"The coverage of #LinaKhan's appearance has focused on #JonStewart's revelation that when he was doing a show on Apple TV, the company prohibited him from interviewing her (why?!).
But for me, the big moment came when Khan described #BigTech monopolists as "too big to care."
What a phrase!
[We've been] familiar with businesses being "too big to fail" & "too big to jail."Too big to care?" Oof, that got me right in the feels." @pluralistic https://youtu.be/oaDTiWaYfcM?si=-Sw__uysRxjTCt5V
Jon Stewart claims Apple wouldn't let him interview FTC chair Lina Khan on his podcast.
@AxiosNews reports: "Stewart's Apple TV+ show ended late last year after Stewart and Apple executives parted ways over creative differences, including the comedian's desire to cover topics such as China and AI."
The most consistent bright spot in the dark swirl of US politics is the competence of the Biden Administration's progressive enforcers: people like #RohitChopra, #JonathanKanter and #LinaKhan, who keep demonstrating just how far a good administrator can go. Anyone can have a vision, but knowing how to execute is the difference between hot air and real change:
Once, workers had "#DefinedBenefitsPensions," where employers promised to pay a certain amount every year from retirement to death. #JimmyCarter swapped that out for #401Ks, "market" pensions where you have to guess which stocks will be valuable or starve in your old age:
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Perhaps the worst, though, is Biden's Secretary of Commerce #GinaRaimondo, a private equity ghoul who did a stint for the notorious wreckers #BainCapital before founding her own firm.
There's a cheat-code in US #antitrustm it's been increasingly used since the #Reagan administration, when the "#ConsumerWelfare" theory ("#monopolies are fine, so long as the lower prices") shoved aside the long-established idea that antitrust law existed to prevent monopolies from forming at all.
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Not only was this turn predictable - it was predicted. Back in 2017, #LinaKhan - then a law student - published a earthshaking #YaleLawJournal paper, "#AmazonsAntitrustParadox," laying out how monopolists would trap their customers and block new competitors as they raised prices and lowered quality:
For a brief time this year, Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon drink" was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by #CatfishUK prankster #OobahButler in a stunt for a new #Channel4 doc, "#TheGreatAmazonHeist":
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As Amazon spokesperson #JamesDrummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.
In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, #AmazonsAntitrustParadox, FTC Chair #LinaKhan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:
The Lost Cause is my next novel. It's about the climate emergency. It's hopeful. $LibraryJournal called it "a message hope in a near-future that looks increasingly bleak." As with every other one of my books #Amazon refuses to sell the audiobook, so I made my own, and I'm pre-selling it on #Kickstarter:
The incredible #LinaKhan brought a long-overdue antitrust case against Amazon while her #DoJ counterpart, #JonathanKanter, dragged #Google into court.
The EU is taking on #Apple, and French cops are kicking down #Nvidia's doors and grabbing their files, looking to build another antitrust case for monopolizing GPUs. The writers won their strike and #JoeBiden walked the picket-line with the #UAW, the first president in history to join striking workers:
The second decade of the 21st century is truly a bounteous time. My backyard has produced a bumper crop of an invasive species of mosquito that is genuinely innovative: rather than confining itself to biting in the dusk and dawn golden hours, these stinging clouds of flying vampires bite at every hour that God sends:
This week, the miscellany begins with the first hesitant signs of an emerging, post-neoliberal order. The #FTC, under direction of the force-of-nature that is #LinaKhan, has brought its long-awaited case #antitrust case against #Amazon. I am very excited about this. Disoriented, even.
When was the last time you greeted every day with a warm feeling because high officials in the US government were working for the betterment of every person in the land?
The #UAW are on #strike against the #BigThree#automakers. #Biden should be roaring his full-throated support for the strike. Doing so would be both just and shrewd. But instead, the #WhiteHouse is waffling...and if recent history is any indication, they might actually come out against the strike.
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Progressives in the Biden administration have often delivered the goods, but they're all-too-often hamstrung by the corporate cheerleaders the party's right wing secured - think of #LinaKhan losing her bid to block the #MicrosoftActivision merger thanks to a Biden-appointed, big-money-loving judge:
Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. 40 years of declining worker power shattered the American Dream (TM), producing multiple generations whose children fared worse than their parents, cratering faith in institutions and hope for a better future.
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Shifting the norms - having the conversations - is the tactic, but getting shit done is the goal. The Biden administration - a decidedly mixed bag - has some incredible, technically skilled, principled fighters who know how to get shit done. Take #LinaKhan, who revived the long-dormant #Section5 of the #FederalTradeAct, which gives her broad powers to ban "unfair and deceptive" practices:
American support for #unions is at its highest level in generations, from 70% (general population) to 88% (Millenials) - and yet, American unionization rates are pathetic.
That's about to change.
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The work of enforcers like DoJ antitrust boss #JonathanKanter, #FTC chair #LinaKhan, and #SEC chair #GaryGensler is at the heart of #Bidenomics: muscular, fearless deployment of existing regulatory authority to make life better for Americans.
Of course, "existing regulatory authority" isn't the last word. The judges filling stolen seats on the illegitimate #SupremeCourt invented the #MajorQuestionsDoctrine and have used it as a club to attack Biden's photocopier-kickers.
#Enshittification isn't inevitable: under different conditions and constraints, the old, good internet could have given way to a new, good internet. Enshittification is the result of specific policy choices: encouraging monopolies; enabling high-speed, digital shell games; and blocking #interoperability.
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Meanwhile, #LinaKhan, the #DoJ and the #FTC are taking steps to halt the economic side of enshittification, publishing new #MergerGuidelines that will ban the kind of anticompetitive merger that let Big Tech buy its way to glory:
I was supposed to be on vacation, and while I didn't do any blogging for a month, that didn't mean that I stopped looking at my distraction rectangle and making a list of things I wanted to write about. Consequentially, the link backlog is massive, so it's time to declare bankruptcy with another #linkdump:
Yesterday, I wrote about why the #FTC and #LinaKhan were right to try to block the #MicrosoftActivision merger, and I heard from a lot of people saying this merger was the only way to check #Sony's reign of terror over video games:
But replacing one monopolist with another isn't good for anyone (except the monopolists' shareholders). If we want audiences and workers - and society - to benefit, we have to de-monopolize the sector.
My god, they sure hate#LinaKhan. This once-in-a-generation, groundbreaking, brilliant legal scholar and fighter for the public interest, the slayer of #Reaganomics, has attracted more vitriol, mockery, and dismissal than any of her predecessors in living memory.
She sure must be doing something right, huh?
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