#boss antitrust

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The GOP is not the party of workers

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/13/occupy-the-democrats/#manchin-synematic-universe

The GOP says it's the "party of the working class" and indeed, they have promoted numerous policies that attack select groups within the American ruling class. But just because the party of unlimited power for billionaires is attacking a few of their own, it doesn't make them friends to the working people.

The best way to understand the GOP's relationship to worker is through "boss politics" – that's where one group of elites consolidates its power by crushing rival elites. All elites are bad for working people, so any attack on any elite is, in some narrow sense, "pro-worker." What's more, all elites cheat the system, so any attack on any elite is, again, "pro-fairness."

In other words, if you want to prosecute a company for hurting workers, customers, neighbors and the environment, you have a target-rich environment. But just because you crush a corrupt enterprise that's hurting workers, it doesn't mean you did it for the workers, and – most importantly – it doesn't mean that you will take workers' side next time.

Autocrats do this all the time. Xi Jinping engaged in a massive purge of corrupt officials, who were indeed corrupt – but he only targeted the corrupt officials that made up his rivals' power-base. His own corrupt officials were unscathed:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181222163946/https://peterlorentzen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Lorentzen-Lu-Crackdown-Nov-2018-Posted-Version.pdf

Putin did this, too. Russia's oligarchs are, to a one, monsters. When Putin defenestrates a rival – confiscates their fortune and sends them to prison – he acts against a genuinely corrupt criminal and brings some small measure of justice to that criminal's victims. But he only does this to the criminals who don't support him:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/29/1088886554/how-putin-conquered-russias-oligarchy

The Trump camp – notably JD Vance and Josh Hawley – have vowed to keep up the work of the FTC under Lina Khan, the generationally brilliant FTC Chair who accomplished more in four years than her predecessors have in 40. Trump just announced that he would replace Khan with Andrew Ferguson, who sounds like an LLM's bad approximation of Khan, promising to deal with "woke Big Tech" but also to end the FTC's "war on mergers." Ferguson may well plow ahead with the giant, important tech antitrust cases that Khan brought, but he'll do so because this is good grievance politics for Trump's base, and not because Trump or Ferguson are committed to protecting the American people from corporate predation itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Writing in his newsletter today, Hamilton Nolan describes all the ways that the GOP plans to destroy workers' lives while claiming to be a workers' party, and also all the ways the Dems failed to protect workers and so allowed the GOP to outlandishly claim to be for workers:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/you-cant-rebrand-a-class-war

For example, if Ferguson limits his merger enforcement to "woke Big Tech" companies while ending the "war on mergers," he won't stop the next Albertson's/Kroger merger, a giant supermarket consolidation that just collapsed because Khan's FTC fought it. The Albertson's/Kroger merger had two goals: raising food prices and slashing workers' wages, primarily by eliminating union jobs. Fighting "woke Big Tech" while waving through mergers between giant companies seeking to price-gouge and screw workers does not make you the party of the little guy, even if smashing Big Tech is the right thing to do.

Trump's hatred of Big Tech is highly selective. He's not proposing to do anything about Elon Musk, of course, except to make Musk even richer. Musk's net worth has hit $447b because the market is buying stock in his companies, which stand to make billions from cozy, no-bid federal contracts. Musk is a billionaire welfare queen who hates workers and unions and has a long rap-sheet of cheating, maiming and tormenting his workforce. A pro-worker Trump administration could add labor conditions to every federal contract, disqualifying businesses that cheat workers and union-bust from getting government contracts.

Instead, Trump is getting set to blow up the NLRB, an agency that Reagan put into a coma 40 years ago, until the Sanders/Warren wing of the party forced Biden to install some genuinely excellent people, like general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who – like Khan – did more for workers in four years than her predecessors did in 40. Abruzzo and her colleagues could have remained in office for years to come, if Democratic Senators had been able to confirm board member Lauren McFerran (or if two of those "pro-labor" Republican Senators had voted for her). Instead, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Synema rushed to the Senate chamber at the last minute in order to vote McFerran down and give Trump total control over the NLRB:

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/11/schumer-nlrb-vote-manchin-sinema

This latest installment in the Manchin Synematic Universe is a reminder that the GOP's ability to rebrand as the party of workers is largely the fault of Democrats, whose corporate wing has been at war with workers since the Clinton years (NAFTA, welfare reform, etc). Today, that same corporate wing claims that the reason Dems were wiped out in the 2024 election is that they were too left, insisting that the path to victory in the midterms and 2028 is to fuck workers even worse and suck up to big business even more.

We have to take the party back from billionaires. No Dem presidential candidate should ever again have "proxies" who campaign to fire anti-corporate watchdogs like Lina Khan. The path to a successful Democratic Party runs through worker power, and the only reliable path to worker power runs through unions.

Nolan's written frequently about how bad many union leaders are today. It's not just that union leaders are sitting on historically unprecedented piles of cash while doing less organizing than ever, at a moment when unions are more popular than they've been in a century with workers clamoring to join unions, even as union membership declines. It's also that union leaders have actually endorsed Trump – even as the rank and file get ready to strike:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yz_Z08KwKgFt3QvnV8nEETSgTXM5eZw5ujT4BmQXEWk/edit?link_id=0&can_id=9481ac35a2682a1d6047230e43d76be8&source=email-invitation-to-cover-amazon-labor-union-contract-fight-rally-cookout-on-monday-october-14-2024-2&email_referrer=email_2559107&email_subject=invitation-to-cover-jfk8-workers-authorize-amazon-labor-union-ibt-local-1-to-call-ulp-strike&tab=t.0

The GOP is going to do everything it can to help a tiny number of billionaires defeat hundreds of millions of workers in the class war. A future Democratic Party victory will come from taking a side in that class war – the workers' side. As Nolan writes:

If billionaires are destroying our country in order to serve their own self-interest, the reasonable thing to do is not to try to quibble over a 15% or a 21% corporate tax rate. The reasonable thing to do is to eradicate the existence of billionaires. If everyone knows our health care system is a broken monstrosity, the reasonable thing to do is not to tinker around the edges. The reasonable thing to do is to advocate Medicare for All. If there is a class war—and there is—and one party is being run completely by the upper class, the reasonable thing is for the other party to operate in the interests of the other, much larger, much needier class. That is quite rational and ethical and obvious in addition to being politically wise.

Nolan's remedy for the Democratic Party is simple and straightforward, if not easy:

The answer is spend every last dollar we have to organize and organize and strike and strike. Women are workers. Immigrants are workers. The poor are workers. A party that is banning abortion and violently deporting immigrants and economically assaulting the poor is not a friend to the labor movement, ever. (An opposition party that cannot rouse itself to participate on the correct side of the ongoing class war is not our friend, either—the difference is that the fascists will always try to actively destroy unions, while the Democrats will just not do enough to help us, a distinction that is important to understand.)

Cosigned.

[robertreich]

Who’s to Blame for Out-Of-Control Corporate Power?    

One man is especially to blame for why corporate power is out of control. And I knew him! He was my professor, then my boss. His name… Robert Bork.

Robert Bork was a notorious conservative who believed the only legitimate purpose of antitrust — that is, anti-monopoly — law is to lower prices for consumers, no matter how big corporations get. His philosophy came to dominate the federal courts and conservative economics.

I met him in 1971, when I took his antitrust class at Yale Law School. He was a large, imposing man, with a red beard and a perpetual scowl. He seemed impatient and bored with me and my classmates, who included Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham, as we challenged him repeatedly on his antitrust views.

We argued with Bork that ever-expanding corporations had too much power. Not only could they undercut rivals with lower prices and suppress wages, but they were using their spoils to influence our politics with campaign contributions. Wasn’t this cause for greater antitrust enforcement?

He had a retort for everything. Undercutting rival businesses with lower prices was a good thing because consumers like lower prices. Suppressing wages didn’t matter because employees are always free to find better jobs. He argued that courts could not possibly measure political power, so why should that matter?

Even in my mid-20s, I knew this was hogwash.

But Bork’s ideology began to spread. A few years after I took his class, he wrote a book called The Antitrust Paradox summarizing his ideas. The book heavily influenced Ronald Reagan and later helped form a basic tenet of Reaganomics — the bogus theory that says government should get out of the way and allow corporations to do as they please, including growing as big and powerful as they want.

Despite our law school sparring, Bork later gave me a job in the Department of Justice when he was solicitor general for Gerald Ford. Even though we didn’t agree on much, I enjoyed his wry sense of humor. I respected his intellect. Hell, I even came to like him.

Once President Reagan appointed Bork as an appeals court judge, his rulings further dismantled antitrust. And while his later Supreme Court nomination failed, his influence over the courts continued to grow.  

Bork’s legacy is the enormous corporate power we see today, whether it’s Ticketmaster and Live Nation consolidating control over live performances, Kroger and Albertsons dominating the grocery market, or Amazon, Google, and Meta taking over the tech world.

It’s not just these high-profile companies either: in most industries, a handful of companies now control more of their markets than they did twenty years ago.

This corporate concentration costs the typical American household an estimated extra $5,000 per year. Companies have been able to jack up prices without losing customers to competitors because there is often no meaningful competition.

And huge corporations also have the power to suppress wages because workers have fewer employers from whom to get better jobs.

And how can we forget the massive flow of money these corporate giants are funneling into politics, rigging our democracy in their favor?

But the tide is beginning to turn under the Biden Administration. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are fighting the monopolization of America in court, and proposing new merger guidelines to protect consumers, workers, and society.

It’s the implementation of the view that I and my law school classmates argued for back in the 1970s — one that sees corporate concentration as a problem that outweighs any theoretical benefits Bork claimed might exist.

Robert Bork would likely regard the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts with the same disdain he had for my arguments in his class all those years ago. But instead of a few outspoken law students, Bork’s philosophy is now being challenged by the full force of the federal government.

The public is waking up to the outsized power corporations wield over our economy and democracy. It’s about time.

[valeriehalla]

at this point I just categorically have 90,000,000 times more fun on tumblr than the smoldering wreckage of twitter. like, twitter was already becoming kind of a drag for me before the hostile takeover, and now that cohost (hallowed be her name) is shutting down, it's like, well—i guess we doin’ tumbls again!! “it’s obviously the best one”

honestly, while the queer internet may never recover from the sucking wound that was and is tumblr’s NSFW ban—at least not as long as the united states of america continues to fail to take antitrust action against apple, google, and the payment processors collectively serving as the final boss of what’s allowed to be posted where on the internet—i’m starting to feel like tumblr is moving back into position as The Best Site For Artists regardless. my thoughts on this are half-formed, but it’s like this:

every other social media platform is either 1. tiktok, 2. hyper-obscure, or 3. slow-motion self-destructing to a degree way beyond even what tumblr inflicted upon itself in 2018. this is not a new sentiment i don’t think.

i think the fact that tumblr is unable to capture the literal billions of users every other platform is chasing makes it arguably a lot nicer for the users who are here. there is no way for an application to achieve a tiktok-sized install base that isn’t just naked manipulation and skinnerboxing. tumblr’s leadership seems either too incompetent to pull it off or too wise to try, and so we have what is effectively the last microblogging platform on the internet that’s actually still usable for microblogging.

also, a smaller-but-not-too-small audience is more engaged with what they’re seeing. simple as. a thousand notes on tumblr means more than a million views on tiktok and it always will.

of course, i am in fact making a living off of sexually-explicit art right now, and so tumblr cannot be my One Platform. i get away with it because the art is in service of a story hosted off-site, and so i never need to post The Whole Pussy on here; if i was exclusively an illustrator i’d be even less thrilled with the current state of things than i already ain’t. i guess this is just a testament to how truly bad The State Of Things has gotten, though. congratulations, tumblr: you really did win by doing absolutely nothing.

[mitchipedia]

Instead of defending American consumers and small businesses, Trump and his allies are going after the imaginary threats of "wokeness" and DEI.

Trump will prosecute predatory businesses, but only those who oppose him. Businesses that support Trump will be free to lie, cheat and steal.

[datamined]

Because it's relevant to the blog: TLDR; The United States' Justice Department have Google in an Antitrust lawsuit over it's ability as a monopoly to corrupt search engine results and more people need to understand what's going on and why this is important. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198558372/doj-google-monopoly-antitrust-trial-search-engine At work one of my bosses threw a fit (justifably) because Google is doing a lot shittier things with advertising and their algorithm than you think. I feel like most people know at this point that Google search results are essentially bunk- the top searches is influenced by how much a company directly works with and pays google. People bid to make their names or businesses at the top of the search results. But it goes a little deeper in that. Recently, I learned that top bidders do not actually get the top result. Why? Because Google wants to make it look less bad when Amazon always gets the top result for virtually anything you're looking for. Top bidders get second top search, the NEXT top bidders actually get the top spot. I could be wrong, but this is essentially my understanding of it at our office in super simple terms. But the biggest issue right now is that Google actually quietly (but significantly) raised their prices for bidding and nobody has any fucking say in it. This makes large corporations (such as Amazon) more likely to be only ones that can manage to take up these top spots, and smaller companies continue to get shafted because they simply cannot compete and Google is essentially stiffing the competition, so to speak, harder than ever before. BUT ON TOP OF THAT, my boss also found that Google is actively making it harder to find information about this and the incoming huge fucking lawsuits thrown at them. They're trying to make it difficult for their users (and basically, the entire world considering so many devices automatically use google search, as Google has deals with Apple and Samsung) to find out anything about their corporate greed and corruption. When searching for the same thing in a different Search Engine like Bing, the lawsuits are the first things to come up. It's huge fucking news but few people know about it or are talking about it. The results of this lawsuit are going to permanently and drastically change the internet and how people find their information.

[azspot]

I think it's safer to say that Trump will selectively target businesses for anticorruption enforcement – including antitrust – based on whether they oppose him or suck up to him. I think American business leaders know it, too, which is why every tech boss lined up to give Trump a public rim-job last week…

Cory Doctorow

[intensifyre]

Tariffs threaten to deal a double blow to small US banks

The recessionary effect on loans, along with the unrealised securities deficit, is the result of a toxic policy mix.

Inflation and weak growth are a bad mix for anyone, but especially for banks, and especially for smaller U.S. banks that are still racking up huge losses on fixed-rate bonds. President Donald Trump's attacks on global trade and his deficit-widening budget show just how painful this combination can be and revive a problem many thought lenders had dealt with.

Unrealized losses on Treasury and mortgage bonds became a big concern for lenders during 2022 and 2023, when a sharp rise in interest rates led to some failures, led by Silicon Valley Bank. Now, bond yields are rising again as recession fears grow. Market value losses on securities with realized losses from commercial property loans or small business loans would be worse.

There's plenty of reason to worry about the U.S. economic outlook after the House Budget Committee advanced Trump's tax-cut bill on Sunday and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant renewed tariff threats against uncooperative trading partners. Treasury yields have been in extreme volatility since early April and U.S. government debt has reversed most of the gains made in the first quarter of this year.

The value of unrealized losses on banks’ bond holdings likely narrowed in the three months through the end of March, though industry-wide data isn’t yet available. They worsened by a total of $482 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024, an increase of $118 billion from the end of September, according to the latest quarterly data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

For big banks, these underwater assets aren’t a problem, as partial losses have a small impact on their overall balance sheets, but for smaller lenders they can be more significant. Regional banks, small banks and community banks collectively account for nearly half of these losses, according to a new analysis published Friday by the Treasury’s Office of Financial Research.

Most of the losses banks are facing are on residential mortgage-backed securities, which have much longer maturities than Treasuries and other bonds owned by banks — 15 years or more. RMBS make up about half of banks' securities holdings but account for nearly three-quarters of their unrealized losses. However, the pain from these holdings will be felt most when combined with other potential losses, such as the rise in commercial real estate loan losses, the OFR found.

“While unrealized securities losses alone may not have a direct impact on banks, they can exacerbate vulnerabilities when banks face stress and may increase the likelihood of antitrust concerns for some banks,” OFR’s Jose Maria Tapia and Hashim Hamandi wrote.

Marianne Lake, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s consumer and community banking chief, told investors on Monday that even though confidence is waning, U.S. consumers are still spending at a relatively healthy rate. However, her boss, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, said markets were too cavalier about the prospect of inflation and said debt is currently a bad risk.

Small lenders came under tremendous pressure two years ago when the mark-to-market losses they were carrying on their balance sheets grew close to or greater than the amount of equity capital they held. That upset uninsured depositors and triggered a rapid run-up at several lenders, including SVB, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank.

Big lenders were less vulnerable in part because they have to deduct unrealized losses on bonds held in trading portfolios from their capital. That means depositors are far less likely to wake up one day and see a previously unforeseen shortfall in their bank's balance sheet.

The Federal Reserve helped end the 2023 short crisis by creating a special program to lend cash to weak banks in exchange for the full face value of their bonds — rather than a lower market value — the so-called Bank Term Funding Program.

If White House policies make inflation a reality, Trump will have to rely on the Fed to rescue small lenders — and end his presidency — with a similar program. He should think twice about upsetting Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.

“Investments in securities market are subject to market risks.”

Stock Market Today: Follow market trends and history offered by intensify research services and don’t assume that something will be different this time. The stock market historically provides long-term returns, allowing your money to grow more over time.

[thatstormygeek]

I think most people characterize a monopoly as kind of an economic thing or, you know, just a commercial thing. But really, a monopoly is a political institution. So, when we're talking about monopolies, we're talking about what is effectively a private government over a market, over an industry. If you're operating in a market which is monopolized, then you have a political boss who sets the prices, the terms of trade, who can buy, who can sell, and you're under their thumb. And yeah, it's your trade, right? So, it looks like the quote unquote economy, but in fact, it's really that a person or a firm has political power over you. And if you have enough monopolies in an economy, then at least in the commercial sector, which is a big part of our lives, we're not living in a democratic society. We're living in a society of a bunch of private governments — authoritarian governments over markets. ... There's a good quote from a plumber in the Wall Street Journal who said that, you know, the government can fine me, but Google can put me out of business because Google could take his business off Google Maps. They could change his ranking in Google search. And so, he was way more afraid of Google than the government. And that's because Google has governing power over the internet. ... So, what you have in a lot of areas — and in most, I think — is monopoly or oligopoly, which is just a small number of companies controlling a market, and [this] is now a systemic feature of the American economy. And it didn't used to be.

John Sherman, of the Sherman Antitrust Act, said that if we will not be ruled by a monarch, we should not be ruled by an autocrat of trade. He was very explicit about the link between monarchy and authoritarianism and monopoly. And they were using the term monarchy because fascism hadn't happened yet, but monarchy did exist. In the 19th century, Americans were looking across the ocean and they were seeing a bunch of kingdoms. There was a little bit of democracy, but that's what they were really looking at. And they were like, we don't want that. Today we would just say fascism, and we did analogize monopoly to fascism in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. It has always been foundational in America that concentrations of power are what we escaped, and they are not what we want here. And there's always been this tension because you do need to consolidate capital and effort to do great public works and to do great works in general. But how do you control the power of that? How do you control the power of industry? If you're going to put a billion dollars together to build a railroad across the country, that’s awesome. Now you have a transcontinental railroad. But who runs that railroad and controls the prices they charge, or the ability for them to charge different prices to different classes of people based on who they want to see succeed? Now, all of a sudden, you're talking about a political problem. 

[bopinion]

2024 / 51

Aperçu of the week

“Basically, it is always the connections with people that give life its value.”

(Wilhelm von Humboldt, Prussian scholar, writer and statesman who reformed the German education system in the spirit of Neo-Humanism)

Bad News of the Week

As we all know, genius and madness go hand in hand. No one is currently more archetypal of this than Elon Musk. It is one thing that he has used his business acumen and ruthlessness to achieve a level of wealth that the world has not seen since John D. Rockefeller. But it's another thing that he acts like a politician without ever having been elected to any office. Only recently, the “adviser to the US president” single-handedly and out of nowhere prevented a budget compromise between Republicans and Democrats and almost plunged the USA into a government shutdown.

With his commitment to Trump's re-election - with pleas in (his own and other) media, an estimated 250 million campaign donations and, above all, wise buddy advice - it almost seems as if he won the election. Not to say he bought it. Hateful comments are already referring to his boss as “Vice President Donald J. Trump”. Which apparently encourages Musk to let other countries benefit from his infinite wisdom too. At least their right-wing representatives. For example, Brexit idol Nigel Farage can apparently look forward to a 100 million US dollar donation to his far-right party Reform UK. Which at least does not have an immediate election opportunity ahead of it, as elections were only held in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland last summer.

The situation is different here in Germany, where elections are due in two months' time. And according to all election forecasts, the radical right-wing AfD (Alternative für Deutschland / Alternative for Germany) has been stable in second place for months with around 18%. And now Elon Musk comes around the corner and tweets “Only the AfD can save Germany”. In the debates that followed, one thing quickly became clear: he doesn't have the slightest idea about either Germany or the AfD. When I express a political opinion - as I do in this blog for example - it is well-founded on the one hand. On the other hand, it is a personal opinion. Musk, on the other hand, informs himself superficially at best, but still hesitantly dares to make a definitive analysis of the situation.

The problem is that a dazzling personality like Elon Musk is a role model, especially for those people who would not classify themselves as right-wing extremists but feel addressed by “Germans First”. A guy who takes risks, doesn't care about conventions and crosses boundaries. And in the end, his success proves him right. So I'd rather listen to such a refreshingly colorful parrot than the boring gray pigeon who calls himself a knowledgeable politician. Cover beats content. The political caste must finally understand this in order to stop allowing such shouters to exert such far-reaching influence.

Incidentally, the Standard Oil Company, the centerpiece of Rockefeller's wealth, was broken up in 1911 for violating the Antitrust Act. And it was all about excessive economic power. The first billionaire in history had probably simply failed to make the political system compliant in time. In 1915, correspondent J. M. Allison of the New York Sun assessed Rockefeller's life's work as follows: “[I am] a believer in the truth that there are only three perfect organizations: the Catholic Church, the Standard Oil Company and the German army.”

Good News of the Week

Unfortunately, Time magazine didn't ask me. Otherwise it wouldn't be Donald Trump who would be Person of the Year, but Gisèle Pelicot, a woman who a year ago nobody outside the Avignon region in the south of France knew. Pelicot's service to society is undoubtedly more valuable than Trump's - especially when it comes to respect for women. The weekly newspaper “Zeit” wrote: “Gisèle Pelicot does not want to be a role model and yet she is one - for her daughter (...) and for millions of women who have experienced sexual violence in their lives.”

For years, Pelicot was drugged by her husband and offered to rape at least 82 men on the internet. For years, she did not understand what her physical and psychological problems resulted from - because she was unconscious during the more than 200 acts of sexual violence. However, she conducted the trial against her husband with the maximum possible consciousness. And thus became a feminist icon. This is because she prevailed with her wish for her trial to take place in public. This “changed her role from victim to a woman who radiates strength and dignity”, according to the public broadcaster ZDF. There is now a consensus that Pelicot not only plays a major role in the #MeToo movement, but also for all people who find themselves in a victim role. As shame has changed sides.

At the end of the trial, there were not only solid verdicts against all (!) fifty defendants, but above all insights into how society can deal with taboo topics. “Rapist, we see you! Victim, we believe you!” was one of the claims chanted by thousands outside courthouses across France. This is thanks to the courage of a single woman who stood alone for so long. And yet, as President Emmanuel Macron wrote on the day the verdict was announced, she “moved and inspired France and the world”. Chapeau!

Personal happy moment of the week

We have a new car. After BMW unfortunately decided to discontinue production of its all-electric i3 model, the fourth version of that was no longer an option and we had to find an alternative. The Model 3 from Tesla was out of the question because of you know who. The Volkswagen ID-3 wasn't iconic enough for me, the ID-Buzz was too expensive and oversized. All Japanese cars seem rather boring to me, and I don't like the Chinese on principle (employee rights, unfair subsidies etc). Now it's a Mini Cooper. And because of the successful combination of go-kart chassis and electric drive, I can't wipe the grin off my face. Fun with a clear conscience makes me happy.

I couldn't care less...

...that there are people who feel cheated by the influencer “Immo Tommy”. Anyone who listens to a YouTuber on something as important as deciding on a real estate investment is even more naive than someone hoping to win the big lottery. The chance of winning is just as low. But the stakes are much higher.

It's fine with me...

...that the incumbent Minister President of Saxony will remain in office, even if Michael Kretschmer only heads a minority government (consisting of his conservative CDu and the social democratic SPD). Here, too, the AfD was the second strongest party in the state elections in the fall, but did not make it into government because the much-cited firewall held firm. And the fact that legislation now also has to convince members of the opposition on a case-by-case basis because their own coalition does not have a majority is not undemocratic either.

As I write this...

...the crooners are playing on the HomePods. For someone like me, who can't stand the typical Christmas songs from Wham! to Mariah Carey to Cliff Richard, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and company are an extremely worthy alternative, which in some strange way fits very well into this season, but is also stylish and sophisticated.

Post Scriptum

There are families in Ukraine who have lost everything but their hope. There are children in Gaza who are missing their parents and both legs. There are still people in the world who are dying of malnutrition. And even in our own neighborhood, there are people who lack the most basic necessities after a flood, for example. Especially at this time of year, when you stop and reflect, it doesn't hurt to remember how well off you actually are. And whether you can give a little of it to those who are not doing so well. With this in mind, Merry Christmas and thank you for every donation to a good cause.

[lisutarid-a]

[Gakuen K] Totsuka Tatara Route Translation

Hotpot boss

LIST OF CHAPTERS

[Translation under the cut]

Kusanagi: Yaaah, only a few hours left in this year, huh? Yata-chan, last spurt of cleaning. I'm counting on you.

Yata: Yup! Kamamoto, how are you doing?

Kamamoto: Everything is going well! Oh, Totsuka-san and the others are walking towards us from the other side of the street.

Yata: Ah, what's he carrying? Oi, no way!

Saya: Hello, everyone.

Totsuka: Yaaah, looks like you're busy cleaning up.

Kusanagi: The two of you are shopping together, huh? I'm glad you guys get along so well.

Totsuka: Right? I've got "that stuff". The rehersal was also perfect, so stay tuned.

Kusanagi: As for me, I'd like to ask you to go easy on me…. Well, sit wherever you don't get in the way of the cleaning.

Saya: What do you mean by "that stuff"?

Totsuka: It's a hot-pot set. Didn't we buy the ingredients earlier?

Saya: …But Kusanagi-san looked displeased about it.

Totsuka: Is that so? It looked like a big smile to me.

Totsuka: He told to sit, but there's still time before night. Maybe I'll also help with cleaning.

Saya: Me too then. I'll go sweep the entrance.

Saya: Ah, Yata-kun and Kamamoto-kun.

Kamamoto: Yata-san, tonight we're gonna have hotpot, hotpot! I'm looking forward to it.

Yata: Is that so? I'm not really.

Kamamoto: Eh, you don't like hotpot?

Yata: That's not the case, I eat it just fine. …But, it's New year's Eve hotpot, right?

Kamamoto: It is?

Yata: That's why it's complicated. Aaah-uuh…

Saya: (Complicated. What does it mean…?)

Totsuka: Attention! The 52nd National High School HotPot Championship is going to be held now!

Saya: Hotpot Championship…?

Kusanagi: It's finally started…

Totsuka: New year's Eve Hotpot…This is the perfect meal to end the year. The heart, culture and art of Japan…

Totsuka: This pot is filled with all kinds of blessings. It is no exaggeration to call it a microcosm!

Kusanagi: That's a huge exaggeration. If you're going to praise it that much, the pot would feel uncomfortable too.

Mikoto: Let's eat.

Totsuka: We can't, King. It's not boiled yet.

Totsuka: I'll manage this microcosm myself even though I'm not very good at it. I'll bring you the best taste, so just follow my instructions properly.

Yata: Here it comes, The Hotpot Boss….!

Saya: Hotpot boss…you mean, Totsuka-senpai?

Kamamoto: That's right. Totsuka-san has a terrible obsession with pots.

Kusanagi: I'm not going anywhere near it…Oh, Mikoto was about to attack.

Totsuka: King, it's not ready yet.

Mikoto: I'm hungry.

Totsuka: If you're starving, eat a salad.

Mikoto: …I think it's ready to eat now.

Totsuka: One minute left. I'm not giving up on this one.

Mikoto: …

Saya: (He talked down Suoh-senpai…!)

Yata: The Invincible Hotpot Boss…

Kusanagi: I think it's about time, Totsuka.

Totsuka: I guess so. Everyone, give me the plates.

Mikoto: What a pain.

Totsuka: King! I'll get it for you, wait!

Mikoto: If I leave it to you, idiot, it'll be full of vegetables.

Totsuka: If I let King do what he wants, he just gonna take only the meat.

Totsuka: Meat is a public property. Since it's required by antitrust law, I have to divide it fairly.

Totsuka: So just wait quietly, King.

Mikoto: …Tsk. I can't helped it.

Saya: (So the reason why everyone seemed to hate it, was because of this…)

Totsuka: Okay, this is for Yata.

Yata: What the hell if this! There is only chinese cabbage here!

Totsuka: It's not true. There is also a little peace of meat too.

Yata: Oh, for real! It's so small! Smaller than an eraser!

Totsuka: First, warm up your stomach with vegetables. The main course will be afterwards.

Totsuka: Fufu. Enjoy your last dinner of the year, everyone!

[Prev chapter][Next chapter]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me at NEW ZEALAND'S UNITY BOOKS in AUCKLAND on May 2, and in WELLINGTON on May 3. More tour dates (Pittsburgh, PDX, London, Manchester) here.

It's damned hard to prove an antitrust case: so often, the prosecution has to prove that the company intended to crush competition, and/or that they raised prices or reduced quality because they knew they didn't have to fear competitors.

It's a lot easier to prove what a corporation did than it is to prove why they did it. What am I, a mind-reader? But imagine for a second that the corporation in the dock is a global multinational. Now, imagine that the majority of the voting shares in that company are held by one man, who has served as the company's CEO since the day he founded it, personally calling every important shot in the company's history.

Now imagine that this founder/CEO, this accused monopolist, was an incorrigible blabbermouth, who communicated with his underlings almost exclusively in writing, and thus did he commit to immortal digital storage a stream – a torrent – of memos in which he explicitly confessed his guilt.

Ladies and gentlepersons, I give you Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta (nee Facebook), an accused monopolist who cannot keep his big dumb fucking mouth shut.

At long, long last, the FTC's antitrust trial against Meta is underway, and this week, Zuck himself took the stand, in agonizing sessions during which FTC lawyers brandished printouts of Zuck's own words before him, asking him to explain away his naked confessions of guilt. It did not go well for Zuck.

In a breakdown of the case for The American Prospect, editor-in-chief David Dayen opines that "The Government Has Already Won the Meta Case," having hanged Zuck on his own words:

https://prospect.org/power/2025-04-16-government-already-won-meta-case-tiktok-ftc-zuckerberg/

The government is attempting to prove that Zuck bought Instagram and Whatsapp in order to extinguish competitors (and not, for example, because he thought they were good businesses that complemented Facebook's core product offerings).

This case starts by proving how Zuck felt about Insta and WA before the acquisitions. On Insta, Zuck circulated memos warning about Insta's growth trajectory:

they appear to be reaching critical mass as a place you go to share photos

and how that could turn them into a future competitor:

[Instagram could] copy what we’re doing now … I view this as a big strategic risk for us if we don’t completely own the photos space.

These are not the words of a CEO who thinks another company is making a business that complements his own – they're confessions that he is worried that they will compete with Facebook. Facebook tried to clone Insta (Remember Facebook Camera? Don't feel bad – neither does anyone else). When that failed, Zuck emailed Facebook execs, writing:

[Instagram's growth is] really scary and why we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this.

At this point, Zuck's CFO – one of the adults in the room, attempting to keep the boy king from tripping over his own dick – wrote to Zuck warning him that it was illegal to buy Insta in order to "neutralize a potential competitor."

Zuck replied that he was, indeed, solely contemplating buying Insta in order to neutralize a potential competitor. It's like this guy kept picking up his dictaphone, hitting "record," and barking, "Hey Bob, I am in receipt of your memo of the 25th, regarding the potential killing of Fred. You raise some interesting points, but I wanted to reiterate that this killing is to be a murder, and it must be as premeditated as possible. Yours very truly, Zuck."

Did Zuck buy Insta to neutralize a competitor? Sure seems like it! For one thing, Zuck cancelled all work on Facebook Camera "since we're acquiring Instagram."

But what about after the purchase. Did Zuck reduce quality and/or raise costs? Well, according to the company, it enacted an "explicit policy of not prioritizing Instagram’s growth" (a tactic called "buy or bury"). At this juncture, Zuckerberg once again put fingers to keyboard in order to create an immortal record of his intentions:

By not killing their products we prevent everyone from hating us and we make sure we don’t immediately create a hole in the market for someone else to fill.

And if someone did enter the market with a cool new gimmick (like, say, Snapchat with its disappearing messages)?

Even if some new competitors spring up, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, these new products won’t get much traction since we’ll already have their mechanics deployed at scale.

Remember, the Insta acquisition is only illegal if Zuck bought them to prevent competition in the marketplace (rather than, say, to make a better product). It's hard to prove why a company does anything, unless its CEO, founder, and holder of the majority of its voting stock explicitly states that his strategy is to create a system to ensure that innovating new products "won't get much traction" because he'll be able to quickly copy them.

So we have Zuck starving Insta of development except when he needs to neutralize a competitor, which is just another way of saying he set out to reduce the quality of the product after acquisition, a thing that is statutorily prohibited, but hard to prove (again, unless you confess to it in writing, herp derp).

But what about prices? Well, obviously, Insta doesn't charge its end-users in cash, but they do charge in attention. If you want to see the things you've explicitly asked for – posts from accounts you follow – you have to tolerate a certain amount of "boosted content" and ads, that is, stuff that Facebook's business customers will pay to nonconsensually cram into your eyeballs.

Did that price go up? Any Insta user knows the answer: hell yes. Instagram is such a cesspit of boosted content and ads that it's almost impossible to find stuff you actually asked to see. Indeed, when a couple of teenagers hacked together an alternative Insta client called OG App that only showed you posts from accounts you followed, it was instantly the most popular app on Google Play and Apple's App Store (and then Google and Apple killed it, at Meta's request):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But why did the price go up? Did it go up because Facebook had neutralized a competitor by purchasing it, and thus felt that it could raise prices without losing customers? Again, a hard thing to prove…unless Zuck happened to put it in writing. Which he did, as Brendan Benedict explains in Big Tech On Trial:

I think we’re badly mismanaging this right now. There’s absolutely no reason why IG ad load should be lower than FB at a time when . . . we’re having engagement issues in FB. If we were managing our company correctly, then at a minimum we’d immediately balance IG and FB ad load . . . But it’s possible we should even have a higher ad load on IG while we have this challenge so we can replace some ads with [People You May Know] on FB to turn around the issues we’re seeing.

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/zuckerberg-v-zuckerberg-will-the

So there you have it: Zuck bought Insta to neutralize a competitor, and after he did, he lowered its quality and raised its prices, because he knew that he was operating without significant competitors thanks to his acquisition of that key competitor. Zuck's motivations – as explained by Zuck himself – were in direct contravention of antitrust law, a thing he knew (because his execs explained it to him). That's a pretty good case.

But what about Whatsapp? How did Zuck feel about it? Well, he told his board that Whatsapp was Facebook's greatest "consumer risk," fretting that "Messenger isn’t beating WhatsApp." He blocked Whatsapp ads on Facebook, telling his team that it was "trying to build social networks and replace us." Sure, they'd lose money by turning away that business, but the "revenue is immaterial to us compared to any risk." Sure seems like Zuck saw Whatsapp as a competitor.

Meta's final line of defense in this case is that even if they did some crummy, illegal things, they still didn't manage to put together a monopoly. According to Meta's lawyers – who're billing the company more than $1m/day! – Meta is a tiny fish in a vast ocean that has many competitors, like Tiktok:

https://www.levernews.com/mr-zuckerbergs-very-expensive-day-in-court/

There's only one problem with this "market definition" argument, and that problem's name is Chatty Mark Zuckerberg. On the question of market definition, FTC lawyers once again raised Zuckerberg's own statements and those of his top lieutenants to show that Zuckerberg viewed his companies as "Personal Social Networks" (PSNs) and not as just generic sites full of stuff, competing with Youtube, Tiktok, and everyone else who lets users post things to the internet.

Take Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, who explained that:

Instagram will always need to focus on friends and can never exclusively be for public figures or will cease to be a social product.

And then there was Zuck's memo explaining why he offered $6b for Snapchat:

Snap Stories serves the exact same use case of sharing and consuming feeds of content that News Feed and Instagram deliver. We need to take this new dynamic seriously—both as a competitive risk and as a product opportunity to add functionality that many people clearly love and want to use daily.

And an internal strategy document that explained the competitive risks to Facebook:

Social networks have two stable equilibria: either everyone uses them, or no-one uses them. In contrast, nonsocial apps (e.g. weather apps, exercise apps) can exist [somewhere] along a continuum of adoption. The binary nature of social networks implies that there should exist a tipping point, ie some critical mass of adoption, above which a network will organically grow, and below which it will shrink.

Sure sounds like Facebook sees itself as a "social network," and not a "nonsocial app." And of course – as Dayen points out – when Tiktok (a company Meta claims as a competitor) went up for sale, Meta did not enter a bid, despite being awash in free cash flow.

In Zuckerberg's defense, he's not the only tech CEO who confesses his guilt in writing (recall that FTX planned its crimes in a groupchat called WIREFRAUD). Partly that's because these firms are run by arrogant twits, but partly it's because digital culture is a written culture, where big, dispersed teams expected to work long hours from offices all over the world as well as from their phones every hour of day and night have to rely on memos to coordinate:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When Dayen claims that "the government has won the Meta case," he doesn't mean the judge will rule in the FTC's favor (though there's a high likelihood that this will happen). Rather, he means that the case has been proven beyond any kind of reasonable doubt, in public, in a way that has historically caused other monopolists to lose their nerve, even if they won their cases. Take Microsoft and IBM – though both companies managed to draw out their cases until a new Republican administration (Reagan for IBM, GWB for Microsoft) took office and let them off the hook, both companies were profoundly transformed by the process.

IBM created the market for a generic, multivendor PC whose OS came from outside the company:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

And Microsoft spared Google the same treatment it had meted out to Netscape, allowing the company to grow and thrive:

https://apnews.com/article/google-apple-microsoft-antitrust-technology-cases-1e0c510088825745a6e74ba3b81b44c6

Trump being Trump, it's not inconceivable that he will attempt to intervene to get the judge to exonerate Meta. After all, Zuck did pay him a $1m bribe and then beg him to do just that:

https://gizmodo.com/zuckerberg-really-thought-trump-would-make-metas-legal-problems-go-away-2000589897

But as Dayen writes, the ire against Meta's monopolistic conduct is thoroughly bipartisan, and if Trump was being strategic here (a very, very big "if"), he would keep his powder dry here. After all, if the judge doesn't convict Meta, Trump won't have wasted any political capital. And if Meta is convicted, Trump could solicit more bribes and favors at the "remedy" stage, when a court will decide how to punish Meta, which could be anything from a fine to a breakup order, to a nothingburger of vague orders to clean up its act.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/18/chatty-zucky/#is-you-taking-notes-on-a-criminal-fucking-conspiracy

[armchairsoapbox]

You vote for your ideal candidate in the primary, you vote in the general to limit the damage.

You get the Dems to move leftward by showing up in the primaries and making sure folks who care about your priorities — including fighting fascism — get elected and funded and have ground support within the Dem party. Go campaign, knock on doors, write and call your representatives, protest. You guys know you supposedly have all these civil rights for a reason right?

Also I don’t know “never take any actual meaningful action” maybe vote Dem anyway because one side is standing up for abortion and reproductive rights and not trying to criminalise trans folks out of existence, trying to protect unions instead of bosses, trying to fight big monopolies via antitrust instead of being all pally with them, lowering the fucking price of insulin and boosting Medicare instead of lining the pockets of pharma companies and insurers, etc. etc.

That doesn’t look like doing nothing to me.

Stop substituting hare-brained cynicism for actual thought.

Post that will get me labelled a psyop but honestly the moment that a party realizes that "you might not like us but you have no choice but to vote for us because otherwise the fascists win" is an effective way to rake in votes it practically ensures that they'll never take any actual meaningful action against the fascism problem. They gotta keep the fascists around bro they're their electoral strategy.

[mitchipedia]

News that got my attention today

Conservatives won the German elections but the far-right AfD doubled support.

What is Long Covid: A beginner’s guide. By Julia Doubleday.

Your kink is health care? Good luck, babe: When Chappell Roan spoke out to ask the music industry to offer health benefits to struggling musicians, the industry struck back to shut her up to protect their oligopoly. In the music industry, a few big companies dominate everything — recording, distribution, publicity and performance. Musicians and fans have no freedom to take their business elsewhere." [For] a capitalist society to function, there has to be competition. And if everything’s connected and all the interests are shared on one side, there’s no way to compete,” Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney said.

The New Antitrust Consensus: The Trump administration is maintaining the merger guidelines that Lina Khan co-authored, and big business is angry.

Hamilton Nolan: Don’t look for a governing philosophy in the White House and Republican Party — Donald Trump is a crime boss. “The goal of all this is not ‘remaking the government in a conservative image’—it is ‘if you want anything, you have to ask me for it.’ The rules that governed how the government works are tossed out and replaced with ‘Trump’s will.’ That’s how mob bosses rule.”

Sources: The Guardian First Thing, Pluralistic

[isfeed]

Threads was originally going to live inside the Instagram app

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is on the stand today in Meta’s antitrust trial. In trying to prove the social network is not a monopoly, he shared that the Threads app could have been just a feature inside of Instagram. Meta was working on built-in Threads features for Instagram first to compete with Twitter, which pioneered text-first social media apps. But Mosseri says the team made the “very…

[10bmnews]

Mark Zuckerberg defends Meta in social media monopoly trial

Lily Jamali Reporting fromSan Francisco Getty Images Mark Zuckerberg leaves court on Monday Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has taken the witness stand in a landmark antitrust trial to defend his company against allegations that his company operates a social media monopoly. His testimony is part of a case first brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2020 during the final days of the first…

[meret118]

Context on Zuckerberg going Nazi.