Monopsony antitrust

[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.

[Jonathan]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/o ... wages.html

[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.

[Jonathan]

http://gabriel-zucman.eu/usdina/

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

[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.

[Jonathan]

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-no ... broken-up/

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

[Jonathan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/upsh ... -bank.html

[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.

[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.

[quantus]

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!

[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.

[Jonathan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... ad928db79/

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

[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?

[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.

[Jonathan]

https://newrepublic.com/article/156880/ ... hmic-greed

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