Future Hindsight

Break Up Monopolies: Zephyr Teachout

Aug 11, 2022

50:29

Thursday, August 11th, 2022

Zephyr Teachout is Senior Counsel for Economic Justice for the New York Attorney General and law professor at Fordham University. We revisit our conversation with her about her book, Break 'Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money. We discuss how monopolies are deeply anti-democratic, how we can break them up by enforcing existing anti-trust laws, and protect our democracy.

Monopolies are anti-democratic because they have the power to set the terms of interactions, from the pricing of consumer goods to interactions with suppliers and resolving disputes. They exert a form of private governing power and control over citizens within our democracy. Chickenization refers to the ways large poultry distributors subjugate independent chicken farmers who depend on them to bring their chickens to market. These regional monopolies force farmers to use their feed, accept the equivalent of poverty wages, require arbitration contracts, and retaliate against farmers who break the rules. Similarly, delivery apps control restaurants and ride-share apps control taxi drivers. America has a long history of trust-busting, and anti-monopolism was once a vital facet of American political activism, and it could be again by enforcing existing US antitrust laws.

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