go up and blame inflation? For a third choice from monopoly and trust, how about anti psychology laws. Imagine a politician running for office trying to sell that concept to get elected. Would you vote for that?