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Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:43 pm
by Jonathan
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opin ... wages.html
The antitrust division screens mergers for antitrust violations, but its guidelines do not even mention that mergers can reduce labor-market competition.
I've been arguing for this for a while since I lost a lot of wages to no-poaching agreements then received a four figure settlement as compensation.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 4:37 pm
by Jonathan

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 7:25 pm
by Jonathan
https://newrepublic.com/article/150938/ ... al-reserve

The Federal Reserve is having monopsony addressed in their public remarks.

The article ties patent law in there. I hadn't considered that before.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 4:09 pm
by Jonathan
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/usdina/

Only the top 5% have experienced average income growth year over year, since 1980.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 6:11 pm
by quantus
Without the government stepping in, or people creating/joining unions in massive numbers and not having the courts weaken them, I don't see this dynamic changing much. Citizens United has just been helping skew things further and it's a huge reason why the Supreme Court is such a big deal. People should've been more outraged over the behavior of the Senate in holding a seat open for a year to skew the court even more conservative and they should be outraged now at the obvious political moves being taken to just force another candidate through. I'm hoping that the current nomination falls apart, but I'm not naive enough to think that it actually will.

More systemically, I think this also goes back to people really not properly weighing what's in their best interest and just feeling that change for change's sake is good. Amplifying that minority voice is the electoral college and gerrymandering districts and voter disenfranchisement. Of course, it doesn't help that so many people don't vote either.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:29 pm
by Jonathan
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-no ... broken-up/

So far none of the declared presidential candidates have used the word monopsony.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2019 3:36 pm
by Jonathan

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2019 7:57 pm
by quantus
I was reading about what's fueling the stock market and keeping it from crashing. One interesting suggestion was the buybacks by the largest companies, which has been suggested for a few years now, but tacked on this time was the fact that the overall size of the stock markets is starting to contract, so while the indexes stay up, they don't really reflect the shrinking pie. A shrinking pie is just another sign of the privatization of the economy and is another driver of wealth inequality.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2019 2:52 am
by Jonathan
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/tech ... trust.html

Attorney general is calling out encryption. Sigh.

Justice department asking around about Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook.

Apple claims not to be a monopoly. This is probably true, except for the iOS software market. They sure as shit are guilty of monopsony, though. They have vast stranglehold on supply chains.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2019 9:19 am
by quantus
Jonathan wrote:Apple claims not to be a monopoly. This is probably true, except for the iOS software market. They sure as shit are guilty of monopsony, though. They have vast stranglehold on supply chains.
Especially if they end up buying Intel's modem team/ip!

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 2:04 am
by Jonathan
And.... There you go.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomb ... e-5g-plans

Apparently we still have 5g plans just not smartphone modem plans.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 5:28 pm
by Jonathan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... ad928db79/

Elizabeth Warren out here using the words "control the labor supply!"

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2019 8:31 pm
by quantus
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apples-ti ... ering-why/
[Cook] offered this philosophical thought: "A monopoly by itself isn't bad if it's not abused."
...
I used to think PG&E might be benign until it started to cut off my power while holding dinners and wine tastings. But Cook was presumably talking about big, good corporations as opposed to big, bad ones.
...
It's a painfully tech industry notion that you can be so good at something that no one can defeat you. Why is it, some might wonder, that Facebook is always trying to squish competitors not by being so very good, but by copying what they do?

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2020 12:50 am
by Jonathan
https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/23/2107 ... -vergecast
I think there’s broad recognition from Republicans and Democrats that this market is not functioning properly, that there is a significant absence of competition and strong evidence of anti-competitive behavior by the dominant platforms. And I think there is a real understanding and expectation that we’re going to do something about this as a Congress.
No mention of monopsony, though.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2020 3:34 am
by Jonathan
https://newrepublic.com/article/156880/ ... hmic-greed

Amazon getting nasty tweets from governors for price gouging, but no enforcement yet.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2020 10:30 pm
by Jonathan

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:04 pm
by Jonathan
When asked about each company on its own, 60 percent of Americans said they either “somewhat” or “strongly” supported breaking up Google, 58 percent said the same of Amazon, 57 percent said the same of Facebook, and 55 percent said the same of Apple. This is an increase from a year ago, when a previous IBD/TIPP poll found 48 percent of Americans supported breaking up Facebook, 45 percent supported breaking up Amazon, 43 percent supported breaking up Google, and only 36 percent said they supported breaking up Apple.
That's over the critical threshold.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 10:11 am
by quantus
What's the critical threshold? Is it 60% of the vote like in the Senate or 50% for some things like judges? Simple majority thresholds that depend on swings in sentiment that ebb and flow feels like a bad idea.

Until we break up internationally based companies like Samsung or heck, the Chinese government coordinated and supported national industrial complex, it's going to end up putting the US in a long-term disadvantage to break them up. I'm all for regulating them more closely to conform to laws that allow for worker's rights, consumer security and privacy, and limiting the lobbying and political power of money (free speech?! no way). Curb the power of these companies on our personal, social, political and economic lives for sure. I think this article is right on that we should be holding the lawyers and the politicians to the fire to clean this mess up. It seems like the EU is making more progress here and the US should pick up the torch and get back to being the guiding light to the world again on these issues.

Limiting corporate economic power to compete globally by breaking them up and diluting that power would be a mistake as long as the rest of the world allows giant companies to exist. It's kinda like economic nuclear war. These companies in general are pretty good at internally innovating and using money from one source to boot strap the next bets to become even more profitable. Alphabet has taken the step of splitting itself into separate companies already, which I think is a pretty good model that other super-large corporations could consider.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 6:56 pm
by Jonathan
I don't buy that for a hot minute. If it's really impossible for American companies to compete domestically with global behemoths of that scale, then the US government should institute capital controls and protectionist trade policies. However, I firmly believe that antitrust action only increases competition. Organizations in a competitive market will deliver better results than organizations in a monoculture.

Re: Monopsony antitrust

Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2020 6:25 pm
by Jonathan
https://www.wired.com/story/google-ad-m ... ck-market/

The case for antitrust against the Google AdWords program (presented without reference to monopsony).