The history and politics of monopoly power. Click to read BIG by Matt Stoller, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Visit thebignewsletter.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Aug 2023 – Sep 2026
Society, Policy & Culture 28Tech Industry & Business 27AI & Machine Learning 1
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rebuked the phone giant, opened the app store, and made a criminal contempt referral to an Apple executive for lying under oath. Plus, a bad antitrust bill goes down.
"We have nowhere else to go and Amazon knows it." The FTC and states are going after Amazon, largely for stopping merchants from offering discounts elsewhere.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta alleged Amazon led a price-fixing conspiracy of online retailers to inflate prices across the entire economy. And he's demanding an immediate halt.
The Trump FTC tried to hide a complaint showing Pepsi forced shoppers to pay higher prices everywhere but Walmart. But now it's unsealed. And the politics of affordability are explosive.
The Stringer Bell rule is obsolete, as Trump and state attorneys general let the egg producers off the hook for a brazen conspiracy. Still, egg prices did drop as a result of the investigation.
Algorithms are no longer a Get out of Jail free card. The Third Circuit ruled that TikTok must stand trial for manipulating children into harming themselves. The business model of big tech is over.
Why is this economy so difficult to manage? The macro statistics are hiding the experience of being cheated.
Corporate gambling is economic coercion, a way to shift tax burdens away from the wealthy to the poor. It's been here since the 1970s, and now it's corrupting sports and young men. Abolish it.
We did an analysis of the Google antitrust trial. Last week, over half of the trial was held behind closed doors because the judge, Amit Mehta, is deferring to Google on the need for secrecy.
Google's monopoly is going on trial starting September 12. This is the big one. Or rather, it's the start of a series of big ones.
4% of all the money in America flows through a few mafia-like health care conglomerates. The FTC just released a ground-breaking report on how they operate. And it is gearing up to sue.
Another Google antitrust trial starts on Monday. If Google loses, it'll be three strikes. At some point, they will give up and realize that the writing is on the wall for their current business model.
Albertsons uses land use restrictions in Mammoth, CA to stop competition so it can be the only store in town.
This week's bankruptcy of iRobot, the maker of the Roomba vacuum, is about more than a robot cleaner. It's about monopolies, Wall Street, and economists leading America on a path of destruction.
The FTC just found evidence that American oil companies colluded with the Saudi government to hike gas prices, costing the average family $3,000 last year. The question is, what can we do about it?
I’ll get to the good and bad news of the week, but first I want to note the big story - Donald Trump’s conviction by a jury in New York - and a little story with big implications - the Federal Bureau of Investigation raiding a corporate landlord in cahoots with a nation-wide rent-fixing cartel that affects up to 16…
In 2010, Congress capped fees for debit card networks so merchants don't get gouged by Visa and Mastercard. But the Fed stuck in a loophole for Discover. And that is leading Capital One to buy it.
'More hens, less income!' So said the United Egg Producers' economist Donald Bell in 1994. The industry has gotten more consolidated ever since. And avian flu is just the latest excuse to hike prices.
If America wants to make civilian airplanes here, the government must step in, take over Boeing, and then design a competitive industry.
New information coming to light in Amazon and meat price-fixing antitrust cases shows inflation is probably being driven by consolidation in the form of data sharing.
In 2017, consulting giant Booz Allen cut a deal with the government to extract junk fees from Americans who want to use Federal lands and waters for hunting or fishing. Will Congress or Biden act?
Ever since a spate of mergers in the 1990s, Westlaw and LexisNexis have dominated legal research. And that might be why searching legal cases is so costly, even in the age of AI.
Henry George was right about land values. And today we have a homebuilder cartel rooted in control of land and financing.
Mortgage lenders face destruction as a cartel of Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax work with FICO to drive them out of business. Regulator and anti-monopolist Rohit Chopra is pushing back.
Documents show a Microsoft exec called AI the "largest theft of labor in human history.” New AI regulations are besides the point, the problem is we don’t apply existing laws to the powerful.
From 2020-2024, rent prices spiked by a third. How much of that is due to collusion by corporate landlords and a software coordinator? And where is the Fed?
Private antitrust cases against Equifax, Pepsi, American Express, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and Corteva are going through the courts. And it turns out, judges get the monopoly problem.
Fanatics has rolled up power in all areas of sports merchandising. And now it's coming for baseball, football, and basketball trading cards.