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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."
We already have anti-trust laws. The primary point of them is to break up companies that are too big, or to prevent the formation of companies that are too big. The solution is to enforce those laws seriously not to add more laws on top.
I get that they want to put on a good show, but it's not like they actually have the votes to accomplish a damned thing without help from the other side of the aisle. I don't see Republicans actually supporting this idea. It just seems rather unlikely.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Amazon is making things cheaper and easier to obtain, but it is going to kill Mom and Pop stores. Is that "hurting consumers"?
I feel like that definition solely depends on much those big companies donate to Democrats.
Force Facebook to give up users to Google+ and MySpace. Maybe even bring back Friendster.
the party is stacked with "Corporate Dems" like Chuck Schumer & the Clintons who are really just Republicans that think pot should be legal, immigration is fine and maybe we should leave the gays alone (but don't let 'em marry, that's icky).
They're searching for an issue they can use to differentiate themselves from the Repubs. They can't do Medicare for All, College for All, End the Wars, real infrastructure bills (aka the "New New Deal") or even really end the war on drugs since their donors don't want any of that. So we get crap like this. Meanwhile they keep losing seats because what the hell's the point of voting for Republican Lite?
The Bernie Democrats (a wing of which is calling themselves "Justice Democrats") is trying to kick 'em out of the party. If you want to see the country move to the left you need to join 'em and get voting in your primary.
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In other words, we'll make life difficult for the companies which haven't paid us off, but will leave you alone if you are a big Democratic donors.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
On one hand, the companies this would be targeting are big enough to hold either de facto or explicit monopoly power, which isn't good for competition. On the other, in this new zero-slack, tiny-margin economy that looks like it's upon us, large companies would be the only ones making enough profit to pay their employees well.
I was just reading this article 2 minutes before reading the linked article. Companies that are being squeezed to the point where they can't make any more money are certainly not going to make life easier for their employees. If you optimize the system 100% and remove all inefficiencies, you could have a situation where nobody can provide enough value to sell their labor anymore. I know that sounds very Luddite-y, but IMO we're at the point where the vast majority of people can't simply move up the job ladder to the next better position when theirs is eliminated. There are too many people employed in middleman positions who will no longer have work, nor have any way to get new work.
Sure, no one wants monopolies with unlimited pricing power. But should the alternative be a hyper-efficient world where no one of average skill and intelligence can find work?
If by "protecting the American people", you mean the proto-fascist regulations from the progressive area and the WWII economy, guilty as charged and good riddance.
The "corporation" in Citizens United was a non-profit making a political movie critical of Hillary. That's what we are talking about here: non-profit political organizations engaging in political speech, not Coca Cola advocating for oil pipelines. That's what you and Hillary Clinton want to see restricted: political speech.
Much of what used to protect the American people has been torn away over the last 40 years. And now we have the ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which neither the Democrats or Republicans wish to address.
You mean the decision that the First Amendment was important enough to allow people to exercise their right to political speech despite unconstitutional attempts to restrict it? A decision that protected the First Amendment is tearing away protections? Huh?
Yes, those people happened to have formed a corporation, but by doing so they did not abdicate their First Amendment rights. And you might want to note that the same decision that said that the people forming the corporation called Citizens United had First Amendment rights said that people who form labor unions also do not give up their rights. It was a decision that took the venue of paid political speech away from exclusive control of the media and allowed the public to band together to pay for speech they would otherwise be unable to afford.
I'd argue if the DNC was serious about going after corporate behavior that harms Americans, there would be talk from the main-stream Democrats to deal with the Citizens United ruling,
Yeah, Democrats would get a lot of political mileage by angering the labor unions that spend a lot of money on political speech supporting Democrats, and by becoming the party that opposes the First Amendment rights of the people.
but I really haven't seen anything but hot air.
I've see a lot of hot air about CU vs. FEC, but I've also read the decision and know the truth. Trying to claim that CU hurts Americans is only one warm front amongst many.
What a troll. I don't think I've ever seen a better one. You tick all the boxes, referencing my post while ignoring it to make a nonsensical point that passes the truthiness test (Leftist gave us Trump, which is so silly I'm not going to bother).
You don't believe that if the Democrats ran a better candidate Trump would have lost? You can't run a basic Google search and find all of the Presidents, Senators, and Congress people and find their ideologies and influences? Oh, I get it. You just don't like facts.
You should go work for one of those Russian outfits that engineered the Trump presidency. Shoot Jared and email, I'm sure he'll meet with you (he meets with _everybody_). Say hi to Paul Manafort for me.
Oh, I see. It wasn't that Trump won the Electoral college with a better message for Middle Class Americans and looked cleaner than Clinton. It was all those damn Russians who did it.
You do realize that that narrative lacks any facts, and was completely dismissed by the Obama Administration's head officials right? Oh noes, more of those things called "facts"! Show me one single fact of Russia hacking the election. I will personally write my Senator, Congressional Rep, the AG, and President and demand that Comey, Kerry, and Clapper be tried for Contempt of Congress since they lied.
I'm pushing back against the Marxist tactics the far left has engaged in since Trump won the election, you are promoting them. Who exactly works for the Russians between the two of us? If you are lost on the "Marxist tactics", see how other totalitarian governments attack opponents and their families.
We can debate facts, but facts in political threads tend to be moderated "troll" on Slashdot. While your allergy to facts is bothersome to rational debate, it's actually sensible on Slashdot. FWIW, I'm not pro-Trump at all. That does not make me for the BS that the far left and media have been spreading for the last year.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The Federal Government is too big! So, we need to break it up. Tim S.
The shills are out in full force tonight.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes, the kind of people that actually represent what the majority of Americans want: small government, low taxes, individual responsibilty, and individual liberties. When the Democrats had more of those kinds of politicians, they were winning. On the other hand, when even a fairly tepid progressive like Hillary can't win against someone as unlikable and incompetent as Donald Trump, you'd think people would figure out that the problem with the Democratic party is their actual policies and directions. Yet, it looks like Democrats are going to double down on stupid and nominate a loser like Warren or Booker next time.
You're a bloody fool if you blame Republicans for that, but I guess that kind of folly and ignorance is typical for 21st century Democrats.
The majority of African Americans in the US are living under institutions and in communities dominated for decades by Democrats, Democratic policies, and businesses, civil rights organizations, and charities close to Democrats. So, there is institutionalized racism alright, but it is the creation of Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, simply don't give a fuck either way about African Americans or their problems.
in the rust belt and because Trump ran on a populist message while she ran, well, without one. She couldn't say anything that would piss off her corporate donors so she had to shy away from anything better than "we'll take a few percentage points off your college loans and let you borrow more money, and oh yeah health premiums are gonna skyrocket about 20% less". That's not a message _anyone_ could get behind. It didn't help that she was for TPP until it became clear it would cost her the primary.
Never mind the fact that the Dems should never has nominated somebody with 20 years bad press. But she could've weathered all that and won if she had just stopped being so damn arrogant and campaigned in the rust belt. She was off wasting time in Arizona while Trump's people were pounding the pavement in Ohio and Wisconsin. There's interviews with Dem party leaders in swing states talking about how they never once saw any of her people. When one of the key issues is that voters feel like their being forgotten and/or taken for granted and you're taking them for granted well, you're just out of touch.
Hilary was everything everybody hates about the Democrats. Not just in theory but in actuality. She's the real thing. A genuine right wing democrat. And just as useless.
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The fact that some old fucks decided it is speech does not change that.
That's not what the decision says. The decision comes to the quite reasonable conclusion that money is required to have effective speech. The days of someone standing on a soapbox for free in the public park being able to have his speech heard are long gone. It takes money to buy airtime and print -- money which the media has ready access to because they own the airtime and print, but which the common citizen does not because he cannot afford it. CU says that people like you and me have First Amendment rights to speak, and that we can combine our money (even under the legal entity of "corporation") to make our speech at least as effective as the corporations collectively called "the media".
This is a Good Thing, not the End of All That is Good And Decent.