You for coming on to discuss monopolies suck. Its a very timely book because the issues you write about in the book, the power of dominant companies in the u. S. Economy and the impact on workers and consumers and citizens is really a very hot topic in economics and policy making right now. And we will see but could play a big role in the incoming Biden Administration. So i thought we should begin with sort of the big picture about, that you lay out in the book. I think when people hear the title they might say of course, no one likes monopolies, no one likes dealing with monopolies. The religious book is about a bigger issue. You are warning about a warring trends across the economy that i think many people may not fully understand. I think you could maybe first set the scene for us and describe what you see happening. Guest first, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today about this book, and thank you to cspan for having here to talk about it as well. We all know monopolies suck, right . Thats not a surprise for anyone but whats been happening over the last several decades is our economy has engaged highly very consummate and its been consolidation on an ongoing basis that led to basically every major sector of our economy being run by just a few companies. We hear a lot about bit tech monopolies, but no matter what youre talking about tech or food or agriculture, named industry, youre going to have a monopoly problem. In the book and talk about monopolies but also talking about what are called duopoly where we had two companies that rule and industry and oligopolies are your three companies for a few companies that rule and industry because basically you do not have robust competition when you have only a few players, and there are a whole lot of harms that flow from that and i wanted to highlight to readers to let them understand what it means for their everyday life and how it affects them and underlined a lot of their pain experience on a daily basis. Host right. So it is as you write about across the economy, its our cable service, Tech Companies, but also healthcare, airlines, meaning many industries. Can you talk about how they got to this point . You sort of explain there was this revolution in economic thinking several decades ago around competition. Can you explain just how we got to this point in the economy . Sure. Antitrust laws we have been the United States have been around for a very long time. The main laws on the sherman act and that was passed back in 1898, and with some pretty good antitrust enforcement for many decades. We had a pretty deep concentrated economy for a large part of our history after we overcame the first gilded age. Really it started to get rolled back around the early 80s. It was the rise of the Chicago Schools, economics, and we know its all so known as neoliberalism, and kind of the takeover of antitrust law to change what is supposed to be focusing on. Antitrust laws, its all about making sure we dont have concentrated power, making sure the markets are functioning really. But what the Chicago Schools of economics did was they really only care about are making sure corporations are efficient. If corporations are efficient they will pass on those efficiencies to consumers in the form of lower prices. Consumers are going to benefit and so thats going to be what we look at when were deciding whether any company of violating antitrust laws either acquiring a company that it shouldnt acquire or heating in an anticompetitive manner to exclude competition. The cats is going to be will this be efficient and will that lead to lower prices for consumers . Unfortunately all these years later we found that this focus on efficiency thats not, in fact, lead to lower prices for consumers. What its done is justified every kind of anticompetitive behavior and acquisition as making basically bigger and better and if corporations become a streamlined, efficient machine by getting bigger and bigger. But actually no one is benefiting from this. Consumers are not benefiting. The only people who are benefiting from these super sizing of our corporations i really executives and major shareholders. Thats kind of how we got where we are. The antitrust laws have weakened by the courts as the court adopted this thinking of the Chicago School of economics and really rolled back the way the antitrust laws were being enforced. Right. Host right. So the Chicago School to go for a lot of thinking, even during democratic administrations come certainly during republican administrations. Right now what i think is interesting is theres a bit of counter revolution going on thats taken over in the last few years. I do notice on the bookshelf behind you, you have a number of books about this issue, break them up, monopolize. And your book of course. I wonder if you could explain a little bit about this pushback that has cropped up. Because i think in the last probably just three or four years, very recent, that theres been a real pushback thats actually created momentum in the other direction. Guest thats right. The authors of these books are all my friends. We are small but mighty movement. We are not a huge and well resourced despite some articles have come up recently claiming that, but i really have to give credit to the organization where i work now, the open markets institute. Its been this for, i mean, my director has been at this for a long time back in 2005 i believe it was he wrote his book called the inn of the line where he was predicting we would have shortages in the event of a pandemic because of consolidation of the supply chain. He started to open markets institute. First it was at new America Foundation but when they put out a statement criticizing google, they were ousted from the new America Foundation which was partly funded by google. They had been at it like i said for the better part of a decade, and finally its reached more people. People being able to see the problems we have been saying for a long time. I personally have been in the antitrust field gosh, a very long time, i guess 15 years now. I started seeing some of the challenges when i was in antitrust enforcer at the new york ag another antitrust laws were not working. It was after i left i was able to join this movement of thinkers really showing the Current System is not working, that our economy is becoming so highly consolidated at its networking for most people, and that antitrust enforcement has gone missing with huge harms related to it. I do have to give credit to the open markets institute and the movement that is growing everyday getting bigger every day. Basically 30 years of evidence to show its not worked. The writing on the wall is pretty clear. This is an issue being written about in popular books, certainly in mainstream media. Can you explain about life why do you think this counterrevolution, ill call it, has been sort of emerged and has been accepted . Guest i think its been successful because you cant ignore the problems anymore. The harms of having a highly consolidated economy are just so great, people are struggling and people want to figure out how to fix our economy. Our economy right now is really only working for a select few. Some have gotten richer and richer, have more wealth than 80 of the bottom of americans. Really just make a living is just so much harder than it used to be. And then with all kinds of the harms in terms of concentrated control over speech and how that has affected our democratic processes like elections. Harms to entrepreneurship, harms to just the cost to healthcare. So many harms that it comes out of allowing corporations to become so giant and our markets to be no longer competitive that i think the pain is really why they are being successful. The evidence is just you cant really ignore it at this point back. People always say to me, are you sure its going to happen . Its all too complicated to do anything about it. I say im confident were going to get our markets working again and get competition working again. Guess we dont have a choice. This current course is not sustainable. I really think its a matter of when, not if, and what were trying to do and im trying to do is make it happen sooner by getting people to understand how this affects their daily lives so that they can rise up and start pressuring the government to do its job in force antitrust laws and other antimonopoly policies so that we could have open competitive markets again. So this isnt the is an issue thats been taken up by progressive activists, and Elizabeth Warren when she was a candidate for president talking about the need, or she argued, she said it was important to break a big Tech Companies. At the time that was pretty radical for a president ial candidate to be talking about antitrust act in advocating for Something Like a like a breakua company. I think its interesting and it was you to talk about a little bit about how antitrust, antitrust in this country has a history of being very political come , like a century ago it was something that was very much on the mind of politicians, but then that changed it seems and it became something that was very apolitical i think until maybe right now. Antitrust law was concentrating power which is what it was intended for, it became a battle of experts doing regressions and, good Economic Analysis and he became so overly complex that no average person could really talk about it or be involved in it. It was honestly a deliberate complication of antitrust laws. Obviously to make it much harder to prevail against any corporation, there was just kind of this even for antitrust enforcer, youre talking about a years long, multiyears long, multimillion dollar often effort. It was really sort of Corporate Power to make it so complicated and would prevail, impossibleo meet burdens, basically. That was a deliberate strategy in favor of Corporate Power to take away this tool that really does belong to the people. Back when senator sherman pass the sherman act in 1890, he said it will not bear the king as a political power. We shall bear a king of commerce and trade. It really is an issue of democracy and concentrated Corporate Power. When we defeated the first round of robber barons we had in this country, the original gilded age, it was really a Citizen Movement that did that. The standard of oil was monopoly on the scale of what we have today of not global like the ones we have today but it was a big bad monopolist that will all the markets, controlled the political system, may have seen insurmountable to overcome standard and it was a journalist who did investigative reporting about standard oil company, expose all its misconducts and published it in a in a Magazine Article that been turned into a book, actually caused a popular uprising. I dont know if youve seen, there in my book, but theres all these wonderful cartoons from the gilded age where they were trying to show monopoly power in these images that would be very accessible to the average person to anchor them and get them involved in the movement against monopolies. It was only when the citizens rose up that the government did breakup standard oil and also passed the clayton act which then anticompetitive mergers. I really believe the citizens must be involved. We will not over, monopoly power unless we have an engaged citizenry. The reality is the concentrated economic power of monopoly translates to tremendous political power. The only way to overcome the millions of dollars of monopoly money is through the people. So yes it needs to come back to the people. This is needs to ensure we have a Quality CompanyAmerican Dream that is alive and functioning and that we are not being ruled by corporations both economically and politically. Host actually, this would be a good time to explain how we make decisions about antitrust enforcement in this country because it is not a decision that is made very openly or by congress. Its a very i think a journalist, secretive process. Talk about the antitrust enforcement regime in the United States just so people understand that, and how that process works and what enforcers, what really the job is in terms of enforcing the law. Guest sure. In the United States we have a few different types of antitrust enforcers. We have the department of justice. We have the federal trade commission. And at the state level with state attorneys general. They have their own antitrust laws, state antitrust laws, and have the power to enforce the federal ones like the sherman act and the clayton act i mentioned before. They get confused about who gets what type of case. Its just a matter of resources in specializations. Theres not an incredibly clear station between which goes to which agency. There are a few different ways they go about beginning enforcement, doing enforcement antitrust laws. There is the merger context with large corporations have notify the federal agencies when theyre going to acquire the company of a certain size. There is a certain amount of time that the agencies have to look at that merger pretty quickly and decide whether or not they are going to take a deeper look, which is called the second request, and get more documents and investigate it, whether they would just let the deal go through. If they do the second request, then to ask more documents. They do interviews and whatnot, and then they will decide whether or not to block the case, to block the deal. Fortunately, they dont just have unilateral ability to say okay, we have investigated this and we weve determined its anticompetitive. They have to prevail in court. They have to sue in court to block the deal and they have to win. And, unfortunately, the judges have bought into the Chicago School of economics ideology come so strongly its hard to win basic merger blocks. You saw that recently with the lawsuit against the sprint tmobile merger. That something that should have been straightforward, you know, a slamdunk merger block when youre talking about a horizontal merger among competitors where they had actually shown it would be billions of dollars or millions of dollars of price increases to consumers as a result of the merger. And still the judge denied to block the merger. The conduct of antitrust enforcers are looking at anticompetitive behavior, and they will find out about that either because some player in the market complains to them or they read a and use story, they get a tip and he might decide to investigate, for example, amazons mistreatment of thirdparty marketplace sellers or Something Like that. They investigate and again they have to decide can they win in court. Because the law said been so narrow in terms of the legal precedent that is, in the last 30 years, its hard to win those cases, particularly monopolization cases. Courts are trying to decide can win in court . Oftentimes the answer is no, even when it is clear to anticompetitive conduct. Thats kind of the problem why weve seen such weak enforcement. Theres this thought can win in court . Increasingly the at to that is no. I do think enforcers should be more aggressive, more willing to lose. Because even when you lose your showing congress, hey, these laws are not working and you need to step in and fix these bad Court Decisions that he made the antitrust laws so toothless. But yeah, that is the process. It is quite opaque. Theres not much for the average citizen to do in terms of seeing what these agencies are deciding, investigations are confidential. But once they do Supreme Court did it it becomes much more transparent process. Host if you think that its important for this process to be more political than it has been, how do you see going forward, or is there anything those interested in this issue can you actually to have a voice in this process . These investigations, he talked about that our merger investigations, that can take a year, essentially theres no announcements or progress announced by the agencies when they do that. The same goes for monopolization investigations when they happen. That doesnt seem be much of a role, if any, for citizens to have a voice, right . Guest well, i think that citizens are key to have turned around this week enforcement with that and thats the whole reason i wrote the book, to let people know this is what antimonopoly, so what monopoly rule means to you in your life when you were struggling everyday, you cant pay your bills, when youre getting gouged on pharmaceuticals, when youre having, you know, conflict with half of americans living in the fight america, what does monopoly have to do about it . The whole reason i wanted to make people understand what it means to their lives, so that they can get involved. I firmly believe citizens are key, but may not be at the agency level. It may be in terms of pressuring congress and their elected representatives to reform the antitrust laws. What we dont normally do is have Congress Passed laws and to let judges completely destroy those laws. What we normally do is if the jet age destroys the loss that were democratically passed, then Congress Needs to rein in the judges saying no, thats not what we meant when we said, when we say no, youre not allowed to monopolize, we didnt mean you could monopolize. We did mean you have to prove 1000 things in order to win a monopoly case. A big role for citizens is to be involved in supporting antimonopoly reforms in congress, supporting those candidates who are willing to be aggressive. Its a really brave move for people like congressman sicily who is in the house and headset the judiciary subcommittee antitrust subcommittee of the house judiciary to endeavor to do an indepth investigation of big tech and to propose all kinds of reforms. That takes a lot of bravery and we need to have his back. We need to support those lawmakers are willing to stand up to concentrated Corporate Power because theres tens of millions of dollars of monopoly money encouraging them not to do that. Thats what i think citizens are most involved and if Congress Changes some of these