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Break 'Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money
A passionate attack on the monopolies that are throttling American democracy.
Every facet of American life is being overtaken by big platform monopolists like Facebook, Google, and Bayer (which has merged with the former agricultural giant Monsanto), resulting in a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen since the Gilded Age. They are evolving into political entities that often have more influence than the actual government, bending state and federal legislatures to their will and even creating arbitration courts that circumvent the US justice system. How can we recover our freedom from these giants? Anti-corruption scholar and activist Zephyr Teachout has the answer: Break 'Em Up.
This book is a clarion call for liberals and leftists looking to find a common cause. Teachout makes a compelling case that monopolies are the root cause of many of the issues that today's progressives care about; they drive economic inequality, harm the planet, limit the political power of average citizens, and historically-disenfranchised groups bear the brunt of their shameful and irresponsible business practices. In order to build a better future, we must eradicate monopolies from the private sector and create new safeguards that prevent new ones from seizing power.
Through her expert analysis of monopolies in several sectors and their impact on courts, journalism, inequality, and politics, Teachout offers a concrete path toward thwarting these enemies of working Americans and reclaiming our democracy before it’s too late.
316 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 19, 2020
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August 5, 2020
This book is a must-read to understand why monopolization is such a huge problem. Teachout is one of the most brilliant legal minds out there and her approach to corruption and corporate power is vital to understanding the current system. She is a clear, nuanced, and forceful writer and this book will open your eyes and light a fire to make changes.
May 27, 2020
Numerous visitors to the USA have noted that far from being free, Americans seem to be the most insecure and fearful people on Earth. Zephyr Teachout can explain that. In her relentless Break ‘Em Up, she shows with total clarity that all symptoms lead back to the same root cause: monopoly. She demonstrates that the stunning concentration of power in the USA is not just economic. It is political too, and the direct, visible result is literally no choice for Americans, even for the government. It’s why wages are low, why interest rates are low and why choice is a laughable concept. Everything is managed and manipulated for profit and power.
In every domain, from journalism to retail to defense, education and justice, Americans have no choice any more. To get a job, they have to sign away their rights to sue, unionize or talk politics (other than the politics the company wants to promote). Despite Justice Antonin Scalia’s absurd decisions, this is not “freedom of choice” – all monopolies are doing it, and adding non-disclosure and non-compete agreements on top of it, even for the lowliest jobs. All disputes go to arbitration, not a US court. Arbitration is paid for by the company, with company-paid arbitrators: secret, unappealable and final. If an American quits a bad job, it could take years to find an equivalent position without all the restrictions. This is because there is unspoken collusion, born of the fact that giant monopolies buy up smaller companies and impose their codes on them. It is so appealing, they all do it now. The same applies to hours: low-pay workers get double jeopardy as giant monopolies make sure they work less than full time, keeping their incomes low while also denying them benefits like paid sick days that are only available to FTs (fulltimers).There is no freedom to choose among employers when they all offer the same bad deal – because they all belong to the same monopoly.
For all those in the gig economy, good luck finding a new gig without all the restrictions, conditions, expenses and lousy pay. They won’t find one, because all the Ubers and Doordashes and Amazons offer the same miserable conditions. The employee takes all the risk and gets no real reward. That’s the freedom to choose in America. In other eras it was called serfdom. In America, it is called freedom.
Similarly, consumers have no choice, as every ecommerce site provides an unreadable but totally enforceable contract whereby the purchaser gives up all right to anything. Going elsewhere with hard-earned cash results in the same thing. There is no choice but to agree to everything and move on.
Beyond the local craft brewpub, all beers are made by two companies. There are only four major airlines, three carmakers, a clutch of banks. Banks arrange things so switching among them is pointless when not unnecessarily difficult. Freedom of choice - taking your business elsewhere - is Welcome to Dystopia. In every sector of the economy, three to five companies dominate. They tolerate a handful of tiny firms, if only so they can bleat there is healthy competition and no monopoly situation after all.
Amazon didn’t like a successful diaper company competing with it, right on the Amazon platform. So it bought the company just to shut it down. Less choice for Americans and freedom to price at will for Amazon. Not to put too fine a point on it, Teachout says the closest analog to what the tech monopolies have done to the economy is the Mafia.
Teachout found studies showing hospital mergers always result in higher prices, as competition is eliminated. Drugmakers, as every American knows by now, simply raise prices as they wish, sometimes thousands of percent, because drugmakers don’t compete, and patent rules have been twisted out of all proportion to accommodate them. They actually pay generic makers not to enter a market so they can milk it a few years longer before there is a competing pill. The generic makers get revenue without the bother of actually manufacturing and distributing a product. Everybody’s happy. Except the American consumer, who has no choice. S/he can take the prescription to another pharmacy, but guess what? Same deal. Because there are really just three PBMs (pharma benefits managers) running the whole industry behind the scenes. The American freedom to take its business elsewhere is empty.
Farmers are trapped by a tiny handful of giants who unspokenly agree not to poach or enter each other’s territory. They trap farmers into taking on huge debt, pay them ever less for their produce, and force them to buy all their supplies, seeds, fertilizers, chemicals and machinery from company-specified vendors. They regulate air circulation and lighting, and in general, make farmers into sharecroppers. Or they will lose their contract, and their farm. There is no choice to go with anyone else. If they stay outside the stranglehold, there is no one to sell to. Teachout calls this the Chickenization of America, and it applies not just to farmers, but franchise “owners” and other small businesses.
Even the farm tractor is beyond choice. John Deere says owners cannot tamper with their own machinery. They are required to wait for an official service agent, and pay the outrageous fees, even though they bought the equipment outright. And are used to making their own repairs and modifications. Tyson, Perdue, Monsanto and the like can experiment on farmers, giving them untested seed or prescribing untried chemical compounds. If that results in a poorer crop, too bad. And farmers are forbidden from talking to each other. Company reps will find out if one knows more than s/he should, and will destroy them all. Sharing is off the table. Leaving the firm means leaving fields fallow for years, lest any stray company seed remain. Surveillance is total. Suicides among farmers are at epic highs. They are trapped, both financially and physically, with no hope of escape from the American Dream.
Possibly more frightening is the political takeover. The obvious one is the PAC (political action committee), in which firms freely outspend actual candidates in the runup to elections. And lobbying, where a billion dollars is spread over Washington and state Capitols to grease the way for monopolies. They heavily fund ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), which prepares actual legislation they want lawmakers to pass. And they do, giving many states surprisingly identical statutes that magically cater to the whims of giant corporations, while restricting voting, unions, strikes, lawsuits, liability and capping minimum wages. They even prevent towns from providing internet services when none of the monopolists will. But that’s just on the outside. On the inside, they talk directly to the president, become cabinet secretaries or head up agencies to effect their own bidding, ridding themselves of safety regulations and ignoring laws they were put there to enforce.
With unemployment at near record lows, economists were expecting wages to go up. Companies need to keep their good people and hire more, so wages and benefits should have risen in such a tight market. But they didn’t. Monopolies have the power to set the rates, avoid bidding wars, and by definition avoid competition. So even economists were surprised at the extent of the power of monopolies. “They own the market,” Teachout says. “They don’t actually participate in it.” It’s why interest rates remain at rock bottom. The monopolies set the rates, or they walk. Another headscratcher for economists solved.
Even the government is hamstrung. It used to be that DoD (Defense Department) contract bids came from 65 different companies. Today the number is five. Five giant monopolies. So $600 hammers and multibillion dollar ripoffs are common. It is so bad the department must still award contracts to these five, even right after they have been convicted of massive fraud against the DoD and have paid out billions in fines (using taxpayer money). The government cannot take its business elsewhere; it has no choice either.
Facebook, Google and Amazon rate their own discussions in Break ‘Em Up. Teachout accuses Google and Facebook of destroying journalism, by simply stealing their content and selling ads that would normally have gone to the newspaper or magazine it was stolen from. The result is billions to Facebook, and bankruptcy for newspapers: “In less than a decade, we have shifted from a democracy with reporters in most courtrooms to one with a national elite press and a big void filled with unchecked gossip and propaganda. Facebook and Google have deliberately, radically poisoned the way we read and the way we relate to each other. They have devalued the very idea of news. “ Teachout is nothing if not direct.
For me, Teachout’s biggest point is that consumers and voters can no longer affect corporate actions. Boycotts not only don’t work any more, but companies come out stronger for simply ignoring them. Trying to personally boycott say, Google, is no longer even possible. She says a quarter of the messages threatening Google with a boycott came in over Android phones. Google even tracks pedestrians in the streets of New York – it is unavoidable.
The only effective workaround tool left to the American populous is antitrust laws. Only enforcement of the existing laws can get monopolists to change. The pressure needs to be on government, not on the companies themselves. She says ‘It should be as easy to unionize or create a co-operative, as it is hard to merge goliaths.” And “Democratic governance is messy and will lead to mistakes, but corporate government will lead to tyranny.” Monopolies need to be broken up, separated into component firms, and forbidden from merging with any other firm with say a 5% market share. No mergers should be allowed where their market share tops 20%. Smaller market share means more competitors, more options for customers, and more success in effecting change among them.
The book is a well-organized, clearly thought out and a laser-focused attack on monopolies. Teachout is forceful. She uses only simple, direct language, making the book a fast and penetrating read. She wants everyone to understand the jig is up. Americans should now know the game and its scoring, and they have to stop it. Government is the last hope. It has happened before, when trusts dominated the country, labor was slavery and rights were none. Popular movements pounded away, until Teddy Roosevelt broke the trusts, followed by Wilson and FDR who restructured the laws to prevent this ever happening again. Unfortunately, the Reagan administration preferred it the other way, and dismantled most of what had been set up and very successfully executed over most of the century. Teachout is hopeful the pendulum is swinging the other way again, but everyone needs to help give it a push. If America is just going to allow its hard fought laws to be totally ignored, then rights and freedoms are meaningless. Americans should not have to hear from its electeds that “Corporations are people too, my friend.”
Teachout says that in the same letter where he proposed freedom of speech for the new constitution, Thomas Jefferson also wanted anti-monopoly as a foundational principle. How very different the country would be today had he succeeded.
David Wineberg
In every domain, from journalism to retail to defense, education and justice, Americans have no choice any more. To get a job, they have to sign away their rights to sue, unionize or talk politics (other than the politics the company wants to promote). Despite Justice Antonin Scalia’s absurd decisions, this is not “freedom of choice” – all monopolies are doing it, and adding non-disclosure and non-compete agreements on top of it, even for the lowliest jobs. All disputes go to arbitration, not a US court. Arbitration is paid for by the company, with company-paid arbitrators: secret, unappealable and final. If an American quits a bad job, it could take years to find an equivalent position without all the restrictions. This is because there is unspoken collusion, born of the fact that giant monopolies buy up smaller companies and impose their codes on them. It is so appealing, they all do it now. The same applies to hours: low-pay workers get double jeopardy as giant monopolies make sure they work less than full time, keeping their incomes low while also denying them benefits like paid sick days that are only available to FTs (fulltimers).There is no freedom to choose among employers when they all offer the same bad deal – because they all belong to the same monopoly.
For all those in the gig economy, good luck finding a new gig without all the restrictions, conditions, expenses and lousy pay. They won’t find one, because all the Ubers and Doordashes and Amazons offer the same miserable conditions. The employee takes all the risk and gets no real reward. That’s the freedom to choose in America. In other eras it was called serfdom. In America, it is called freedom.
Similarly, consumers have no choice, as every ecommerce site provides an unreadable but totally enforceable contract whereby the purchaser gives up all right to anything. Going elsewhere with hard-earned cash results in the same thing. There is no choice but to agree to everything and move on.
Beyond the local craft brewpub, all beers are made by two companies. There are only four major airlines, three carmakers, a clutch of banks. Banks arrange things so switching among them is pointless when not unnecessarily difficult. Freedom of choice - taking your business elsewhere - is Welcome to Dystopia. In every sector of the economy, three to five companies dominate. They tolerate a handful of tiny firms, if only so they can bleat there is healthy competition and no monopoly situation after all.
Amazon didn’t like a successful diaper company competing with it, right on the Amazon platform. So it bought the company just to shut it down. Less choice for Americans and freedom to price at will for Amazon. Not to put too fine a point on it, Teachout says the closest analog to what the tech monopolies have done to the economy is the Mafia.
Teachout found studies showing hospital mergers always result in higher prices, as competition is eliminated. Drugmakers, as every American knows by now, simply raise prices as they wish, sometimes thousands of percent, because drugmakers don’t compete, and patent rules have been twisted out of all proportion to accommodate them. They actually pay generic makers not to enter a market so they can milk it a few years longer before there is a competing pill. The generic makers get revenue without the bother of actually manufacturing and distributing a product. Everybody’s happy. Except the American consumer, who has no choice. S/he can take the prescription to another pharmacy, but guess what? Same deal. Because there are really just three PBMs (pharma benefits managers) running the whole industry behind the scenes. The American freedom to take its business elsewhere is empty.
Farmers are trapped by a tiny handful of giants who unspokenly agree not to poach or enter each other’s territory. They trap farmers into taking on huge debt, pay them ever less for their produce, and force them to buy all their supplies, seeds, fertilizers, chemicals and machinery from company-specified vendors. They regulate air circulation and lighting, and in general, make farmers into sharecroppers. Or they will lose their contract, and their farm. There is no choice to go with anyone else. If they stay outside the stranglehold, there is no one to sell to. Teachout calls this the Chickenization of America, and it applies not just to farmers, but franchise “owners” and other small businesses.
Even the farm tractor is beyond choice. John Deere says owners cannot tamper with their own machinery. They are required to wait for an official service agent, and pay the outrageous fees, even though they bought the equipment outright. And are used to making their own repairs and modifications. Tyson, Perdue, Monsanto and the like can experiment on farmers, giving them untested seed or prescribing untried chemical compounds. If that results in a poorer crop, too bad. And farmers are forbidden from talking to each other. Company reps will find out if one knows more than s/he should, and will destroy them all. Sharing is off the table. Leaving the firm means leaving fields fallow for years, lest any stray company seed remain. Surveillance is total. Suicides among farmers are at epic highs. They are trapped, both financially and physically, with no hope of escape from the American Dream.
Possibly more frightening is the political takeover. The obvious one is the PAC (political action committee), in which firms freely outspend actual candidates in the runup to elections. And lobbying, where a billion dollars is spread over Washington and state Capitols to grease the way for monopolies. They heavily fund ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), which prepares actual legislation they want lawmakers to pass. And they do, giving many states surprisingly identical statutes that magically cater to the whims of giant corporations, while restricting voting, unions, strikes, lawsuits, liability and capping minimum wages. They even prevent towns from providing internet services when none of the monopolists will. But that’s just on the outside. On the inside, they talk directly to the president, become cabinet secretaries or head up agencies to effect their own bidding, ridding themselves of safety regulations and ignoring laws they were put there to enforce.
With unemployment at near record lows, economists were expecting wages to go up. Companies need to keep their good people and hire more, so wages and benefits should have risen in such a tight market. But they didn’t. Monopolies have the power to set the rates, avoid bidding wars, and by definition avoid competition. So even economists were surprised at the extent of the power of monopolies. “They own the market,” Teachout says. “They don’t actually participate in it.” It’s why interest rates remain at rock bottom. The monopolies set the rates, or they walk. Another headscratcher for economists solved.
Even the government is hamstrung. It used to be that DoD (Defense Department) contract bids came from 65 different companies. Today the number is five. Five giant monopolies. So $600 hammers and multibillion dollar ripoffs are common. It is so bad the department must still award contracts to these five, even right after they have been convicted of massive fraud against the DoD and have paid out billions in fines (using taxpayer money). The government cannot take its business elsewhere; it has no choice either.
Facebook, Google and Amazon rate their own discussions in Break ‘Em Up. Teachout accuses Google and Facebook of destroying journalism, by simply stealing their content and selling ads that would normally have gone to the newspaper or magazine it was stolen from. The result is billions to Facebook, and bankruptcy for newspapers: “In less than a decade, we have shifted from a democracy with reporters in most courtrooms to one with a national elite press and a big void filled with unchecked gossip and propaganda. Facebook and Google have deliberately, radically poisoned the way we read and the way we relate to each other. They have devalued the very idea of news. “ Teachout is nothing if not direct.
For me, Teachout’s biggest point is that consumers and voters can no longer affect corporate actions. Boycotts not only don’t work any more, but companies come out stronger for simply ignoring them. Trying to personally boycott say, Google, is no longer even possible. She says a quarter of the messages threatening Google with a boycott came in over Android phones. Google even tracks pedestrians in the streets of New York – it is unavoidable.
The only effective workaround tool left to the American populous is antitrust laws. Only enforcement of the existing laws can get monopolists to change. The pressure needs to be on government, not on the companies themselves. She says ‘It should be as easy to unionize or create a co-operative, as it is hard to merge goliaths.” And “Democratic governance is messy and will lead to mistakes, but corporate government will lead to tyranny.” Monopolies need to be broken up, separated into component firms, and forbidden from merging with any other firm with say a 5% market share. No mergers should be allowed where their market share tops 20%. Smaller market share means more competitors, more options for customers, and more success in effecting change among them.
The book is a well-organized, clearly thought out and a laser-focused attack on monopolies. Teachout is forceful. She uses only simple, direct language, making the book a fast and penetrating read. She wants everyone to understand the jig is up. Americans should now know the game and its scoring, and they have to stop it. Government is the last hope. It has happened before, when trusts dominated the country, labor was slavery and rights were none. Popular movements pounded away, until Teddy Roosevelt broke the trusts, followed by Wilson and FDR who restructured the laws to prevent this ever happening again. Unfortunately, the Reagan administration preferred it the other way, and dismantled most of what had been set up and very successfully executed over most of the century. Teachout is hopeful the pendulum is swinging the other way again, but everyone needs to help give it a push. If America is just going to allow its hard fought laws to be totally ignored, then rights and freedoms are meaningless. Americans should not have to hear from its electeds that “Corporations are people too, my friend.”
Teachout says that in the same letter where he proposed freedom of speech for the new constitution, Thomas Jefferson also wanted anti-monopoly as a foundational principle. How very different the country would be today had he succeeded.
David Wineberg
March 16, 2020
I guess this is supposed to be my "competition," as I have a book about monopolies out within the same month. I don't see it that way. This is a terrific contribution to a body of literature about the economic crisis we've been facing for 40 years, which has super-charged inequality, damaged resiliency, and sapped people's liberties. Zephyr is at her best taking about the destruction of personal and legal rights by a system that commandeers regulation and public law and fashions it for themselves. It's a powerful read that thankfully doesn't significantly overlap with my own, because I would be outclassed!
October 10, 2021
Monopolies are a competing form of government and they're winning the right to rule.
This is a VERY important book to read right now. Teachout is extremely knowledgeable, competent and objective in her analysis of the current monopolistic state in which we live and she provides ample solutions to finding our way out of this. To be very clear, a monopoly is a competing form of government that runs parallel with the public sector. Typically there have been anti-trust laws and regulations that stop corporations from taking over markets and quite literally subjugating employees into a quasi-servitude state. The weakening of anti-trust has been deliberate and overt starting in the 1980s and has strengthened into an enormous leviathan today.
You don't need to be a single corporation in a market to be a monopoly. No. All you need is someone to control the market and you have a monopoly on your hands. It goes without saying that Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google are behemoth monopolies that have absolute control over their markets. Like Tyson Chicken, a "chickenization" has occurred in which corporations expand their influence not only horizontally (acquiring businesses in your own market) but vertically. Vertical expansion is where a company buys everything else along the chain including supply, manufacturing, distribution, marketing and ultimately pricing. So not only do the tech giants control their current market, but all the attached markets up and downstream. Their rule is absolute with complete control over the market. While this may result in cheap products for consumers, it is devastating for living wages which is the other side of the same coin of consumption.
What results from this chickenization is an anti-capitalistic oligarchy which exercises absolute control over workers. You get living wage suppression, less employment options, less benefits and a complete evisceration of working unions. What you also get is forced arbitration clauses running rampant in all employment contracts that prohibit an employee to open court remediation and often puts them in a corporate arbitration court funded by corporate lawyers. What we get is a parallel legal system outside the jurisdiction of public law.
The downstream effects of this monopolization have been devastating in many arenas. News and journalism has suffered greatly. Where they once could rely on subscriptions and in-house ad space, newspapers have had to shift their business model in the age of social media. Instead of dictating the price of add space, newspapers have become serfs in the feudal system of tech media who control what content gets displayed and at what price. Not only do tech giants control everything about the market, they use the very data their clients generate to then outcompete them. I wonder if this has effected the quality of media and journalism?
There has been a deliberate and neoliberal path paved to where we are today. No one is talking about anti-trust--it wasn't even a talking point in the 2016 and 2020 democratic primaries. The infiltration of corporations into our political system and been methodical and highly successful thanks to Citizens United ruling, astronomical lobbying, nonprofit think tanks as well as organizations like ALEC. Because these things didn't happen de facto, Teachout makes a compelling case that we can fix this problem but we must be deliberate.
Teachout offers a myriad of solutions . She states that the anti-trust laws are still there but they have been rusting in the shed outback. We re-sharpen existing anti-trust laws, enforce them and go deeper. We live in an age of unprecedented monopolistic powers and therefore must strengthen anti-trust efforts. We can create laws to prohibit mergers, predatory pricing and lending. Not only should Glass-Steagall be enforced but we should create similar laws that separate powers within a single market. We should breakup all the facets of the tech giants into separate companies so they don't have a stranglehold over the market. We can deem new technologies part of vital communications infrastructure, making them public and with a small utility cost. We can strengthen unions once again and put the power in the hands of those that are currently being exploited. Needless to say, there is a ton of work to do in big pharma in the form of patent law and stopping the "evergreen" process of re-patenting a drug that only has a trivial molecular variation. Teachout provides a beautiful epilogue of what change would look like.
Here's the bottom line: the free market isn't free, it's controlled and manipulated by a few hundred men. They are competing for our freedom with a toxic form of rule that paradoxically destroys personal freedom. We actually can be moral and capitalistic; compassionate and profitable. We need to shed the toxic binary ideology of capitalism vs socialism and understand that personal freedom thrives under a combination of both. We need anti-trust legislation and enforcement NOW.
Please, READ THIS BOOK.
This is a VERY important book to read right now. Teachout is extremely knowledgeable, competent and objective in her analysis of the current monopolistic state in which we live and she provides ample solutions to finding our way out of this. To be very clear, a monopoly is a competing form of government that runs parallel with the public sector. Typically there have been anti-trust laws and regulations that stop corporations from taking over markets and quite literally subjugating employees into a quasi-servitude state. The weakening of anti-trust has been deliberate and overt starting in the 1980s and has strengthened into an enormous leviathan today.
You don't need to be a single corporation in a market to be a monopoly. No. All you need is someone to control the market and you have a monopoly on your hands. It goes without saying that Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google are behemoth monopolies that have absolute control over their markets. Like Tyson Chicken, a "chickenization" has occurred in which corporations expand their influence not only horizontally (acquiring businesses in your own market) but vertically. Vertical expansion is where a company buys everything else along the chain including supply, manufacturing, distribution, marketing and ultimately pricing. So not only do the tech giants control their current market, but all the attached markets up and downstream. Their rule is absolute with complete control over the market. While this may result in cheap products for consumers, it is devastating for living wages which is the other side of the same coin of consumption.
What results from this chickenization is an anti-capitalistic oligarchy which exercises absolute control over workers. You get living wage suppression, less employment options, less benefits and a complete evisceration of working unions. What you also get is forced arbitration clauses running rampant in all employment contracts that prohibit an employee to open court remediation and often puts them in a corporate arbitration court funded by corporate lawyers. What we get is a parallel legal system outside the jurisdiction of public law.
The downstream effects of this monopolization have been devastating in many arenas. News and journalism has suffered greatly. Where they once could rely on subscriptions and in-house ad space, newspapers have had to shift their business model in the age of social media. Instead of dictating the price of add space, newspapers have become serfs in the feudal system of tech media who control what content gets displayed and at what price. Not only do tech giants control everything about the market, they use the very data their clients generate to then outcompete them. I wonder if this has effected the quality of media and journalism?
There has been a deliberate and neoliberal path paved to where we are today. No one is talking about anti-trust--it wasn't even a talking point in the 2016 and 2020 democratic primaries. The infiltration of corporations into our political system and been methodical and highly successful thanks to Citizens United ruling, astronomical lobbying, nonprofit think tanks as well as organizations like ALEC. Because these things didn't happen de facto, Teachout makes a compelling case that we can fix this problem but we must be deliberate.
Teachout offers a myriad of solutions . She states that the anti-trust laws are still there but they have been rusting in the shed outback. We re-sharpen existing anti-trust laws, enforce them and go deeper. We live in an age of unprecedented monopolistic powers and therefore must strengthen anti-trust efforts. We can create laws to prohibit mergers, predatory pricing and lending. Not only should Glass-Steagall be enforced but we should create similar laws that separate powers within a single market. We should breakup all the facets of the tech giants into separate companies so they don't have a stranglehold over the market. We can deem new technologies part of vital communications infrastructure, making them public and with a small utility cost. We can strengthen unions once again and put the power in the hands of those that are currently being exploited. Needless to say, there is a ton of work to do in big pharma in the form of patent law and stopping the "evergreen" process of re-patenting a drug that only has a trivial molecular variation. Teachout provides a beautiful epilogue of what change would look like.
Here's the bottom line: the free market isn't free, it's controlled and manipulated by a few hundred men. They are competing for our freedom with a toxic form of rule that paradoxically destroys personal freedom. We actually can be moral and capitalistic; compassionate and profitable. We need to shed the toxic binary ideology of capitalism vs socialism and understand that personal freedom thrives under a combination of both. We need anti-trust legislation and enforcement NOW.
Please, READ THIS BOOK.
November 28, 2020
Zephyr Teachout makes a passionate case for renewed enforcement of antitrust laws as a progressive priority, because monopolies and oligopolies pose a basic threat to democracy through concentration of economic power. She touches on many industries, from technology to food processing to big pharma and banking, with victims ranging from consumers to newspapers to farmers. Teachout also talks about the increasing concentration of wealth among the top 1% that results from the government shirking its responsibilities to enforce anti-trust legislation, like Hart-Scott-Rodino. Sadly, her message is badly diluted by skipping around, coming to conclusions not supported by her argument(s), and the use popular catchphrases are not explained.
September 14, 2020
An in-depth look at how some American companies have become monopolies.... and what we can do about it. Very interesting, well-researched, and informative.
March 30, 2021
Break 'em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money puts forth a solid pathos argument but it does not give a complete picture.
Firstly, the author has misinterpreted the definition of monopoly. Monopoly implies predatory pricing (higher prices against the consumer) through industry control; for example a drug cartel. Large cap companies like Google, Facebook and Bayer are not monopolies if you look at their worldwide market share. It is the very legal system that is given agency on whether or not companies can merge: e.g. Facebook acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram, or Bayer acquiring Monsanto. There are many Chinese companies competing with our American ones: in tech, Tencent and Baidu. By 'breaking them up' you are truncating powerful synergies which give our free market institutions a strong foothold. This would be ill-advised. Furthermore you cannot adopt the Scandinavian model as Bernie Sanders proposes to United States of America - free market is an important driver for wealth and innovation. Moreover Finland is the same size as the Greater Area of New York - it is an erroneous notion that such a system in all its nuance can be applied to a country with the worlds reserve currency. This would create immense lag in terms of innovation and give China a more dominant economic position - which is currently Americas strength.
The balance of power is in a tenuous position with COVID-19, high debt load compared to economic output, and as the world shifts towards renewables oil consumption will go down. This will consequently lessen the strength of the US dollar (as oil in the Middle East is traded with American currency.) Further putting pressure on GDP growth.
If you take the big four American tech companies: Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon they account for 6 trillion dollars on aggregate as a sum compared to the US 20 trillion dollar economy (30%.) These businesses bring in substantial value through their synergistic quality of organized human capital.
There is also a paradox in giving more government control, if corporations lobby - why would you give more centralized power to the government? That by definition would be a monopoly. No free market? Free market encourages competition which safeguards against monopoly and fulfills solely consumer demands. One centralized body. Government has no incentive to run efficient industry with the same steadfastness of corporations who have a fiscal obligation to shareholders. This would perniciously drive prices up (and affect the consumer) because inputs are not being as efficiently turned into outputs. It would then spiral to more austerity. Although corporations have had breaches of CSR in history I'd argue that the effects of government control have been more deadly. Look at: Venezuela, Russia, and China before the 1960s. China has risen out of poverty very recently because they've adopted free market.
If you want to limit what corporations can do I'm all for it by enforcing activity prerogatives but not by stifling our free market institutions. One such idea to create wealth is to disable banks from taking part in derivatives. Over the past years the average main street investor has lost 4 trillion dollars on aggregate while the market has created 400 trillion in value. This is in part due to the distortion of derivatives and big banks.
Another alarming stat is that 95% of fund managers cannot beat index funds. It would do well for the working American to avoid mutual funds, and to index instead. Finally, 96% of stocks are owned by the top 1% wealth bracket. This is highly peculiar. Wealth is created by investment and not overspending your income.
Firstly, the author has misinterpreted the definition of monopoly. Monopoly implies predatory pricing (higher prices against the consumer) through industry control; for example a drug cartel. Large cap companies like Google, Facebook and Bayer are not monopolies if you look at their worldwide market share. It is the very legal system that is given agency on whether or not companies can merge: e.g. Facebook acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram, or Bayer acquiring Monsanto. There are many Chinese companies competing with our American ones: in tech, Tencent and Baidu. By 'breaking them up' you are truncating powerful synergies which give our free market institutions a strong foothold. This would be ill-advised. Furthermore you cannot adopt the Scandinavian model as Bernie Sanders proposes to United States of America - free market is an important driver for wealth and innovation. Moreover Finland is the same size as the Greater Area of New York - it is an erroneous notion that such a system in all its nuance can be applied to a country with the worlds reserve currency. This would create immense lag in terms of innovation and give China a more dominant economic position - which is currently Americas strength.
The balance of power is in a tenuous position with COVID-19, high debt load compared to economic output, and as the world shifts towards renewables oil consumption will go down. This will consequently lessen the strength of the US dollar (as oil in the Middle East is traded with American currency.) Further putting pressure on GDP growth.
If you take the big four American tech companies: Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon they account for 6 trillion dollars on aggregate as a sum compared to the US 20 trillion dollar economy (30%.) These businesses bring in substantial value through their synergistic quality of organized human capital.
There is also a paradox in giving more government control, if corporations lobby - why would you give more centralized power to the government? That by definition would be a monopoly. No free market? Free market encourages competition which safeguards against monopoly and fulfills solely consumer demands. One centralized body. Government has no incentive to run efficient industry with the same steadfastness of corporations who have a fiscal obligation to shareholders. This would perniciously drive prices up (and affect the consumer) because inputs are not being as efficiently turned into outputs. It would then spiral to more austerity. Although corporations have had breaches of CSR in history I'd argue that the effects of government control have been more deadly. Look at: Venezuela, Russia, and China before the 1960s. China has risen out of poverty very recently because they've adopted free market.
If you want to limit what corporations can do I'm all for it by enforcing activity prerogatives but not by stifling our free market institutions. One such idea to create wealth is to disable banks from taking part in derivatives. Over the past years the average main street investor has lost 4 trillion dollars on aggregate while the market has created 400 trillion in value. This is in part due to the distortion of derivatives and big banks.
Another alarming stat is that 95% of fund managers cannot beat index funds. It would do well for the working American to avoid mutual funds, and to index instead. Finally, 96% of stocks are owned by the top 1% wealth bracket. This is highly peculiar. Wealth is created by investment and not overspending your income.
February 13, 2021
Excellent Book about Recovering Our Freedom
It’s more obvious in the United States than it was when this book was published, that Americans are in danger of losing their freedom but also their lives. The federal government led by Donald Trump lied to Americans about COVID-19 and allowed an enormous number of Americans to die and get sick. He discouraged people from wearing masks and that the virus was a hoax or just a cold. We are still having problems with a national COVID-19 plan. This is a great book discussing how we got here. A lot had to do getting rid of antitrust laws and allowing many corporations form huge monopolies. Great discussion.
It’s more obvious in the United States than it was when this book was published, that Americans are in danger of losing their freedom but also their lives. The federal government led by Donald Trump lied to Americans about COVID-19 and allowed an enormous number of Americans to die and get sick. He discouraged people from wearing masks and that the virus was a hoax or just a cold. We are still having problems with a national COVID-19 plan. This is a great book discussing how we got here. A lot had to do getting rid of antitrust laws and allowing many corporations form huge monopolies. Great discussion.
September 1, 2025
"The highest and best goals of America—equality and freedom—require government to protect citizens from any group or individual wielding too much power. We used to do this fairly well through antitrust laws, campaign finance regulations, public utility oversight, labor protections, and other anti-monopoly tools. But in recent years, our government has failed on all these fronts."
In Break ‘Em Up, author Zephyr Teachout dismantles the common misconception that a monopoly must control the entire market. When Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, it held 65% of the market. Until 1980, the United States used anti-monopoly laws to block mergers of corporations with as little as 5–6% market share. As Teachout explains, monopolies are any companies so powerful they dictate the terms of interaction—like pharmaceutical giants that refuse to compete and freely charge whatever price they wish.
“[M]onopoly is tyranny,” Teachout writes. They are “little would-be Alexander the Greats,” and “no democracy can survive for long once a few corporations have amassed governmental power in such a massive form and scale.” Among the companies she argues should be broken up are:
Amazon
Bank of America
Blue Cross/Blue Shield
Boeing
Citibank
Comcast
CommonSpirit Health
CVS
Disney
Exxon
Google
Monsanto/Bayer
Nestlé
Pfizer
Spectrum
Uber
Unilever
United Healthcare
Verizon
Visa
Walmart
Teachout insists this is not a choice between breaking up big business or regulating it—we must do both. Regulation alone cannot prevent the amassing of power that allows monopolies to persist.
"Monopoly is a rival form of government burrowing its way into democratic government, so we must always strike at the root of its power, and not leave anti-monopolism for later."
Breaking up companies and preventing mergers isn’t the only path to limiting their power. Campaign finance reform, predatory pricing laws, public utility regulation, support for co-ops, and preserving citizens’ rights to sue corporations (rather than being forced into arbitration) are also essential.
Perhaps the most damning section of Break ‘Em Up is about chickens. Yes, chickens. Poultry is a $90 billion-per-year industry, yet many farmers earn poverty wages and are saddled with crushing debt. Just three primary processors—Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Perdue—dominate nearly every stage of production, from purchase to processing to sale. Evidence suggests these processors don’t meaningfully compete, leaving farmers with only one option in their region and forcing compliance with company terms on everything from feed to transportation. If a processor cuts ties, farmers face bankruptcy under the weight of million-dollar mortgages on their chicken houses.
Contracts bar farmers from openly sharing the terms of their agreements. If a processor decides to experiment with five of fifty farmers—say, by requiring different feed or lighting—and the experiment fails, the farmers bear the costs, never knowing who else faced the same burdens.
Decades ago, farmers had more autonomy, with multiple processors competing for business. But antitrust laws gutted under the Reagan administration allowed horizontal (same-industry) and vertical (related-industry) mergers. Tyson, Perdue, and Pilgrim’s Pride then went on a buying spree—acquiring processing plants, feed mills, logistics systems, packaging companies, and more.
In 1985, farmers earned 40 cents of every consumer food dollar. Today, they earn just 15 cents, and they live paycheck-to-paycheck.
"Once you control a market, you can set prices, extract wage value, and vertically integrate with other companies to create more control and more extraction."
This “chickenization” model has spread to other industries, such as transportation (Uber), food delivery (Grubhub), and even dry cleaning (Cleanly). Once-independent small businesses now operate under terms dictated by tech platforms.
Big tech is an ever-growing threat. Consider Facebook: if Mark Zuckerberg changes his mind, he changes what hundreds of millions of people read, think, and consume. Half of all 18–24-year-olds check Facebook first thing in the morning, and over 1.1 billion people use it on their phones. Decisions about data privacy and editorial control made by one company ripple across society. Facebook has only grown stronger by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp.
Amazon sets the rules for which businesses survive on its marketplace. Google surveils users, casually pays fines for lawbreaking, bankrolls lobbyists, and puts data-gathering devices in our schools.
Too often, we protest as consumers, not as citizens. We may boycott Amazon until the next impulse purchase. Boycotts can shift executive leadership (see Target), but they rarely change systems. If highways are unsafe, we don’t boycott driving—we demand action from elected officials. Likewise, when Facebook accepts money to run false political ads, quitting Facebook isn’t enough. We must demand legislation to hold them accountable.
In 2019, the FTC fined Google $170 million—a trivial sum for the company—for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting data on kids through nursery-rhyme videos and then targeting them with ads. Yet we continue rewarding Google by stocking our classrooms with Chromebooks.
Denmark saw the threat clearly in 2018, appointing a diplomat as the world’s first ambassador to the tech industry. In doing so, Denmark acknowledged that companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook wield power rivaling that of governments.
So, what are we to do? We must get big money out of politics. Buckley v. Valeo (1976) removed limits on campaign spending, treating money as free speech. Citizens United v. FEC (2010) went further, unleashing unlimited corporate spending. The naïve belief was that outside spending could not be corrupting.
Our reality says otherwise. AT&T and Verizon, for example, poured money into groups supporting voter suppression laws all in order to block municipal broadband initiatives threatening their business interests. Businesses will always advocate for shareholders and market dominance. We must never forget that.
Wages tend to rise as companies compete. However, the larger these companies become, the less they need to compete and the more they can, instead, prioritize stock buybacks, rewarding shareholders over the employees that power their businesses.
"The 26 richest people in the world own $1.4 trillion in wealth—the same as the 3.8 billion poorest people. Most are Americans. Most are men. Most are white. Most made their money from monopolies: owning the market, not competing in it, is the best way to extract wealth from workers, consumers, and partners alike."
Before we part ways (a long review, I know), let’s discuss what a divorce from Google might look like, and why your ex would still be a part of your life forever and always. To stop using Google, you’d have to: (1) never use Google Maps again, (2) get rid of your G-Mail account, (3) use DuckDuckGo or some other web browser service, (4) stop investing in Google Ads – even if they bring in revenue for your business, (5) instruct your children to not use any technology in the classroom powered by Google, (6) not connect to free WiFi in participating airports such as in Las Vegas and Boston, (7) get rid of your Android phone, (8) stop wearing your Fitbit, (9) not use any application hosted on Google Cloud (GCP), (10) disconnect your Nest smart home products, (11) pretend YouTube never existed, (12) never hail a Waymo ride, (13) not reside in a city that provides tax subsidies to Google for growing their footprint…and the list goes on.
Now tell me, is Google too big?
Break ‘Em Up is a powerful, eye-opening read. The first half will jolt you awake. The second half loses some steam, which is why I knock it 0.5 stars.
3.5 out of 5
In Break ‘Em Up, author Zephyr Teachout dismantles the common misconception that a monopoly must control the entire market. When Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, it held 65% of the market. Until 1980, the United States used anti-monopoly laws to block mergers of corporations with as little as 5–6% market share. As Teachout explains, monopolies are any companies so powerful they dictate the terms of interaction—like pharmaceutical giants that refuse to compete and freely charge whatever price they wish.
“[M]onopoly is tyranny,” Teachout writes. They are “little would-be Alexander the Greats,” and “no democracy can survive for long once a few corporations have amassed governmental power in such a massive form and scale.” Among the companies she argues should be broken up are:
Amazon
Bank of America
Blue Cross/Blue Shield
Boeing
Citibank
Comcast
CommonSpirit Health
CVS
Disney
Exxon
Monsanto/Bayer
Nestlé
Pfizer
Spectrum
Uber
Unilever
United Healthcare
Verizon
Visa
Walmart
Teachout insists this is not a choice between breaking up big business or regulating it—we must do both. Regulation alone cannot prevent the amassing of power that allows monopolies to persist.
"Monopoly is a rival form of government burrowing its way into democratic government, so we must always strike at the root of its power, and not leave anti-monopolism for later."
Breaking up companies and preventing mergers isn’t the only path to limiting their power. Campaign finance reform, predatory pricing laws, public utility regulation, support for co-ops, and preserving citizens’ rights to sue corporations (rather than being forced into arbitration) are also essential.
Perhaps the most damning section of Break ‘Em Up is about chickens. Yes, chickens. Poultry is a $90 billion-per-year industry, yet many farmers earn poverty wages and are saddled with crushing debt. Just three primary processors—Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Perdue—dominate nearly every stage of production, from purchase to processing to sale. Evidence suggests these processors don’t meaningfully compete, leaving farmers with only one option in their region and forcing compliance with company terms on everything from feed to transportation. If a processor cuts ties, farmers face bankruptcy under the weight of million-dollar mortgages on their chicken houses.
Contracts bar farmers from openly sharing the terms of their agreements. If a processor decides to experiment with five of fifty farmers—say, by requiring different feed or lighting—and the experiment fails, the farmers bear the costs, never knowing who else faced the same burdens.
Decades ago, farmers had more autonomy, with multiple processors competing for business. But antitrust laws gutted under the Reagan administration allowed horizontal (same-industry) and vertical (related-industry) mergers. Tyson, Perdue, and Pilgrim’s Pride then went on a buying spree—acquiring processing plants, feed mills, logistics systems, packaging companies, and more.
In 1985, farmers earned 40 cents of every consumer food dollar. Today, they earn just 15 cents, and they live paycheck-to-paycheck.
"Once you control a market, you can set prices, extract wage value, and vertically integrate with other companies to create more control and more extraction."
This “chickenization” model has spread to other industries, such as transportation (Uber), food delivery (Grubhub), and even dry cleaning (Cleanly). Once-independent small businesses now operate under terms dictated by tech platforms.
Big tech is an ever-growing threat. Consider Facebook: if Mark Zuckerberg changes his mind, he changes what hundreds of millions of people read, think, and consume. Half of all 18–24-year-olds check Facebook first thing in the morning, and over 1.1 billion people use it on their phones. Decisions about data privacy and editorial control made by one company ripple across society. Facebook has only grown stronger by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp.
Amazon sets the rules for which businesses survive on its marketplace. Google surveils users, casually pays fines for lawbreaking, bankrolls lobbyists, and puts data-gathering devices in our schools.
Too often, we protest as consumers, not as citizens. We may boycott Amazon until the next impulse purchase. Boycotts can shift executive leadership (see Target), but they rarely change systems. If highways are unsafe, we don’t boycott driving—we demand action from elected officials. Likewise, when Facebook accepts money to run false political ads, quitting Facebook isn’t enough. We must demand legislation to hold them accountable.
In 2019, the FTC fined Google $170 million—a trivial sum for the company—for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting data on kids through nursery-rhyme videos and then targeting them with ads. Yet we continue rewarding Google by stocking our classrooms with Chromebooks.
Denmark saw the threat clearly in 2018, appointing a diplomat as the world’s first ambassador to the tech industry. In doing so, Denmark acknowledged that companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook wield power rivaling that of governments.
So, what are we to do? We must get big money out of politics. Buckley v. Valeo (1976) removed limits on campaign spending, treating money as free speech. Citizens United v. FEC (2010) went further, unleashing unlimited corporate spending. The naïve belief was that outside spending could not be corrupting.
Our reality says otherwise. AT&T and Verizon, for example, poured money into groups supporting voter suppression laws all in order to block municipal broadband initiatives threatening their business interests. Businesses will always advocate for shareholders and market dominance. We must never forget that.
Wages tend to rise as companies compete. However, the larger these companies become, the less they need to compete and the more they can, instead, prioritize stock buybacks, rewarding shareholders over the employees that power their businesses.
"The 26 richest people in the world own $1.4 trillion in wealth—the same as the 3.8 billion poorest people. Most are Americans. Most are men. Most are white. Most made their money from monopolies: owning the market, not competing in it, is the best way to extract wealth from workers, consumers, and partners alike."
Before we part ways (a long review, I know), let’s discuss what a divorce from Google might look like, and why your ex would still be a part of your life forever and always. To stop using Google, you’d have to: (1) never use Google Maps again, (2) get rid of your G-Mail account, (3) use DuckDuckGo or some other web browser service, (4) stop investing in Google Ads – even if they bring in revenue for your business, (5) instruct your children to not use any technology in the classroom powered by Google, (6) not connect to free WiFi in participating airports such as in Las Vegas and Boston, (7) get rid of your Android phone, (8) stop wearing your Fitbit, (9) not use any application hosted on Google Cloud (GCP), (10) disconnect your Nest smart home products, (11) pretend YouTube never existed, (12) never hail a Waymo ride, (13) not reside in a city that provides tax subsidies to Google for growing their footprint…and the list goes on.
Now tell me, is Google too big?
Break ‘Em Up is a powerful, eye-opening read. The first half will jolt you awake. The second half loses some steam, which is why I knock it 0.5 stars.
3.5 out of 5
August 23, 2020
Early in her newest book, Break ‘Em Up, Zephyr Teachout retells the story of an Amazon air hockey seller. The seller, whose air hockey table was one of the top-3 search results until Amazon introduced sponsored ads. Coincidentally, despite years of sales and popular reviews, the product dropped off the search charts with their arrival—even the free organic results. Potential buyers in the America’s largest online market could no longer find the product. In a desperate act to regain volume, the seller decided to spend $5,000-$10,000 a month on Amazon sponsored advertisements. As if magic, a product that mysteriously dropped off Amazon’s organic search results, found its way back to the top after it bought thousands of dollars of advertisements.
Zephyr Teachout explains:
This example speaks to the heart of Break ‘Em Up. Teachout argues that large private monopolies are forms of tyranny that destroy our economy and democracy. The small air hockey seller is not free to conduct business if they’re forced to purchase thousands of dollars of advertisements from the only online market that matters. According to Teachout, the only way to combat the tyranny is to target the heart of the issue: the business model itself.
Zephyr Teachout is one of the most important figures within the modern progressive movement. She’s a lawyer, law professor, author, and multiple time candidate for public office. Unlike a lot of her contemporaries, her arguments and solutions aren’t driven solely from a moral standpoint. Instead, she provides a moral vision with a fierce defense of competitive markets and cost-savings—something every business minded person should hold dear to their heart. Take the popular progressive position of Medicare (universal health care). Zephyr supports it, but wants to move past the discussion of universal coverage and into the structural issues driving health care cost: private monopolies.
Basically, Zephyr Teachout has the courage and the moral conviction of Ralph Nader, but the vision to see the structural issues driving our society.
Break ‘Em Up is structured into two parts. The first argues that private monopolies have destroyed a lot of what we consider society. The second is what to do about it. One of my favorite things about this book is how she frames business taxes. The earlier $5,000 to $10,000 ‘advertising’ fee that the small business pays every month isn’t advertising. It’s a private tax, imposed by Amazon in order to access the market. Unlike public taxes, which go to fund roads and schools, this goes straight into the pocket of Jeff Bezos—who is current worth around $200 billion.
She walks us through a variety of industries and the monopolies that impose private destructive taxes on each: Tyson and Farming, Facebook and Journalism, Amazon and Retail. The stats are particularly damning in farming. In 1985 farmers were paid about 40 cents for every dollar Americans spent on food. Today, that number is down to 15 cents. The money has shifted from small producers, to large manufacturers and retailers.
The first part of the book is well written, but unless you’re new to the anti-monopoly thought, it isn’t particularly groundbreaking. In my opinion, The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu (who she ran for governor with) and Matt Stoller’s Goliath do a little bit better job explaining the evolution, history, and impact of the rise of private monopolies. Where Break ‘Em Up really shines is in the second part—what to do about it.
I’m generally partial to the plight of consumer products companies—this isn’t to say they’re blameless—but most are effectively powerless against large retailers. The reason for this is quite simple–we quit enforcing free trade laws. For most CPG companies, two retailers (Walmart and Kroger) constitute 30-35% of sales. If one of them says an item’s price needs to be lowered—it’s going to get lowered—and the manufacturer is going to take the margin bite. They simply can’t risk getting their item take out of the store. The only way they’re able to negotiate is if they have a large portfolio—either raising prices elsewhere or making it up in overall volume. Either way, the underlying structure pushes companies towards consolidation—like the mega-merger of Kraft-Heinz. Break ‘Em Up is one of the first books that I’ve read that gives concrete framework to stop the structure from happening.
To me, some of her most powerful writing is when analyzes Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy, a book that argues the typical progressive line on capitalism—that it’s bad and needs to change for moral reasons. Her response is phenomenal and I think shows a viable path forward to popularizing progressive policies across the ideological spectrum.
Zephyr’s solution isn’t to regulate out markets. The solution is to regulate markets in a way that works for people. She then provides a framework that isn’t just theory, but practical and proven.
All in all, Break ‘Em Up is a nice addition to the modern anti-trust movement by one of its most important practitioners.
This review originally appeared on my website.
Zephyr Teachout explains:
The resulting system is the opposite of a competitive market — it’s a kickback regime. Amazon sets up an allegedly neutral system , and then charges fees to game that system, calling those fees “ advertisements. ” Sellers compete over how much they can pay Amazon to get access to consumers.
This example speaks to the heart of Break ‘Em Up. Teachout argues that large private monopolies are forms of tyranny that destroy our economy and democracy. The small air hockey seller is not free to conduct business if they’re forced to purchase thousands of dollars of advertisements from the only online market that matters. According to Teachout, the only way to combat the tyranny is to target the heart of the issue: the business model itself.
Zephyr Teachout is one of the most important figures within the modern progressive movement. She’s a lawyer, law professor, author, and multiple time candidate for public office. Unlike a lot of her contemporaries, her arguments and solutions aren’t driven solely from a moral standpoint. Instead, she provides a moral vision with a fierce defense of competitive markets and cost-savings—something every business minded person should hold dear to their heart. Take the popular progressive position of Medicare (universal health care). Zephyr supports it, but wants to move past the discussion of universal coverage and into the structural issues driving health care cost: private monopolies.
Here’s the rub: driving down prices is much harder when the government is negotiating with a powerful monopoly than when it is negotiating in a competitive market. Healthcare expert Phillip Longman has written several persuasive articles about consolidation in the drug market, and the healthcare industry more generally, and the risk that this consolidation poses to nationalizing plans. If a single payer plan was enacted without additionally addressing the monopoly problem, he argues, government could end up effectively subsidizing big pharma, and big hospitals, and keep paying enormously high prices. Those costs would shift back to the public—in the form of taxes.
Single payer care is necessary for humane reasons, and for the extraordinary reduction in administrative costs. But why not demand both single payer and breaking up drug monopolies?
Basically, Zephyr Teachout has the courage and the moral conviction of Ralph Nader, but the vision to see the structural issues driving our society.
Break ‘Em Up is structured into two parts. The first argues that private monopolies have destroyed a lot of what we consider society. The second is what to do about it. One of my favorite things about this book is how she frames business taxes. The earlier $5,000 to $10,000 ‘advertising’ fee that the small business pays every month isn’t advertising. It’s a private tax, imposed by Amazon in order to access the market. Unlike public taxes, which go to fund roads and schools, this goes straight into the pocket of Jeff Bezos—who is current worth around $200 billion.
She walks us through a variety of industries and the monopolies that impose private destructive taxes on each: Tyson and Farming, Facebook and Journalism, Amazon and Retail. The stats are particularly damning in farming. In 1985 farmers were paid about 40 cents for every dollar Americans spent on food. Today, that number is down to 15 cents. The money has shifted from small producers, to large manufacturers and retailers.
The first part of the book is well written, but unless you’re new to the anti-monopoly thought, it isn’t particularly groundbreaking. In my opinion, The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu (who she ran for governor with) and Matt Stoller’s Goliath do a little bit better job explaining the evolution, history, and impact of the rise of private monopolies. Where Break ‘Em Up really shines is in the second part—what to do about it.
I’m generally partial to the plight of consumer products companies—this isn’t to say they’re blameless—but most are effectively powerless against large retailers. The reason for this is quite simple–we quit enforcing free trade laws. For most CPG companies, two retailers (Walmart and Kroger) constitute 30-35% of sales. If one of them says an item’s price needs to be lowered—it’s going to get lowered—and the manufacturer is going to take the margin bite. They simply can’t risk getting their item take out of the store. The only way they’re able to negotiate is if they have a large portfolio—either raising prices elsewhere or making it up in overall volume. Either way, the underlying structure pushes companies towards consolidation—like the mega-merger of Kraft-Heinz. Break ‘Em Up is one of the first books that I’ve read that gives concrete framework to stop the structure from happening.
1. Open, competitive markets, working together with publicly provided services and neutral infrastructure, are necessary for economic liberty. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to every industry, but unregulated private monopoly poses a unique threat. Private corporations with too much power raise prices for consumers, depress wages for workers, choke off democracy, and regulate all of us.
2. To preserve rough economic and political equality, we should make it easier to organize people and harder to organize capital. It should be as easy to unionize, or to create a cooperative, as it is hard to merge goliaths.
3. It’s better to err on the side of decentralized private power. Democratic governance is messy and will lead to mistakes, but corporate government will lead to tyranny.
To me, some of her most powerful writing is when analyzes Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy, a book that argues the typical progressive line on capitalism—that it’s bad and needs to change for moral reasons. Her response is phenomenal and I think shows a viable path forward to popularizing progressive policies across the ideological spectrum.
Sandel’s approach is dangerous because it closes down an arena of moral action and redirects activism away from breaking up big corporations. It makes us ignore market – structure problems. If we treat markets as a kind of necessary infectious disease that one must cordon off, instead of institutions that can be wonderful or corrupt depending on how they are structured, we stop trying to fix them. And while a few people think the state should make shoes and grow carrots, most people — including myself — imagine most of economic life happening through private exchange.
Zephyr’s solution isn’t to regulate out markets. The solution is to regulate markets in a way that works for people. She then provides a framework that isn’t just theory, but practical and proven.
All in all, Break ‘Em Up is a nice addition to the modern anti-trust movement by one of its most important practitioners.
This review originally appeared on my website.
May 24, 2021
Amazing book! Some really great material on antitrust and corporate greed.
Touches heavily on Amazon, Facebook, and Monsanto.
Really liked the bit about Amazon (below).
They sell products for less because they make those product companies cut corners or pay their employees less. So, this book said that we all work at these companies, so buying from Amazon essentially means you're offering your neighbors lower wages. Shop local!
Don't get me started on Facebook! This book really opens your eyes.
I would have given this book a higher rating, but there is a genuine lack of mentioning Apple's also terrible business practices. I think Teachout has gone a little freakout for Apple in the way of fanboying. They got lots of dirt too buddy.
The content is pretty volatile and decisive, and I found it really interesting.
Great book if you're into economics and appreciate honest business practices and living wage.
4.2/5
Touches heavily on Amazon, Facebook, and Monsanto.
Really liked the bit about Amazon (below).
They sell products for less because they make those product companies cut corners or pay their employees less. So, this book said that we all work at these companies, so buying from Amazon essentially means you're offering your neighbors lower wages. Shop local!
Don't get me started on Facebook! This book really opens your eyes.
I would have given this book a higher rating, but there is a genuine lack of mentioning Apple's also terrible business practices. I think Teachout has gone a little freakout for Apple in the way of fanboying. They got lots of dirt too buddy.
The content is pretty volatile and decisive, and I found it really interesting.
Great book if you're into economics and appreciate honest business practices and living wage.
4.2/5
December 8, 2020
yeah we should def break em up
November 8, 2021
goodreads is owned by AMAZON
August 27, 2020
Monopolies bad
So, where’s Teddy Roosevelt when we need him? He was replaced by conservative values. Monopolies rule.
The top three richest persons of America own more wealth than the bottom 160,000,000 Americans. The top corporations wield power to keep things their way.
Electronic “news”, according to the author, destroyed journalism, although diminishing advertising, cell phones and acquisition by bad persons/corporations may have had a bit to do about it.
Teachout proposes a blueprint to break up the mass businesses and create a moral economy, such as I do not believe has ever existed in the U.S.... or, the world. I may be wrong, but I am not.
(I personally remember our local publisher at the millionaire’s table at Rotary boosting NAFTA. In a few years, the local businesses/stores dried up and now the “paper” is twice weekly, probably bankrupt and owned by someone/something in Paduka, Kentucky- I am not making that up- and is selling its building. And, yet, Indiana University is still enticing young blockheads to go in debt the rest of their lives for a journalism degree!)
Also, major corporations are immune from lawsuits posted on their sites that’s thanks to a 1996 law passed by their paid up buddies.
That is really neat. There is a huge difference between law and justice and we were all put her to be eaten... in case you did not know. In reality, the big boys can buy and or shut down newspapers/television venues at will.
Trade associations are really terrific in an extraordinarily bad sort of way. Read the body snatchers chapter.
Of course we know people of color were systematically suppressed. Blacks now own merely 2% of the nation’s wealth. (p. 128). Black power is actually declining.
Wage distribution is as obscene as it always was. Big companies are spending more on stock buybacks than on capital improvements. Most, if not all, unions are now impotent.
Okay, Teachout did an amazing job of describing what she thinks is the problem, but fails miserably in suggesting a workable solution. The final chapter “Epilogue 2040” would have been funny, except it was not. It was fantasy at its best, or worse depending upon your point of view.
Notes:
Conservative values: When various hot button are used to allow Those Who Rule Over Us to get whatever they want.
Reagan’s appointed judges gutted antitrust laws.
Citizens United put big money in control.
Americans for Prosperity is the new superpower.
ALEC is bad, but the average American has never heard of the organization.
November 25, 2020
Good points, though it mostly just made me angry and treaded ground I'd read about in other places, though I think it's important to deliver the message: This is not natural. The power does not have to be with the companies. Workers especially need to seize control back, and we're not going to do it by consumer boycotts because the consumer doesn't really have any choice anymore with so many companies owning each other.
But you know, if you were looking for MORE reasons to hate Reagan for starting our inexorable slide toward a corporate feudalism more dystopian than any cyberpunk book could have imagined ... do read.
But you know, if you were looking for MORE reasons to hate Reagan for starting our inexorable slide toward a corporate feudalism more dystopian than any cyberpunk book could have imagined ... do read.
January 11, 2026
Above all, Teachout demands our imagination for an economy that is moral and free. She calls out our current moment of economic despotism without accountability, focuses on and lists the legislation that could serve as remedy, and tears down liberal and conservative thought that have lead us to this unsustainable situation.
For an effective explanation as to why the land of the free feels so oppressive, look no further than Teachout.
For an effective explanation as to why the land of the free feels so oppressive, look no further than Teachout.
August 7, 2020
Fantastic book. I almost feel obligated to stay abreast of popular books on economics (especially relating to inequality and market concentration), and I find myself at times dragging my way through similar grab-bag collections of anecdotes and industry-by-industry woes. Not so in this case.
This book is tightly thought out and well edited. It focuses on power - in a very practical (negotiating) sense, as opposed to a socialist framework. It is very timely and takes on the difficult topics of social media - acknowledging that the social media monopolies act in their own self-interests - resulting in decisions which are, from society's viewpoint, arbitrary and pernicious.
It addresses shallow satisfactions and limited utility of 'cancel culture', arguing that real change requires real intervention - trust-busting, just as it always was. I took a college course in anti-trust law in the 1970s - back when we as a society still believed in such things - and I never cease to marvel at the market concentrations that we accept today as a matter of course. The standard has shifted to consumer prices - as long as the monopolist offers lower prices (e.g., Amazon, Facebook) we turn a blind eye to the other harms such concentrations cause.
Highly recommend.
This book is tightly thought out and well edited. It focuses on power - in a very practical (negotiating) sense, as opposed to a socialist framework. It is very timely and takes on the difficult topics of social media - acknowledging that the social media monopolies act in their own self-interests - resulting in decisions which are, from society's viewpoint, arbitrary and pernicious.
It addresses shallow satisfactions and limited utility of 'cancel culture', arguing that real change requires real intervention - trust-busting, just as it always was. I took a college course in anti-trust law in the 1970s - back when we as a society still believed in such things - and I never cease to marvel at the market concentrations that we accept today as a matter of course. The standard has shifted to consumer prices - as long as the monopolist offers lower prices (e.g., Amazon, Facebook) we turn a blind eye to the other harms such concentrations cause.
Highly recommend.
September 21, 2020
Zephyr Teachout makes a compelling case about the dangers to freedom and public well-being posed by concentration of economic power. She calls for restoring federal anti-trust law to the force it held from the 1940s until the Reagan administration and Chicago-school jurists began whittling it down to today's near-nonentity. What was most painful for me to read was the straitjacket buckled onto today's farmers -- contracts with seed and fertilizer companies and meat processors that constrain the grower at every turn. Monsanto, Bayer, Perdue and their like make the image of sturdy rural independence a hollow memory in great swaths of America. Banking, manufacturing, transportation, and retail all have their examples of similar harmful concentration.
What is missing from the book is a reckoning with the economic power that is concentrated outside our country. While many of the monopolies she described are American in origin and control, money flows easily across borders. How do we break up monopolies here and still compete in the world?
We could hope that this is on Teachout's to-do list. The present book and the one before, about corruption, are already forces for reform. We need the next.
What is missing from the book is a reckoning with the economic power that is concentrated outside our country. While many of the monopolies she described are American in origin and control, money flows easily across borders. How do we break up monopolies here and still compete in the world?
We could hope that this is on Teachout's to-do list. The present book and the one before, about corruption, are already forces for reform. We need the next.
February 24, 2022
I have mixed feelings about this book.
I agree with the author’s argument and the premise: monopolization is a dire threat to the US. The author draws excellent parallels to the Gilded Age, and that is done well.
But there are details that just make me side eye.
For example, the author decries Monsanto in the section about Big Ag. I have lots of issues with Monsanto, but the way she described the recent merger made it sound like Monsanto bought Bayer—but it’s the other way around. That’s an important detail to get right, and it felt in context like the author was playing off the fear-mongering and notoriety of Monsanto.
Also there’s a section discussing the need for the Green New Deal and green/renewable energy (big agree!), and she discusses how we need to create a Department of Green Energy…but we already have the DOE? Creating another bureaucracy is not a great solution when we already have an agency to address the very issue.
That’s just two examples, but they make me side eye and question her other examples. Thankfully I’ve read other books on related topics and feel comfortable about my knowledge, but will others?
Again, agree with the premise. But details matter.
I agree with the author’s argument and the premise: monopolization is a dire threat to the US. The author draws excellent parallels to the Gilded Age, and that is done well.
But there are details that just make me side eye.
For example, the author decries Monsanto in the section about Big Ag. I have lots of issues with Monsanto, but the way she described the recent merger made it sound like Monsanto bought Bayer—but it’s the other way around. That’s an important detail to get right, and it felt in context like the author was playing off the fear-mongering and notoriety of Monsanto.
Also there’s a section discussing the need for the Green New Deal and green/renewable energy (big agree!), and she discusses how we need to create a Department of Green Energy…but we already have the DOE? Creating another bureaucracy is not a great solution when we already have an agency to address the very issue.
That’s just two examples, but they make me side eye and question her other examples. Thankfully I’ve read other books on related topics and feel comfortable about my knowledge, but will others?
Again, agree with the premise. But details matter.
May 9, 2022
When writing our Constitution, our founding fathers sought to limit the power of the only institutions they feared could thwart the freedom of the individual - the state and the church (via the limits on religion inherent in the First Amendment). They could not imagine a commercial enterprise powerful enough to threaten our privacy, our livelihoods or our very democracy. But that is precisely the result that Zephyr Teachout presents in Break 'Em Up. From tech giants like Facebook and Google to agricultural behemoths like Monsanto to Big Pharma and voracious hospital chains, the dollars flowing to politicians thanks to Citizens United have created a feedback loop of influence that drives legislation that generates ever-higher profits for those donors, who then plow those profits back into more political donations. Stock buybacks, tax law, lax anti-trust enforcement, favorable regulations, anti-employee arbitration rules and more are not accidents. They are deliberate and on-going - and they are a threat to everything listed above - privacy, livelihoods, democracy. Believing we are powerless to do anything about it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
March 7, 2021
Prescient. I found parts of this book hyperbolic and unsupported with evidence, but that might be because the ideas are revolutionary and I haven't fully become a revolutionary, not because the ideas are wrong. The greater portion of the book is supported by history and morality. It lays out clearly the concentration of power in a few and connects it to problems or society faces. Best of all, it lays out solutions. I will be reading this again.
October 17, 2021
Break ‘em up explains the dynamics of monopoly power excellently. Teachout provides countless examples of the ways corporate giants cheat small businesses and taxpayers. I thought her suggestions were very thought provoking and insightful. In particular, her discussion of M4A and the potential for it to make healthcare vastly more expensive if the issue of monopoly power isn’t addressed properly really stuck out to me.
However, at some points she is overly ideological when she doesn’t need to be. Some of the examples she selects are needlessly divisive. She could win more people over by being more thoughtful of the examples she includes.
Additionally, some of the book seemed rushed and unorganized. But overall, Teachout provides a really valuable perspective that anyone interested in learning about monopoly power would benefit from.
However, at some points she is overly ideological when she doesn’t need to be. Some of the examples she selects are needlessly divisive. She could win more people over by being more thoughtful of the examples she includes.
Additionally, some of the book seemed rushed and unorganized. But overall, Teachout provides a really valuable perspective that anyone interested in learning about monopoly power would benefit from.
July 29, 2020
An inspiring case for why we need to break up the corporate monopolies that run the US, and a path for how we get there. Picked it up and couldn't put it down till the last page.
September 12, 2020
Her diagnosis of our economic and political situation as well as the proposed remedies are persuasively argued and , I think, correct. I hope her optimism turns out to be justified.
November 12, 2020
I had this book on my reading list for some time, thinking that it might be interesting, but that it would not really add much that I did not already know. I could not have been more wrong.
I thought I understood how monopolies and oligopolies work, that I knew most of what there is to know about how companies try to expand and become bigger and bigger to eliminate competition and increase profits. The reality, as painted in this book was much harsher and darker than I had dared to contemplate even in my most dystopian fantasies.
I find the idea of trying to summarize the most important aspects of this book currently overwhelming, and I won't even try. All I can say is, that this book will probably end up in the top three of my all time favorite nonfiction books. Although I must say that the word "favorite" is probably misleading, as it suggests something positive.
The book starts with the high rate of suicides among US farmers, and explains how a handful of extremely big corporations have divided the US into regions, in such a way that in each region there is no competition whatsoever, and the farmers are at the mercy of these monopolists in ways that Russian-like totalitarian states would be envious of. If somebody had told me this, I would not have believed it, but Teachout is a scientist, and there is a huge list of references and footnotes in each chapter.
After that, the book just goes on and delivers blow after blow, at least that is how I experienced it. At times it left me sick with disgust reading how monopolies and oligopolies have a disastrous effect on the less fortunate people of our society. The book ends on a more positive note, discussing improvements that have been achieved since 2017.
I thought I understood how monopolies and oligopolies work, that I knew most of what there is to know about how companies try to expand and become bigger and bigger to eliminate competition and increase profits. The reality, as painted in this book was much harsher and darker than I had dared to contemplate even in my most dystopian fantasies.
I find the idea of trying to summarize the most important aspects of this book currently overwhelming, and I won't even try. All I can say is, that this book will probably end up in the top three of my all time favorite nonfiction books. Although I must say that the word "favorite" is probably misleading, as it suggests something positive.
The book starts with the high rate of suicides among US farmers, and explains how a handful of extremely big corporations have divided the US into regions, in such a way that in each region there is no competition whatsoever, and the farmers are at the mercy of these monopolists in ways that Russian-like totalitarian states would be envious of. If somebody had told me this, I would not have believed it, but Teachout is a scientist, and there is a huge list of references and footnotes in each chapter.
After that, the book just goes on and delivers blow after blow, at least that is how I experienced it. At times it left me sick with disgust reading how monopolies and oligopolies have a disastrous effect on the less fortunate people of our society. The book ends on a more positive note, discussing improvements that have been achieved since 2017.
February 7, 2021
Truly excellent - an exhaustively researched, solidly argued, impassioned call for anittrust law and reform with simple actionable policy proposals. It's expansive and comprehensive while still being accessible. I couldn't put this book down. Whatever your political orientation, read this and realize that the first step in any major reform in our country must begin with the nationalization and/or decentralization of massive monopolistic corporations with regulatory aspirations. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple should be the first companies which come to mind, but the rapid consolidation of Disney, Bayer/Monsanto, UnitedHealthcare, Lockheed, GeoGroup, and other giants must be stopped if we're to have any chance of reforming our country before it's destroyed by the fecklessness of these grasping entities. There's much work to be done but there is hope. Teachout's afterword paints a compelling picture of a more just and equitable world within reach of our current one if we can act now.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 24, 2024
I'm someone who has always flirted with but never fully committed to the growing antitrust movement, headed now by Lina Khan, Jonathan Kantor, Tim Wu, and, of course, Zephyr Teachout, has had my attention for a while. Now, I’m fully bought in. Teachout’s patently activist tone invites some skepticism, but her facts overwhelm and had me ready to dive into opensecrets.org and find a pol to persuade via social movement. Antitrust and privacy closely intertwine via Google, Meta, Amazon, etc., as Teachout notes throughout, so this one confirmed for me that I’m in the right field.
August 30, 2020
This case against big business monopolies emphasis the impact on democracy and the systematic stripping of rights through the courts, journalism and politics. Endnotes supports and documents sources for the multiple scenarios presented. The author proposes that the current environment is really for change and closer look at where money power resides.
March 27, 2020
It was a good read.
March 30, 2021
It's a wage puzzle, how more people are employed than ever before but there's is a labor shortage. Yet CEO make 300 times that of workers. In the 70s that might have only been 20 times.
It's wage puzzle on how many people's working wages are just above inflation but is bugging many.
Everyone is saying socialism and communism of the media yet a social platform of Facebook and Google keeps arbitration to the individual and in small courts due to small print. Exactly what many farmers deal with seeds and crops on data info with deer Tractors have on paying farmers low and needing to buy seeds every year.
Workers around the world: lost $3.7 trillion in the pandemic.
Billionaires around the world: gained $3.9 trillion in the pandemic.
It's the biggest one-year wealth transfer in history, yet somehow barely anyone is talking about it.
If we just collected all the taxes the 1% owes but doesn't pay, we'd have $1.75 trillion over a decade.
The cost to wipe out student debt is $1.7 trillion.
Stop saying we can't afford things and start asking why we refuse to do anything to inconvenience the rich or help people
Check out this book on Goodreads: Break 'em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
Start holding hedge fund and ceo and presidents to bail out fraud and tax break fraud. Investors are bettering against it, laughable. They know direct and indirect that deny self market control and it’s absurd is similar market shares will steal other
Similar market fares to increase there profitability and is a way to Stifel competitors into losses
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...
I recently found out a family in the States privately owns one of the largest agricultural companies in the world. Having huge problems with Covid in Alberta, I'd never even heard of them. Among a litany of crimes including tax evasion, deforestation, poor food standards and human right abuses they are being sued for kidnapping children and keeping them as slaves on cocoa farms. We need stickers on our food like there are on packets of cigarettes with pictures of child slaves, foreign workers working in other countries away from family for year's, burnt orangutans and polluted waterways are linked to petty crime so we can see what the true cost of a kit kat is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill
People’s commutes are the worst part of their day
Think protesters of truckers tractors plugging up the roadway.
Or huge shipping container blocking canal. %%%%$$$$$
https://books.apple.com/ca/audiobook/...
Every one might want to pick up jordans book. I have read many books that skirt around this topic, yet this is the first book by Andrew Yang with a presidential nomination. I’d like to see how Jordan Peterson would explain the growth of single parent house holds in marriage due to a partner not working, addiction, disability growing and mental problem growing of this great displacement in a vlog online with Andrew Yang, it would be interesting.
It’s asked of me, did I enjoy it?
Well, I would of enjoyed it more if I could regurgitate the reverberation of so many topics elements that stood out. It’s quite a bothersome book and lots streams out of it.
Has quite a coda and often a person sticks out who don’t get swamped by the deluge.
Pense trucker tractors plugging up roadways in protest. For a Suez Canal? Evergreen and maritime ship radar know direct and indirect that deny self market control and it’s absurd is similar market shares will steal other
Similar market fares to increase there profitability and is a way to Stifel competitors into losses
Check out this book on Goodreads: The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
It's wage puzzle on how many people's working wages are just above inflation but is bugging many.
Everyone is saying socialism and communism of the media yet a social platform of Facebook and Google keeps arbitration to the individual and in small courts due to small print. Exactly what many farmers deal with seeds and crops on data info with deer Tractors have on paying farmers low and needing to buy seeds every year.
Workers around the world: lost $3.7 trillion in the pandemic.
Billionaires around the world: gained $3.9 trillion in the pandemic.
It's the biggest one-year wealth transfer in history, yet somehow barely anyone is talking about it.
If we just collected all the taxes the 1% owes but doesn't pay, we'd have $1.75 trillion over a decade.
The cost to wipe out student debt is $1.7 trillion.
Stop saying we can't afford things and start asking why we refuse to do anything to inconvenience the rich or help people
Check out this book on Goodreads: Break 'em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
Start holding hedge fund and ceo and presidents to bail out fraud and tax break fraud. Investors are bettering against it, laughable. They know direct and indirect that deny self market control and it’s absurd is similar market shares will steal other
Similar market fares to increase there profitability and is a way to Stifel competitors into losses
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...
I recently found out a family in the States privately owns one of the largest agricultural companies in the world. Having huge problems with Covid in Alberta, I'd never even heard of them. Among a litany of crimes including tax evasion, deforestation, poor food standards and human right abuses they are being sued for kidnapping children and keeping them as slaves on cocoa farms. We need stickers on our food like there are on packets of cigarettes with pictures of child slaves, foreign workers working in other countries away from family for year's, burnt orangutans and polluted waterways are linked to petty crime so we can see what the true cost of a kit kat is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill
People’s commutes are the worst part of their day
Think protesters of truckers tractors plugging up the roadway.
Or huge shipping container blocking canal. %%%%$$$$$
https://books.apple.com/ca/audiobook/...
Every one might want to pick up jordans book. I have read many books that skirt around this topic, yet this is the first book by Andrew Yang with a presidential nomination. I’d like to see how Jordan Peterson would explain the growth of single parent house holds in marriage due to a partner not working, addiction, disability growing and mental problem growing of this great displacement in a vlog online with Andrew Yang, it would be interesting.
It’s asked of me, did I enjoy it?
Well, I would of enjoyed it more if I could regurgitate the reverberation of so many topics elements that stood out. It’s quite a bothersome book and lots streams out of it.
Has quite a coda and often a person sticks out who don’t get swamped by the deluge.
Pense trucker tractors plugging up roadways in protest. For a Suez Canal? Evergreen and maritime ship radar know direct and indirect that deny self market control and it’s absurd is similar market shares will steal other
Similar market fares to increase there profitability and is a way to Stifel competitors into losses
Check out this book on Goodreads: The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews