Monopoly

How Amazon Destroys The Intellectual Justifications For Capitalism

December 28, 2020 Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs. Educate! Amazon, Corporate Power, Monopoly, Neo-feudalism

Amazon doesn't fit comfortably within the free-market fable of how capitalism is supposed to operate. We are, in theory, supposed to get freedom, competition, the reward of innovation, the elimination of all-powerful centralized bureaucracy. But consider this recent Wall Street Journal report on how Amazon destroys its competitors. Essentially, because Amazon is gigantic and has vast sums of money at its disposal, it does not need to “innovate” the same way smaller companies do. It can simply lift the innovations of others, and because it can undercut their prices, it can put them out of business. The Journal cites a number of examples.

How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism

August 30, 2020 Cory Doctorow, One Zero. Strategize! Big Tech, Capitalism, Mass Surveillance, Monopoly

Figuring out what we want our tech to look like is crucial if we’re going to get out of this mess. Today, we’re at a crossroads where we’re trying to figure out if we want to fix the Big Tech companies that dominate our internet or if we want to fix the internet itself by unshackling it from Big Tech’s stranglehold. We can’t do both, so we have to choose. I want us to choose wisely. Taming Big Tech is integral to fixing the internet, and for that, we need digital rights activism.

GateHouse’s Takeover of Gannett: Bad News for Journalism and the Planet

August 25, 2019 Janine Jackson, FAIR Educate! Media, Monopoly

Gannett—the largest newspaper publisher in the country, as measured by total daily circulation—has merged with GateHouse Media, owned by Wes Edens’ New Fortress Investment Group, which also owns New Fortress Energy, which deals in natural gas. The merger is terrible for the usual journalistic reasons: This sort of consolidation means fewer resources for reporting, usually fewer reporters, and less informed attention to local affairs. As for the fossil fuel connection, it’s maybe not so much what it means for USA Today as for the 666 other publications involved nationwide. Like in Florida, where as New Fortress, Edens owns a liquefied natural gas export terminal, with big eyes on Puerto Rico, and as GateHouse, he owns 31 publications, including four newly acquired Gannett papers.

Tulsi Gabbard Vs Google Goliath

August 7, 2019 Rick Sterling, Blackagendareport.com Resist! Censorship, Google, Monopoly

"Google creates, operates, and controls its platform and services, including but not limited to Google Search, Google Ads, and Gmail as a public forum or its functional equivalent by intentionally and openly dedicating its platform for public use and public benefit, inviting the public to utilize Google as a forum for free speech. Google serves as a state actor by performing an exclusively and traditionally public function by regulating free speech within a public forum and helping to run elections." (p22)

New Report: Walmart’s Monopolization Of Local Grocery Markets

June 28, 2019 Stacy Mitchell, Ilsr.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, Monopoly, New Economy, Walmart

Our findings illustrate the failure of contemporary antitrust policy. For nearly four decades, the two agencies that enforce the antitrust laws, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, have given corporations like Walmart a free hand to use their size and financial might to consolidate markets. This lax approach was supposed to generate widespread benefits for Americans. Instead, it has left a remarkable number of places without a competitive market for even the most basic of daily needs.

Time To Break Up The 21st Century Tech Trusts

June 17, 2019 David Rosen, Counterpunch.org Create! Corporations, Monopoly, Technology

On June 11th, the House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation into the market dominance of the four leading “big-tech” companies — Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon. Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), who oversees the subcommittee hearing, proclaimed, “these are monopolies,” warning that they dominate the digital marketplace and it might be time for new legislation to increase competition. “We know the problems; they’re easy to diagnose,” Cicilline said. “Shaping the solutions is going to be more difficult.”

Duke Energy’s Monopoly Power Faces Challenges In Southern States

March 5, 2019 Sue Sturgis, Portside.org Organize! Duke Energy, Energy, Monopoly

A newly-formed coalition of advocacy groups has launched a campaign to end Duke Energy's longstanding monopoly control over most of North Carolina's electric system in hopes that permitting competition among power generators would hasten the shift to clean energy and bring pollution relief to vulnerable communities. The members of the Energy Justice NC coalition include local, regional, and national environmental and social justice organizations. Among them are 350.org, Appalachian Voices, Center for Biological Diversity, Down East Coal Ash Coalition, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, and the NC Environmental Justice Network.

Attacking Monopoly Power Can Be Stunningly Good Politics, Survey Finds

December 14, 2018 David Dayen, Theintercept.com Strategize! Corporations, Monopoly, Regulation

ON MONDAY, THE Open Markets Institute released new evidence of increased corporate concentration in 32 different industries, from cellphone providers (where four firms control 98 percent of the market) to peanut butter (four firms control 92 percent). The data, which has gone uncollected by the federal government since President Ronald Reagan’s Federal Trade Commission stopped the practice in 1981, came from a private industry analyst called IBISWorld. Open Markets intended to publicize the data to show the enormity of America’s monopoly problem. But never-before-seen polling obtained by The Intercept suggests that the public already knows about, and is gravely concerned by, the concentration of economic power in fewer and fewer hands.

Body-Cam Giant Snaps Up Its Biggest Rival To Create Near-Monopoly

May 8, 2018 Cyrus Farivar, Arstechnica.com Educate! Body Cameras, Monopoly, Police

Axon, the company formerly known as Taser, has acquired its largest rival, VieVu—setting up a near-monopoly in the market for body-worn cameras. While Axon already has contracts with most large cities in America, VieVu beat out Axon for a number of large contracts, including those for the New York Police Department, the Miami-Dade Police Department, and the Phoenix Police Department, among others. Last year, Axon got even more aggressive in pursuing its industry dominance by offering any American law enforcement agency free body cameras and a year’s worth of access to the company’s cloud storage service, Evidence.com. Digital Ally, now one of the company's smaller rivals, did not respond to Ars’ request for comment. While the prevalence of body-worn cameras is accelerating, they are still far from ubiquitous.

The Bayer-Monsanto Merger Is Bad News For The Planet

April 10, 2018 Ellen Brown, Ellenbrown.com Educate! Merger, Monopoly, Monsanto, Pesticides

Two new studies from Europe have found that the number of farm birds in France has crashed by a third in just 15 years, with some species being almost eradicated. The collapse in the bird population mirrors the discovery last October that over three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have vanished in just three decades. Insects are the staple food source of birds, the pollinators of fruits, and the aerators of the soil. The chief suspect in this mass extinction is the aggressive use of neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly imidacloprid and clothianidin, both made by German-based chemical giant Bayer. These pesticides, along with toxic glyphosate herbicides (Roundup), have delivered a one-two punch against Monarch butterflies, honeybees and birds.

New Brandeis Movement: Principles Of Antimonopoly Debate

March 30, 2018 Lina Khan, Academic.oup.com Strategize! Monopoly, New Economy, Supreme Court

Over the last two years, a growing number in America have concluded that the United States has a monopoly problem. The Obama Administration’s Council of Economic Advisers linked rising market power with inequality and other ills, top Senators have called for reinvigorating competition policy, and the Democratic Party has identified antitrust enforcement as a key pillar of its economic agenda. This recognition is important because seeing and understanding the problem is the first step to addressing it. In some ways the renewed attention in the USA echoes conversations in Europe, where the antitrust community is debating whether and to what degree competition law should embody values of fairness.

Amazon Is A 21st-Century Digital Chain Gang

February 9, 2018 By Marshall Auerback / AlterNet.org Educate! Amazon, Capitalism, Monopoly

When Amazon announced plans to locate a $5 billion, 50,000-employee complex as its second headquarters somewhere in North America, state governments and municipalities fell over themselves offering billions of dollars in tax abatements and corporate subsidies to secure the prize. It might behoove the remaining 20 cities that have made the final cut to heed the warning from Virgil’s Aeneid: “I fear the Greeks, even when they are bearing gifts.” Especially when the gifts come in the form of a modern-day digital chain gang. Amazon likes to see itself as a cutting-edge, 21st-century growth company, always working to expedite delivery to its customers, whether by means of a drone, or eliminating queueing and bagging at its newly acquired Whole Foods stores with a new smartphone app.

Fragmented Health System Paves Way For CVS-Aetna Merger

November 11, 2017 Aaron Mate, www.therealnews.com Educate! Health Care, Health Insurance, Merger, Monopoly

By Aaron Mate for The Real News. It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Maté. In what is being called the biggest merger in the history of the health insurance industry, CVS is reportedly making a $66 billion bid to buy Aetna. CVS operates pharmacies all over the country, while Aetna sells health insurance policies. Now, the cost of both pharmaceutical drugs and health insurance plans are already sky high, so could a merger of these two giants make those prices even higher? Joining me is Bill Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Welcome, Bill. So, your thoughts on this potential merger.

To Address Inequality, Let’s Take On Monopolies

September 26, 2017 Barry Lynn and Kevin Carty, www.inequality.org Educate! Inequality, Monopoly, Workers

By Barry Lynn and Kevin Carty for Inequality - Most Americans know that our country has become extremely unequal. They may not know that the richest 0.1% of Americans own as much wealth as the bottom 90%, or that the richest one percent took more than half of all income growth since 1979. But they know that the rich benefit more and more nowadays, while middle and working class families take home less and less. Our team at the Open Markets Institute is dedicated to investigating and publicizing the radical concentrations of wealth — and of power — that are responsible for creating much of this extreme inequality. Through investigative journalism and historical and legal research we have shown that monopoly power is at the root of many of the most pressing injustices in America today—including degraded jobs, depressed entrepreneurship, financial instability, and the weakening of the economic and social fabric of communities all across the country. Last month, our team of ten people was forced to leave our long-time home at a well-known Washington think tank. We were pushed out for expressing support for an antitrust decision against Google, a tech monopoly that is also one of that think tank’s largest funders.

Time To Fight Health-Care Monopolization

July 10, 2017 Phillip Longman, www.democracyjournal.org Educate! ACA, Health Care, Monopoly

By Phillip Longman for Democracy Journal - Compared to the discourse in the other party’s nomination process, the debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over health-care reform may have seemed thoughtful and on point. Clinton argued that Sanders’s “Medicare for all” plan was too expensive to ever become law and was also a threat to the progress achieved by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Sanders criticized Clinton for compromising the progressive goal of a single-payer system that would make health care a right. Eventually, Clinton moved Sanders’s way a bit, announcing in May that she had her own plan for letting people buy into Medicare, and then in July that she supported a public option insurance plan. Unfortunately, however, both sides scored mostly moot points, because both ignored a mega-trend in the business of health care: its increasing control by corporate monopolies. The massive increase in concentrated ownership occurring throughout the health-care sector could, at least in theory, lead to better coordinated care delivered at lower prices. This is the supposition behind key provisions of the ACA that directly and indirectly encourage health-care providers to merge. But experience has shown that consolidation, far from “bending the cost curve,” instead leads to higher prices, for the simple reason that mergers reduce competition.

«1 2 3 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources