"A salient example of how monopoly power can infringe on core freedoms"

November 8, 2023 12:00 PM

Lina Khan, US Federal Trade Commission Chair, sits down for an interview with Adam Conover (podcast version) to talk about anti-trust reform and her high-profile battles against monopoly power in America. They discuss her influential article, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox", the New Brandeis movement, the FTC's new merger guidelines, and how monopolies affect everything from insulin prices to non-compete clauses to anesthesiology to big tech and more.
posted by ourobouros (18 comments total)

It was such a coup putting her in as the FTC Chair.

Next year if you have to endure people saying anything remotely like "both candidates stink," point to Lina Khan as an example and say "NO, they clearly aren't. People like Lina Khan in government are an important check to the bulldozer of monopolistic corporate interests, and Joe Biden stuck her in that role for a reason. NOT. THE. SAME." (those people may never bring politics up with you again, but that might be a feature and not a bug)
posted by mcstayinskool at 1:17 PM on November 8, 2023 [27 favorites]

Has she been successful with any of these cases? My understanding is she faces an uphill climb changing the way the courts see antitrust laws.
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:34 PM on November 8, 2023

Has she been successful with any of these cases? My understanding is she faces an uphill climb changing the way the courts see antitrust laws.

You have to start somewhere, and it is ridiculous that the legal profession looks to the theories of a man who committed one of the gravest blows to our system of laws for guidance on antitrust.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:04 PM on November 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm really looking forward to listening to this one!
posted by JHarris at 4:50 PM on November 8, 2023

I think a lot about the weird circumstances that led to the US government going after a company on antitrust grounds, on the e-book market, and it was: Apple. Because Amazon, despite being a de facto monopoly in the e-book market, hasn't used that position to raise prices (for end consumers), the law as it exists is like "good luck and have a nice day."

It makes sense in a legal lab-coat-and-tweezers sort of way, but at the same time, Amazon never facing antitrust scrutiny does also feel like it should be grounds for Appeal to Come On at this point
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:09 PM on November 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

(This is not to say that Apple did not necessarily deserve scrutiny for their own e-book behavior, but, like… Amazon is the proverbial elephant in the room here, y'know?)
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:38 PM on November 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Matt Stroller has been writing in this area for a while, and is a big fan of the work she has been doing.
posted by idb at 6:06 PM on November 8, 2023 [7 favorites]

The Lina Khan Effect: All the Cool Law Students Are Doing Antitrust These Days - "FTC Chair Lina Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter are cultivating foot soldiers for a potential antitrust revolution."
posted by kliuless at 11:22 PM on November 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

Because Amazon, despite being a de facto monopoly in the e-book market, hasn't used that position to raise prices (for end consumers),

Apple’s “illegal” prices were $5 cheaper per book than Amazon’s “legal” prices. And since there now isn’t Apple to tell publishers how much their books should cost, prices are now usually much higher than that $5.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 12:07 AM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

I often think of something that Thomas Watson Jr. said about his father (his father being the person who headed IBM during its growth to the monster company it was by 1960). It was during the government's antitrust suit against IBM when he said something to the effect that his dad "could never accept that you don't have to do anything wrong to be in the wrong" and that the government was only suing because they didn't think there was enough competition in their market.

As others have mentioned upthread, it's disgusting how warped interpretation of antitrust has become that the government seems to need to show collusion or price fixing or some other already illegal behavior before courts will honor antitrust legislation as written.
posted by Ickster at 12:33 AM on November 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

It’s bad for rule of law to have what should be a nonpartisan regulator take such strong political stances. The agency’s loses are all pretty brutal and have real costs for companies, employees, investors and consumers as potential acquisitions don’t happen because of the agency’s increased scrutiny.
posted by hermanubis at 8:51 AM on November 9, 2023

It’s bad for rule of law to have what should be a nonpartisan regulator take such strong political stances.

Please explain why it's bad, especially given that the current status quo is also a strong political stance especially given who promulgated it. This idea of regulators being "non-partisan" strikes me as laughable as well as a form of unilateral disarmament given that binding our hands will never bind theirs.

The agency’s loses are all pretty brutal and have real costs for companies, employees, investors and consumers as potential acquisitions don’t happen because of the agency’s increased scrutiny.

Why yes, that would be the point of the exercise, and it's being done because it's turning out that the past half century of consolidation has not been healthy for our society as a whole.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:54 AM on November 9, 2023 [8 favorites]

Yeah, I think Lina Khan only looks "partisan" if you think that the status quo is "non-partisan" -- and it is clearly not. A few decades ago, a group of self-interested actors influenced the FTC to stop enforcing existing anti-trust laws, causing measurable harm to citizens as well as businesses. On the harms to business...one example Khan discusses is that of chicken farmers, who have to go through 3-4 giant meat processors to reach their customers. Those processors have used their monopoly power to underpay, and in some cases directly threaten, these farmers. She also discusses numerous examples of monopolies using their power to illegally squash business competitors (while simultaneously overcharging customers and degrading quality of service). Monopoly power is not good for anybody but the monopolists. Enforcing laws passed by Congress to limit monopoly power isn't "partisan" -- it is the rule of law by definition.
posted by ourobouros at 6:05 AM on November 10, 2023 [10 favorites]

The podcast was predictably great. The whole thing was wonderful. It's great that someone who actually cares about antitrust is head of the FCC now, and is even willing to appear on shows like Factually, instead of the typical suit, or worse, the non-suit who's still been infected by their mindset.
posted by JHarris at 12:40 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

hermanubis Except she's not out there going "rah rah Democrats rule Republicans drool", she's just firmly in favor of what her department is doing. Are you arguing that we should have a system wherein people who run government departments take the public position that meh their department is ok they guess?

She's not partisan, she's anti-monopoly. As she should be!
posted by sotonohito at 5:43 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

I especially liked this point circa 7:30, where Khan makes a general motivating point out of an illustrative example of chicken processors coercing and even threatening chicken farmers who dared report concerns to government investigators:

In America we really value the first amendment, really value people's ability to speak up. Oftentimes we think about threats to the 1st amendment and threats to free speech as coming from the government side. Yet [in the chicken industry] we had a really salient example of how monopoly power and concentrated private power can also infringe on core freedoms and core liberties.

posted by daveliepmann at 3:33 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Are you arguing that we should have a system wherein people who run government departments take the public position that meh their department is ok they guess?


That has sort of been the trend among the last 20 years of Republican appointees to such positions.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:13 AM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

And it seems that Khan has hit a nerve as Mark Zuckerberg is suing to have the FTC declared unconstitutional.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:33 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]