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Sep 28, 2022

1. Walmart opened its first superstore in 1962, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that it (and other chains) exploded, killing local retailers & taking over. What happened? The government stopped enforcing a crucial antitrust law, the Robinson-Patman Act.

Boxed Out: Our New Report on How Big Retailers are Flexing Their Supply Chain Power to Kill Off...

Powerful retailers are killing off small businesses by dominating supply chains. Our new report argues it’s time to revive the Robinson-Patman Act and restore antitrust enforcement against predatory

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This is a good piece from

@jwherrman

about how Amazon's development into a "megascale infrastructure" company powering everything explains why shopping on its site is such a bad and weird experience.

nymag.com

Why Does It Feel Like Amazon Is Making Itself Worse?

The “everything store” has gotten junkier and more chaotic. But, for the company, it’s only good business.

Feb 1

And yet, even as retail gets worse and worse, our policy decisions are still made in this blind fog of "big companies are better and smarter!" "consolidation creates efficiency!"

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maya kosoff

@mekosoff

Jan 30

retail in 2023 involves choosing between going to walgreens and doing ur shopping by having a worker unlock each individual item for you from behind plexiglas, or trying to decide between IOCBYHZ, BANKKY, or KLAQQED spatulas on amazon nymag.com/intelligencer/

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Today, the

proposed a rule to curb excessive credit card penalty fees. We project that this could save Americans as much as $9 billion in credit card late fees each year. consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsr

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed a new rule to rein in excessive credit card late fees. The proposed rule would: Reduce late fees to $8 for most cases, End the automatic annual inflation adjustments for those late fees, Cap late fee amounts at 25% of the minimum payment. In 2020, credit card companies charged customers about $12 billion in late fees. If finalized as proposed, the rule could reduce late fees by as much as $9 billion a year. To learn more about the proposed rule and to share your feedback, visit consumerfinance.gov/CreditCardLateFees.

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Amazon Ordered to Face Antitrust Case Over Merchant Price Policy

Edward Ongweso Jr

@bigblackjacobin

Jan 31

one thing I want to work on this year is articulating that Silicon Valley’s vision and it’s financiers are unambiguously the enemy. The project they’re engaged in, knowingly or not, is antithetical to any world where human beings can truly flourish

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Edward Ongweso Jr

@bigblackjacobin

Jan 31

The entire business model of Silicon Valley is a vision for society managed by managers managing managers. Some of those managers are bankers, some are algorithms, some are venture capitalists, some are libertarian reactionaries, but this whole thing is managers managing managers twitter.com/unusual_whales…

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“Amazon Inc. lost its bid to end federal antitrust litigation in Seattle over claims that its ‘most favored nation’ policies for merchants have driven up prices across the internet.”

news.bloomberglaw.com

Amazon.com Inc. lost its bid to end federal antitrust litigation in Seattle over claims that its “most favored nation” policies for merchants have driven up prices across the internet.

Lubbock locally-owned discount dollar store, ‘Lucky Dollar,’ has grand opening celebration

Jan 31

I remember getting an email urging me to shop on Amazon from a local theater company (so they could get some pennies through Amazon Smile). The company's playbills were filled with expensive ads purchased by local businesses -- their main funders, all threatened by Amazon.

The worst was watching nonprofits send out emails encouraging people to shop on Amazon -- giving Amazon valuable ad space for nothing.

Good riddance, Amazon Smile. It was such a ripoff for nonprofits — for mere pennies Amazon got to marinate its brand in the good feelings that people have for their favorite charities and arts groups. Amazon got far more monetary value out of this than the nonprofits.

The two big Dollar chains have a predatory business model. But it doesn't have to be this way -- a growing number of locally owned and community-oriented dollar stores are on a different path:

everythinglubbock.com

LUBBOCK, Texas — On Friday, a new locally-owned dollar store kicked off its grand opening celebration with a ribbon-cutting. But the celebration will not end there. On Saturday, the store sai…

Jan 30

Big utilities have been blocking rural clean energy projects by forcing costly and unnecessary transmission line upgrades. This is a really interesting conversation about the cheapest way to convert to clean power (and why breaking the stranglehold of big utilities is key.)

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John Farrell

@johnffarrell

Who Needs Transmission? Our provocative podcast title ignores nuance in the quest for a clean energy grid, but the discussion does not: ilsr.org/who-needs-tran #energytwitter #transmission

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Demand Progress

@demandprogress

UltraViolet has the #ReproReceipts and 9 others

This morning, we sent a letter w/ ~40 groups to the White House calling for any replacements to

@superwuster

at the NEC have similar track records & a history of demonstrating firm commitments to anti-monopoly policy. The letter:

With this move, it's obvious that

@SpeakerMcCarthy

and

@Jim_Jordan

have zero intent to challenge Big Tech's market power. No one in the House GOP understands the impact the tech giants are having, particularly on smaller businesses, better than

@RepKenBuck

. Shameful.

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Emily Birnbaum

@birnbaum_e

It's confirmed: Rep. Ken Buck, one of the most fervent tech critics in the House, will not be the chair of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee. It will be Rep. Thomas Massie, who takes a libertarian view on corporate oversight. This is a win for the big tech companies.

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Opinion | Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?

's NYT Op Ed is making my blood boil. He is so bad at understanding the political economy of rural issues. No mention of how megacorporations have crushed these communities.

nytimes.com

Rural voters blame the wrong people, but their troubles are real.

By monopolizing online advertising, Google has been able to pick the pockets of local businesses and newspapers for years, to the tune of billions of $ extracted. Today the

@TheJusticeDept

moved to break up that monopoly. Our statement:

“Antitrust enforcers are again embracing their responsibility,” Stacy Mitchell Says of DOJ Lawsuit...

Mitchell proclaims in the statement, "Google actively extracts resources from communities that need them most and threatens a free, local press that lies at the heart of our democracy.”

Dina Srinivasan

@DinaSrinivasan

Many people don't realize that the largest electronically traded markets in the world are online ad markets. Today the DOJ filed suit against Google for illegally monopolizing them. This puts DOJ, half+ our States, and even Senators and Congressmen in alignment. 1/

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ron knox

@ronmknox

1. Hello. Today, the Justice Department filed a monumental antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing it of abusing its monopoly over the systems that control digital advertising. Here's

@ILSR

's statement, and a couple of thoughts on why this is important.

ron knox

@ronmknox

Testifying at this Live Nation/Ticketmaster hearing, Kathleen Bradish from the typically more reserved

@AntitrustInst

straightforwardly calls for for breaking up Live Nation. This DOJ recognizes that remedies that run counter to the company's own motives don't work.

4/4. It's long past time for the antitrust agencies and courts to restore strong enforcement against predatory pricing — they basically stopped treating it as illegal around 1993.

Issue Brief: Handcuffed by the Courts

Beginning in the late 1970s, a series of Supreme Court cases upended U.S. antitrust laws — laws that were once the linchpin of a comprehensive, democratic check on corporate power. This issue brief

3. Predatory pricing is a way for those with deep pockets (Amazon/Wall Street) to grab control from those of normal means (local pharmacies).

2. Time and again, this kind of below-cost pricing turns into higher prices and worse service once a corporation eliminates its smaller competitors.

1. Amazon is using predatory pricing in a bid to dominate another industry — pharmacy.

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Nathaniel Meyersohn

@nmeyersohn

“The set of generics in Amazon’s new program represent 32% of generic drugs in 2021, and is likely a loss leader for Amazon.” Amazon’s new $5 monthly generic drug delivery service cnn.com/2023/01/24/bus

For weeks, we've been racing to win corrections to the FCC's wildly inaccurate broadband maps — before it delivers $42B in federal funds based on those maps. The process was a mess, indicative of ongoing incompetence at the FCC.

@communitynets

explains:

Deadline to Challenge FCC Maps Highlights Failed Process

Last Friday was a major milestone in the process of moving $42.5 billion from the federal government to states to distribute mostly to rural areas to build new, modern Internet access networks. Januar

Institute for Local Self-Reliance

@ilsr

Why are broadband maps—records of which areas have service and which don’t—such a mess? One big reason: monopoly ISPs deliberately obscure the process to protect their territory. Hear the full story on Building Local Power:

Maps Can Make or Break Communities’ Broadband Futures — Episode 152 of Building Local Power

Host Jess Del Fiacco is joined by members of ILSR's Community Broadband Networks team: Ry Marcattilio-McCracken, Sean Gonsalves, and Christine Parker. They discuss the importance of mapping for buildi

The fact that state AGs challenged this in the first place is a breakthrough. But it's going to take some steady work over time to dislodge that ingrained ideology that financiers can do whatever they want, regardless of how destructive it is to our productive capacity.

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Washington state's Court says it's okay if Albertsons' private equity owners loot the grocer of all of its cash, leaving it arguably too wobbly to stand up unless it's allowed to merge with Kroger. winsightgrocerybusiness.com/albertsons/alb

winsightgrocerybusiness.com

Washington state's Court says it's okay if Albertsons' private equity owners loot the grocer of all of its cash, leaving it arguably too wobbly to stand up unless it's allowed to merge with Kroger.

Albertsons to pay $4B special dividend on Friday

Shareholders waited over two months as the payment, announced with the Kroger mega-merger, became entangled in litigation.

'It means the world': Local businesses to be vendors at governor-elect's inauguration

Every one of the 60+ vendors at the Pennsylvania governor's inaugural is an independent, locally owned business.

wfmz.com

One Black-owned distillery based in Allentown says it's a 'huge' opportunity to participate in the celebration of the state's new governor, Josh Shapiro.

Amazon Downplays Its Retail Might With This One Number, on Repeat

One reason Amazon's PR people are so well paid is their talent for keeping a straight face while peddling the idea that Amazon is really, really tiny.

@lhautala

unpacks the charade

cnet.com

The e-commerce giant won't stop pointing out that it's only 1% of global retail -- but advocates say that's sleight of hand.

Jan 19

Update: Success! Bigger than a cupcake, but perfect.

Hey, it's my birthday! There's a little bit of snow on the ground (wishing for more). I have a (so far) mild case of Covid. And I'm trying to figure out how to get cupcakes from the local bakery without leaving the house.

ron knox

@ronmknox

Jan 11

1. Hello. For years, the tabletop role playing game Dungeons & Dragons has become massively popular, largely because of fans developing their own content, characters and storylines. But now, monopoly power is coming to crush these user-created worlds - and its rivals. A thread.

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Opinion | Lina Khan: Noncompetes Depress Wages and Kill Innovation

Lina Khan

@linakhanFTC

Jan 9

Noncompetes undermine economic liberty. Evidence suggests they also suppress wages—even for people who aren't bound by a noncompete—and hurt innovation. In

@nytopinion

I explain why

@FTC

has proposed banning noncompetes from employment contracts.

nytimes.com

The chairwoman of the F.T.C. argues in favor of a proposal to eliminate noncompete clauses from employee contracts.

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Small Business Rising

@RisingSmallBiz

Justice Department Digs Into “Competition Concerns” in New England Fishing Industry

NEW PARTNER SHOUT-OUT: Welcome

@NAMA_NET

- a fishermen-led org building a broad movement toward healthy fisheries and fishing communities. Existing market strategies threaten the continued survival of small and medium-scale community-based fishermen.

propublica.org

Responding to a ProPublica-New Bedford Light investigation, federal attorneys have interviewed fishermen’s groups about the growing power that private equity firms and foreign investors wield over...

Squawk Box

@SquawkCNBC

“This is going to be a huge boon to the economy," says

@FTC

Chair

@linakhanFTC

on her proposal to ban noncompete clauses. "The American experiment is based on free markets and open competition and that’s what this will promote."

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McMullen's Market, a New Philadelphia landmark, closes after 75 years in business

"Please stay open" customers lament as a 75-year-old local grocery store — "known for its award-winning smoked kielbasa, boneless ham, ring bologna and bratwurst" — closes, citing market conditions that make it hard for independents to survive.

finance.yahoo.com

Jan. 1—NEW PHILADELPHIA — When William "Bill" McMullen was on the Saint Clair High School football team in the 1970s, he would come home from practice and go right to work in his father's grocery...

Dollar Tree employee murdered with machete inside store, police say

The violence at chain dollar stores is truly horrifying— and it's a result of a deliberate corporate decision not to implement the basic safety features of other retailers. These stores are targets, by design, and their staff and customers endangered.

kwch.com

A man is accused of murdering a Dollar Tree employee with a machete inside an Upper Sandusky, Ohio store on New Year’s Day, the city’s police chief told 13abc.

In 1978, RAIN Magazine wrote that

@ilsr

“puts hard numbers on soft dreams.” Back then ILSR was showing that fast-food chains suck $ out of cities, that much of our garbage could be recycled & that rooftop solar was viable. David Morris tells the story:

Shifting the Paradigm, One Community at a Time

For our final Building Local Power episode of 2022, we invited Co-Founder, David Morris, to offer a history lesson on the self-reliance framework that underpins ILSR’s work. He discusses how that fr

The

could help improve solar deployment, take advantage of #InflationReductionAct, and reduce #UtilityShutoffs by requiring better data on interconnection and from utilities: ilsr.org/feds-should-co #SolarMarketData #DataSharingIsCaring

Feds Should Collect Better Data for Fairer Markets and Energy Justice

Today the Institute for Local Self-Reliance was joined by joined by 24 utility justice, consumer advocate, and environmental organizations in submitting comments urging the Energy Information Administ

What banning noncompetes could mean for the US workforce

Vox

@voxdotcom

Jan 5

What banning noncompetes could mean for the US workforce

vox.com

Lina Khan’s FTC wants to change how we think about anti-competitive behavior.