Monopolies Suck

August 31, 2020
Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, debuts with a thorough look at how corporate monopolies negatively impact the average American’s finances, health, consumer options, and overall well-being. She sketches the history and process of antitrust law enforcement, then delves into the impact of modern-day monopolies on airfare costs, internet access, and food supplies. Streaming services such as YouTube and Spotify make a fortune in revenue yet pay musicians a pittance, according to Hubbard, while Amazon prohibits marketplace sellers from listing items that compete with its own products. These and other corporate leviathans also pay little to nothing in income taxes, Hubbard notes, leaving taxpayers to make up the shortfall, even as worker pay has only increased 9% since the 1970s (compared to a 940% bump for CEOs). Hubbard also details how anticompetitive practices in the health-care industry contributed to a ventilator shortage during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her suggestions for fighting monopoly power range from using the DuckDuckGo search engine instead of Google to proposing a law banning online platforms from competing against businesses that depend on them. Hubbard’s cogent, accessible analysis makes a persuasive case that unchecked monopolies have rigged the system against ordinary Americans. Policymakers and voters will want to take note. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA

September 1, 2020
The title says it all: The major corporations are milking us dry, and the problem is getting worse as they flout "the rules that democracies create to protect their citizens." How do monopolies suck? Let Hubbard, the director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, count the ways: They're anti-democratic, they crush competition and hamper innovation, they're destroying the planet, and so forth. "We blame the economy for our financial struggles," she writes, "but the economy is doing just fine. The problem is that the ultrarich are hoarding its spoils." The game is rigged from the start, though those spoils have been increasingly rolling into the vaults of the mega-wealthy ever since the Reagan years, when the interests of the middle class were jettisoned in favor of the predatory capitalism of today. Hubbard clearly shows how monopolies are established in numerous ways. For instance, in the matter of internet access, very few consumers have a choice between more than two providers, "meaning broadband providers can charge monopoly prices in most of America." Where municipalities have provided broadband, as in the case of Chattanooga, lobbyists have pressed to quash this "unfair" competition legally. In another instance, four leading poultry producers conspired to fix prices, costing families an average of $330 extra per year--and that's just poultry. Monopolistic corporations gather consumer data (see: Amazon, Google, Facebook), parasitize the economy ("Walmart employees make up the single largest group of food stamp recipients in many states"), and promote inequality and "inequities in our society, like structural racism and patriarchy." Hubbard's argument is convincing without being overbearing. Usefully, she also makes the case that monopolies have been broken before in American history (think Teddy Roosevelt's trust-busting) and that there are anti-monopolistic tools already available to federal enforcers--if only they would use them. A provocative call to restore economic competition by dismantling the ruling plutocracy.

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