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Democrats Propose New Competition Laws That Would 'Break Up Big Companies If They're Hurting Consumers' (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Senate and House Democratic leaders today proposed new antitrust laws that could prevent many of the biggest mergers and break up monopolies in broadband and other industries. "Right now our antitrust laws are designed to allow huge corporations to merge, padding the pockets of investors but sending costs skyrocketing for everything from cable bills and airline tickets to food and health care," US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. "We are going to fight to allow regulators to break up big companies if they're hurting consumers and to make it harder for companies to merge if it reduces competition." The "Better Deal" unveiled by Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was described in several documents that can be found in an Axios story. The plan for "cracking down on corporate monopolies" lists five industries that Democrats say are in particular need of change, specifically airlines, cable and telecom, the beer industry, food, and eyeglasses. The Democrats' plan for lowering the cost of prescription drugs is detailed in a separate document. The Democrats didn't single out any internet providers that they want broken up, but they did say they want to stop AT&T's proposed $85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner: "Consolidation in the telecommunications is not just between cable or phone providers; increasingly, large firms are trying to buy up content providers. Currently, AT&T is trying to buy Time Warner. If AT&T succeeds in this deal, it will have more power to restrict the content access of its 135 million wireless and 25.5 million pay-TV subscribers. This will only enable the resulting behemoths to promote their own programming, unfairly discriminate against other distributors and their ability to offer highly desired content, and further restrict small businesses from successfully competing in the market."
What's the problem with wealth accumulation?
Six thousand years of historical examples.
Somehow Democrats and Obama did this while Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.[1]
The DOJ, FCC, and FTC are executive branch agencies, controlled by the Chief Executive. A decision by the DOJ not to prosecute under anti-trust law, or the FTC/FCC to allow a merger, are executive branch decisions.
Republicans controlled the House for the last six of Obama's eight years in office, and the Senate for the last two.
And every time they tried to oppose something Obama wanted they were called racist or obstructionist.
As the saying goes, capitalism is a deeply flawed system but it beats anything else that's been tried.
The economic defense of capitalism is premised on the ubiquity of competitive markets, providing for the rational allocation of scarce resources and justifying the existing distribution of incomes. The political defense of capitalism is that economic power is diffuse and cannot be aggregated in such a manner as to have undue influence over the democratic state. Both of these core claims for capitalism are demolished if monopoly, rather than competition, is the rule.
If you think power is easier to abuse in government than it is in a corporation or private individual with a few billions, you really haven't been paying attention.
If you think corporate regulation is bad, have a look at all the red tape the bureaucracy has to fight through to get anything done. Have a look at all the public scrutiny on the higher levels of government. Have a look at how many people have to sign off on everything for even inconsequential actions.
There's no need for elections, no worries about limited terms, and public opinion is almost irrelevant to any diversified individual or corporation. And if they want more power than their money already gives them, they can lobby to get the rules changed to suit them more, or simply move to a more favourable jurisdiction.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?