#Anti monopoly regulation and competition law

[almatyconsultinggroups]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada sues Google

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/03/clementsy/#can-tech

For a country obsessed with defining itself as "not America," Canada sure likes to copy US policies, especially the really, really terrible policies – especially the really, really, really terrible digital policies.

In Canada's defense: these terrible US policies are high priority for the US Trade Representative, who leans on Canadian lawmakers to ensure that any time America decides to collectively jump off the Empire State Building, Canadian politicians throw us all off the CN Tower. And to Canada's enduring shame, the USTR never has to look very hard to find a lickspittle who's happy to sell Canadians out.

Take anti-circumvention. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a gnarly hairball of copyright law whose Section 1201 bans reverse-engineering for any purpose. Under DMCA 1201, "access controls" for copyrighted works are elevated to sacred status, and it's a felony (punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine) to help someone bypass these access controls.

That's pretty esoteric, even today, and in 1998, it was nearly incomprehensible, except to a small group of extremely alarmed experts who ran around trying to explain to lawmakers why they should not vote for this thing. But by the time Tony Clement and James Moore (Conservative ministers in the Harper regime) introduced a law to import America's stupidest tech idea and paste it into Canada's lawbooks in 2012, the evidence against anti-circumvention was plain for anyone to see.

Under America's anti-circumvention law, any company that added an "access control" to its products instantly felonised any modification to that product. For example, it's not illegal to refill an ink cartridge, but it is illegal to bypass the access control that gets the cartridge to recognise that it's full and start working again. It's not illegal for a Canadian software developer to sell a Canadian Iphone owner an app without cutting Apple in for a 30% of the sale, but it is illegal to mod that Iphone so that it can run apps without downloading them from the App Store first. It's not illegal for a Canadian mechanic to fix a Canadian's car, but it is illegal for that mechanic to bypass the access controls that prevent third-party mechanics from decrypting the error codes the car generates.

We told Clement and Moore about this, and they ignored us. Literally: when they consulted on their proposal in 2010, we filed 6,138 comments explaining why this was a bad idea, while only 53 parties wrote in to support it. Moore publicly announced that he was discarding the objections, on the grounds that they had come from "babyish" "radical extremists":

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/copyright-debate-turns-ugly-1.898216

For more than a decade, we've had Clement and Moore's Made-in-America law tied to our ankles. Even when Canada copies some good ideas from the US (by passing a Right to Repair law), or even some very good ideas of its own (passing an interoperability law), Canadians can't use those new rights without risking prosecution under Clement and Moore's poisoned gift to the nation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

"Not America" is a pretty thin basis for a political identity anyway. There's nothing wrong with copying America's good ideas (like Right to Repair). Indeed, when it comes to tech regulation, the US has had some bangers lately, like prosecuting US tech giants for violating competition law. Given that Canada overhauled its competition law this year, the country's well-poised to tackle America's tech giants.

Which is exactly what's happening! Canada's Competition Bureau just filed a lawsuit against Google over its ad-tech monopoly, which isn't merely a big old Privacy Chernobyl, but is also a massively fraudulent enterprise that rips off both advertisers and publishers:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/canadas-antitrust-watchdog-sues-google-alleging-anti-competitive-conduct-2024-11-28/

The ad-tech industry scoops up about 51 cents out of every dollar (in the pre-digital advertising world the net take by ad agencies was more like 15%). Fucking up Google's ad-tech rip off is a much better way to Canada's press paid than the link tax the country instituted in 2023:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

After all, what tech steals from the news isn't content (helping people find the news and giving them a forum to discuss it is good) – tech steals news's money. Ad-tech is a giant ripoff. So is the app tax – the 30% Canadian newspapers have to kick up to the Google and Apple crime families every time a subscriber renews their subscriptions in an app. Using Canadian law to force tech to stop stealing the press's money is a way better policy than forcing tech to profit-share with the news. For tech to profit-share with the news, it has to be profitable, meaning that a profit-sharing press benefits from tech's most rapacious and extractive conduct, and rather than serving as watchdogs, they're at risk of being cheerleaders.

Smashing tech power is a better policy than forcing tech to share its stolen loot with newspapers. For one thing, it gets government out of the business of deciding what is and isn't a legit news entity. Maybe you're OK with Trudeau making that call (though I'm not), but how will you feel when PM Polievre decides that Great Replacement-pushing, conspiracy-addled far right rags should receive a subsidy?

Taking on Google is a slam-dunk, not least because the US DoJ just got through prosecuting the exact same case, meaning that Canadian competition enforcers can do some good copying of their American counterparts – like, copying the exhibits, confidential memos, and successful arguments the DoJ brought before the court:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies

Indeed, this already a winning formula! Because Big Tech commits the same crimes in every jurisdiction, trustbusters are doing a brisk business by copying each others' cases. The UK Digital Markets Unit released a big, deep market study into Apple's app market monopoly, which the EU Commission used as a roadmap to bring a successful case. Then, competition enforcers in Japan and South Korea recycled the exhibits and arguments from the EU's case to bring their own successful prosecutions:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

Canada copying the DoJ's ad-tech case is a genius move – it's the kind of south-of-the-border import that Canadians need. Though, of course, it's a long shot that the Trump regime will produce much more worth copying. Instead, Trump has vowed to slap a 25% tariff on Canadian goods as of January 20.

Which is bad news for Canada's export sector, but it definitely means that Canada no longer has to worry about keeping the US Trade Rep happy. Repealing Clement and Moore's Bill C-11 should be Parliament's first order of business. Tariff or no tariff, Canadian tech entrepreneurs could easily export software-based repair diagnostic tools, Iphone jailbreaking tooks, alternative firmware for tractors and medical implants, and alternative app stores for games consoles, phones and tablets. So long as they can accept a US payment, they can sell to US customers. This is a much bigger opportunity than, say, selling cheap medicine to Americans trying to escape Big Pharma's predation.

What's more, there's no reason this couldn't be policy under Polievre and the Tories. After all, they're supposed to be the party of "respect for private property." What could be more respectful of private property than letting the owners of computers, phones, cars, tractors, printers, medical implants, smart speakers and anything else with a microchip decide for themselves how they want to it work? What could be more respectful of copyright than arranging things so that Canadian copyright holders – like a games studio or an app company – can sell their copyrighted works to Canadian buyers, without forcing the data and the payment to make a round trip through Silicon Valley and come back 30% lighter?

Canadian politicians have bound the Canadian public and Canadian industry to onerous and expensive obligations under treaties like the USMCA (AKA NAFTA2), on promise of tariff-free access to American markets. With that access gone, why on Earth would we continue to voluntarily hobble ourselves?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Zachary Pleat at MMFA:

On August 15, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris began outlining her economic agenda, which includes fighting excessive prices by enacting a federal ban on price gouging.  Most states already have some kind of law banning price gouging in at least some circumstances, but Harris’ new proposal would create the first ever federal ban on price gouging on groceries and empower the Federal Trade Commission to enforce these new consumer protections.  Yet Fox News and others in the media reacted by falsely mischaracterizing Harris’ proposal as setting price controls, denying that price gouging exists in the food industry, and ranting about communism.

Bloomberg White House reporter Josh Wingrove posted a Harris campaign email previewing her plan that makes no mention of price controls. What the announcement did mention was “authority for the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate and impose harsh penalties” on corporations engaging in price gouging, “resources for the federal government to identify and take on price-fixing and other anti-competitive practices” in the food industry, and support for small businesses to break into the food industry to take on monopolies. [Twitter/X, 8/15/24]

Washington Post economics reporter Jeff Stein posted another Harris campaign announcement that cited state price gouging laws and laid out plans to grant more authority to the FTC and state attorneys general and increase competition in the food industry. There was no mention of price controls. [Twitter/X, 8/15/24]

In a press release, the Harris-Walz campaign detailed its price gouging initiative to empower regulators and state attorneys general and to tackle predatory price gouging. In an August 16 press release fully detailing the Harris-Walz campaign’s broader economic agenda, the campaign reiterated that, if elected, Harris will work to “advance the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries,” stipulating that these policies would be aimed at “big corporations” that “unfairly exploit consumers” and that the regulatory and legal authority to investigate and enforce the new anti-price gouging rules would rest with “the FTC and state attorneys general.” [Harris-Walz campaign press release, 8/16/24 via Popular Information]

Axios: Price controls are “just not how anti-price gouging policies work in the U.S.” Axios markets correspondent Emily Peck wrote that “critics are conflating the idea with Soviet-style price controls, and calling the plan ‘Kamunism.’” She explained that there’s been “wild speculation about what the plan could mean, including opinion pieces expressing fears that retailers won't be able to, say, set the price of a gallon of milk, and that it would lead to widespread shortages, black markets and hoarding,” but that “that's just not how anti-price gouging policies work in the U.S.,” pointing to a federal draft bill that “largely mirrors state laws” but is limited to larger companies “with at least $100 million in revenue.” [Axios, 8/20/24]

An FTC investigation revealed price gouging by major supermarket chains, and there have been many cases of price fixing in the food industry

In March, the FTC released a report on grocery supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, which found that some supermarket corporations “seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today.” FTC chair Lina Khan said, “The FTC’s report examining U.S. grocery supply chains finds that dominant firms used this moment to come out ahead at the expense of their competitors and the communities they serve.” [Federal Trade Commission, 3/21/24, 3/21/24]

The right-wing lie machine mischaracterizes Kamala Harris’s economic plans, denies the existence of price gouging in food, and libelously call her a “Communist.”

[morlock-holmes]

Or like, here's one version of "More capitalism" that we could do in the US:

Repeal all minimum wage laws

Abolish medicaid

Eliminate all anti-competetive regulations in the medical and health insurance fields

I suspect doing all three of those things would result in a net *decrease* in my ability to access basic medical care; that while the costs of medical care would decrease, my wages would also decrease and the net result would be less access to medical care.

This might well be true even if anti-competitive regulations are unnecessarily driving up the cost of health care.

More or less Capitalism kind of... Doesn't mean anything coherent. Are monopolies and cartels capitalist or anti-capitalist? What about specific anti-trust laws? Product labeling laws? Truth in advertising laws? Mandatory waivers of class action rights? Data protection laws? Unions?

[americanredragger]

Capitalist Highlander — THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

All Capitalist roads lead to Monopoly at the end, be they long or short, because Monopoly is the goal of an unfettered free market ideology.

You have many companies, all competing to offer goods and/or services in a given space, with the understanding that the "superior" company will beat out the competition and emerge victorious.

The lie we were told as children consisted of two fallacious understandings: that the struggle has no end, and that it was the superior product and/or service that would win, not the superior company. That lie disguises the fact that the superior company achieves that superiority by many, MANY means, with only a small handful having to do with shipping a product of a certain level of quality. Most of them have to do with legal abuse, creative accounting, dividing up territory, and other means of inter-corporate politics to block and/or remove competition in the first place. Most of this effort is targeted at preventing smaller competition from growing further, as not much can be done to bring down a fellow titan but wait for them to make an industry-shaking mistake and then be there to buy up the pieces off the corpse, so these titans exist in a precarious balance of power with each other.

The struggle ends, of course, with a victor who has achieved such market dominance sufficient to effectively lock out any and all competitors, aka, a monopoly. Some competition will always be permitted to deny that a monopoly has formed and lend it a degree of market legitimacy ("See! We can't be a monopoly! We have competition right over there!"), but it will only be allowed to operate within a permitted niche — it will never be allowed enough resources and breathing room to seriously challenge said monopoly's dominance. This is a big reason why a box of Honey Nut Cheerios will sell for $5-6 a box, but "Auntie Rhonny's Honeyed Nut Cereal" has to make do selling a much smaller box for $8-10 even if their product were objectively better in every way; the dominant power sets the terms of the market such that their competition stays small and token.

Even "better" is when the monopoly can turn their small competitors into customers. For instance, Samsung sells their smartphone screens at an affordable price both to major competitors like Apple, and also to smaller, more niche brands like Unihertz. This makes those smaller companies dependent on the titan they are in direct competition with, ensuring they cannot grow above a certain level. After all, if Unihertz started approaching getting big enough to think about maybe making their OWN displays, Samsung could simply prematurely cut off Unihertz's supply and prevent further growth in that direction, forcing them to either fold or find a new source of displays that may not be of the same quality that their customers have come to expect, which might do further damage. This dependency on Unihertz's part assures that Samsung wins and maintains their dominance over one market or another, no matter what happens.

Capitalist thought is much like The Highlander: "there can be only one". The process will continue until each market segment is dominated by a superior company, and then that King can behave largely how they want, because a lack of meaningful competition means people have no alternative.

It goes without saying that this is ultimately bad for consumers AND workers. Only the "competition" phase is any good for us, and even then, it has to be competition predicated on the ideal of selling a superior product or service. For that, in the current status quo, you need a strong government with powerful anti-trust laws and pro-worker and pro-consumer regulations and a vested interest and willingness to enforce them.

There are potential socioeconomic overhauls (of which Marxism and its various descendants are overwhelmingly the most well known) that could flip this script completely by investing power elsewhere and even redefine what a corporation even IS, but those are simply potential overhauls that will require a revolution (of one sort or another) to accomplish, so for the purposes of this post, they aren't very practical to discuss.

In the system we have, right here, right now, the only way to prevent monopoly is by using government regulations and anti-trust to physically intervene and prevent them, and break them up where they HAVE formed. Which is to say, the United States is probably already fucked. But the rest of you guys might manage something with enough action.

[mckitterick]

also, this has been A Thing for waaaay longer than Bezos has been killing small businesses. before that, Wal-Mart famously drove countless small retailers out of business (and still does), and even big retailers like K-Mart, JCPenney, etc. then they raise prices so only their CEOs and shareholders benefit

and long before that, think of all the monopolists like Carnegie and Rockefeller - we had a term for them: Robber Barons

they were industrial and financial tycoons who gained wealth and status by exploiting workers, governmental practices, and the environment, and further increased their wealth and power by eradicating competition, which allowed them to further control prices of resources, products, and labor

sound familiar?

what ended the Robber Baron era was regulation and anti-monopoly laws. like so much of what's wrong with American society and economics (and that of much of the world), you can thank Reagan and his "trickle-down economics" nonsense for beginning the dissolution of these controls, which has led to the newest era of techbro and economic Robber Barons

[allthenewzworld]

Nvidia shares were under pressure Monday after a Chinese regulator said it was investigating the chipmaker over possible violations to the country's antimonopoly law.

The State Administration for Market Regulation opened an investigation into the chipmaker in relation to acquisition of Mellanox, the Chinese government said Monday.

"In recent days, due to Nvidia's suspected violation of China's anti-monopoly law and the State Administration for Market Regulation's restrictive conditions around Nvidia's acquisition of Mellanox shares... the State Administration for Market Regulation is opening a probe into Nvidia in accordance with law," according to a statement translated by CNBC.

The news comes as competition heats up between the U.S. and China over chipmaking capabilities, with the Biden administration last week announcing a final slew of curbs targeting semiconductor toolmakers.

Read more at the link in bio.

[saikrishnaassociates]

Trusted IPR Firms in India for Protecting Innovations and Ideas

 The Intersection of Competition Law and Intellectual Property Rights

The intersection of competition law and Top IPR firms in India is where things get intriguing. Interaction between both  – competition law and IPR in India is complex due to their inherent tensions. On one hand, IPR protection encourages innovation and rewards the inventors and creators for their efforts. On the other hand, the exclusive rights granted under IPR can lead to monopolistic practices. Balancing these interests is a delicate task. IP rights are designed to incentivize innovation by granting exclusive rights to inventors and creators. However, these exclusive rights can potentially lead to monopolistic behavior that hampers competition. Striking the right balance is challenging.

Patent Law and Antitrust Regulations – A key aspect of patent law and antitrust law is the unilateral right of the patent holder and antitrust protections. Patents grant their holders the exclusive right to make, use, and sell their inventions for a certain period, typically 20 years from the date of filing of patent application. This exclusive right is the core part of the patent grant and allows the patent holder to exclude others from using their patented technology without permission. However, antitrust laws are in place to prevent anti-competitive behavior and promote fair competition. In the context of patents, unconditional, unilateral refusals to license (meaning the patent holder refuses to license their technology to anyone) are generally considered within the patent holder’s rights. This is because patents are essentially a government-granted monopoly for a limited time, and patent holders are not obligated to license their technology to others. Conditional refusals to license that cause competitive harm, on the other hand, may be subject to antitrust liability. For example, if a patent holder has a dominant position in a particular market and refuses to license their technology to competitors in a way that harms competition and consumers, antitrust authorities may intervene.

Copyright Law and Antitrust Regulations: Copyright law grants creators exclusive rights to their original works for a limited period. This exclusive right, while protecting creators’ interests, can also lead to a monopoly on certain content. When copyright holders abuse this monopoly power to stifle competition, it can raise antitrust concerns[1]. Similarly, doctrine of ‘fair use’ under copyright law allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for purposes such as criticism, commentary, and news reporting. Competition law may come into play when copyright holders misuse copyright claims to suppress fair use or hinder competition, especially in cases involving transformative use of copyrighted works. Copyright holders often enter into licensing agreements to grant others the right to use their copyrighted material. These agreements can have competitive implications, especially when they involve exclusive licenses that may restrict competition or reduce consumer choice. In such cases, Antitrust authorities may scrutinize such agreements for anti-competitive behaviour. Copyright holders should not engage in anti-competitive practices such as price-fixing, market allocation, or exclusionary conduct that harms competition and leads to abuse of dominant position. This may trigger antitrust investigations and enforcement actions.

Trademark Law and Antitrust Regulations: Similarly, Trademark law grants the holder exclusive rights to use a particular trademark in connection with specific goods or services. While these exclusive rights are crucial for brand protection, they may raise competition concerns when used to create an unjustified monopoly in the market. In Bayer AG v. United Drug Co. Ltd. (UK), the court considered the potential anti-competitive impact of granting injunction over the mark ‘aspirin’, as it could maintain a monopoly in the market. The court observed that, if the plaintiff (trademark holder) is allowed a monopoly of the word as against consumers, it will deprive the trade in general. Read more - https://www.saikrishnaassociates.com/aboutus/

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Anti Monopoly Regulation and Competition Law - Expert Legal Support

Ensure compliance with anti monopoly regulation and competition law through our expert legal support. We offer strategic advice for businesses facing regulatory challenges or disputes related to competition practices—contact us today for assistance!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Worker misclassification is a competition issue

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/02/upward-redistribution/#bedoya

The brains behind Trump's stolen Supreme Court have detailed plans: they didn't just scheme to pack the court with judges who weren't qualified for – or entitled to – a SCOTUS life-tenure, they also set up a series of cases for that radical court to hear.

Obviously, Dobbs was the big one, but it's only part of a whole procession of trumped-up cases designed to give the court a chance to overturn decades of settled law and create zones of impunity for America's oligarchs and the monopolies that provide them with wealth and power.

One of these cases is Jarkesy, a case designed to allow SCOTUS to euthanize every agency in the US government, stripping them of their powers to fight corporate crime:

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sec-v-jarkesy-the-threat-to-congressional-and-agency-authority/

The argument goes, "Congress had the power to spell out every possible problem an agency might deal with and to create a list of everything they were allowed to do about these problems. If they didn't, then the agency isn't allowed to act."

This is an Objectively Very Stupid argument, and it takes a heroic act of motivated reasoning to buy it. The whole point of expert agencies is that they're experts and that they might discover new problems in American life, and come up with productive ways of fixing them. If the only way for an agency to address a problem is to wait for Congress to notice it and pass a law about it, then we don't even need agencies – Congress can just be the regulator, as well as the lawmaker.

If there was any doubt that Congress created the agencies as flexible and adaptive hedges against new threats and problems, then the legislative history of the FTC Act should dispel it.

Congress created the FTC through the FTCA because the courts kept misinterpreting its existing antitrust laws, like the Sherman Act. Companies would engage in the most obvious acts of naked, catastrophic fuckery, and judges would say, "Welp, because Congress didn't specifically ban this conduct, I guess it's OK."

So Congress created the FTC with an Act that included a broad authority to investigate and punish "unfair methods of competition." They didn't spell these out – instead, they explicitly said (in Section 5) that it was the FTC's job to determine whether something was unfair, and to act on it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The job of the FTC is to investigate unfair conduct before it becomes such a problem that Congress takes action, and to head that conduct off so that it never rises to the level of needing Congressional intervention.

Now, it's true that since the Reagan years, the FTC has grown progressively less interested in using this power, but that's broadly true of all of America's corporate watchdogs. But as the public all over the world has grown ever more furious about corporate abuses and oligarchic wealth, governments everywhere have rediscovered their role as a public protector.

In America, the Biden administration altered the course of history with the appointment of new enforcers in the key anti-monopoly agencies: the FTC and the DOJ's antitrust division. But more importantly, the Biden admin created a detailed, technical plan to use every agency's powers to fight monopoly, in a "whole of government" approach:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Now, this can give rise to seeming redundancies. Take labor issues. The NLRB is a (potentially) powerful regulator that had been in a coma for decades, but has awoken and taken up labor rights with a fervor and cunning that is a delight to behold:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

At the same time, the FTC has also taken up labor rights, using its much broader powers to do things like ban noncompetes nationwide, unshackling workers from bosses who claim the right to veto who else they can work for:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

But the NLRB doesn't make the FTC redundant, or vice-versa. The NLRB's role is principally reactive, punishing wrongdoing after it occurs. But the FTC has the power to intervene in incipient harms, labor abuses that have not yet risen to the level of NLRB enforcement or new acts of Congress.

This case is made beautifully in Alvaro Bedoya's speech "'Overawed': Worker Misclassification as a Potential Unfair Method of Competition," delivered to the Law Leaders Global Summit in Miami today:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Overawed-Speech-02-02-2024.pdf

Bedoya describes why the FTC has turned its attention to the problem of "worker misclassification," in which employees are falsely claimed to be contractors, and thus deprived of the rights that workers are entitled to. Worker misclassification is rampant, and it transfers billions from workers to employers every year. As Bedoya says, 10-30% of employers engage in worker misclassification, allowing them to dodge payment for overtime, Social Security, workers' comp, unemployment insurance, healthcare, retirement and even a minimum wage. Each misclassified worker is between $6k-18k poorer thanks to this scam – a typical misclassified worker sees a one third decline in their earning power. And, of course, each misclassified worker's boss is $6k-$18k richer because of this scam.

It's not just wages, it's workplace safety. One of the most dangerous jobs in the country is construction worker, and worker misclassification is rampant in the sector. That means that construction workers are three times more likely than other workers to lack health insurance.

What's more, misclassified workers can't form unions, because their bosses' fiction treats them as independent contractors, not employees, which means that misclassified construction workers can't join trade unions and demand health-care, or safer workplaces.

Contrast this with, say, cops, who have powerful "unions" that afford them gold-plated health care and lavish compensation, even for imaginary ailments like "contact overdoses" from touching fentanyl – a medical impossibility that still entitles our nation's armed bureaucrats to handsome public compensation:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/27/extraordinary-popular-delusions/#onshore-havana-syndrome

Cops have far safer jobs than construction workers, but cops don't get misclassified, so they are able to collect benefits that no other worker – public or private – can hope for.

Not every employer wants to cheat and maim their employees, of course. In Bedoya's speech, he references Sandie Domando, an executive VP at a construction company in Palm Beach Gardens. Domando's company keeps its employees on its books, giving them health-care and other benefits. But when she started bidding against rival firms for jobs funded by the covid stimulus, she couldn't compete – two thirds of those jobs went to other firms that were able to put in cheaper bids. Those bids were cheaper because they were defrauding their workers by misclassifying them. Thus, publicly funded projects were overwhelmingly handed over to fraudulent companies. Fraud becomes a fitness-factor for winning jobs. It's a market for lemons – among employers.

Employee misclassification is a pure transfer from workers to bosses. Bedoya recounts the story of Samuel Talavera, Jr, a short-haul trucker who worked for decades in the Port of Los Angeles. For decades, his job paid well: enough to support his family and even take his kids to Disneyland now and again.

But in 2010, his employer reclassified him as a contractor. They ordered him to buy a new truck – which they financed on a lease-purchase basis – and put him to work for 16 hours stretches in shifts lasting as much as 20 hours per day. Talavera couldn't pick his own hours or pick his routes, but he was still treated as an independent contractor for payroll and labor protection purposes.

This lead to an terrible decline in Talavera's working conditions. He gave up going home between shifts, sleeping in his cab instead. His pay dropped through the floor, thanks to junk-fees that relied on the fiction that he was a contractor. For example, his boss started to charge him rent on the space his truck took up while he was standing by for a job at the port. Other truckers at the port saw paycheck deductions for the toilet-paper in the bathrooms!

Talavera's take-home pay dropped so low that he was bringing home a weekly wage of $112 or $33 (one week, his pay amounted to $0.67). His wife had to work three jobs, and they still had to declare bankruptcy to avoid losing their home. When Talavera's truck needed repairs he couldn't afford, his boss fired him and took back the truck, and Talavera was out the $78,000 he'd paid into it on the lease-purchase plan.

This story – and the many, many others like it from the Port of LA – paint a clear picture of the transfer of wealth from workers to their bosses that comes with worker misclassification. The work that Talavera did in the Port of LA didn't get less valuable when he was misclassified – but the share of that value that Talavera received dropped to as little as $0.67/week.

Worker misclassification is rampant across many sectors, but its handmaiden is technology. The fiction of independence is much easier to maintain when the fine-grained employer-employee control is mediated by an app (think of Uber):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

That's why those scare-stories that AI trucks were going to make truckers obsolete and create an employment crisis were such toxic nonsense. Not only are we unlikely to see self-driving trucks, but the same investors that back AI technology are making bank on companies that practice worker misclassification through the "it's not a crime if we do it with an app" gambit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

By focusing our attention on a hypothetical employment crisis that will supposedly be caused by future AI developments, tech investors can distract us from the real employment crisis that's created by app-enabled worker misclassification, which is also the source of much of the capital they're plowing into AI.

That's why the FTC's work on misclassification is so urgent. Misclassification is a scam that hurts workers and creates oligarchic power – and it's also a mass-extinction event for good companies that don't cheat their workers, because those honest companies can't compete.

Worker misclassification is having a long-overdue and much needed moment. The revolutionary overthrow of the rotten old leadership at the Teamsters was caused, in part, by a radical wing that promised to focus the Teamsters' firepower on fighting worker misclassification:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/19/hoffa-jr-defeated/#teamsters-for-a-democratic-union

This has become a focus of labor organizers all around the world, as worker misclassification-via-smartphone has infected labor markets everywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#an-injury-to-one

Bedoya's speech is a banger, and it reminds us that labor rights and anti-monopoly have always been part of the same project: to rein in corporate power and protect workers from the insatiable greed of the capital class:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

[gigglystudent]

Understanding Market Failure and Government Intervention: Essential Insights for University Assignments

In the realm of economics, understanding the intricacies of market failure and government intervention is vital for students. Market failure occurs when free markets are unable to allocate resources efficiently, leading to a net social welfare loss. Addressing this topic is essential for those seeking Public Economics Homework Help, as it forms a fundamental part of economic theory and policy analysis.

What is Market Failure?

Market failure refers to situations where the market, left to its own devices, fails to allocate resources in a way that maximizes social welfare. Several factors can lead to market failure, including externalities, public goods, information asymmetry, and monopolies.

Externalities: These occur when a third party is affected by an economic transaction they are not directly involved in. Externalities can be either positive (beneficial effects) or negative (harmful effects). For instance, pollution from a factory imposes health costs on the surrounding community, a negative externality.

Public Goods: Public goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, meaning they are available to all, and one person's use does not reduce their availability to others. Examples include national defense and public parks. Because these goods are not profitable for private companies to provide, they often require government provision.

Information Asymmetry: This occurs when one party in a transaction has more or better information than the other, leading to an imbalance of power and potentially unfair outcomes. For example, a car dealer might know more about the car's condition than the buyer, potentially leading to the buyer making a suboptimal purchase.

Monopolies: When a single firm dominates a market, it can lead to inefficiencies such as higher prices and reduced output. Monopolies can stifle innovation and exploit consumers, necessitating regulatory intervention.

Government Intervention to Correct Market Failure

Government intervention is often necessary to correct market failures and ensure efficient resource allocation. This intervention can take various forms, including regulation, taxation, subsidies, and the provision of public goods.

Regulation: Governments can impose regulations to control activities that lead to negative externalities. For example, environmental regulations limit pollution emissions from factories, protecting public health and the environment.

Taxation and Subsidies: Taxes can be used to internalize externalities, making those who cause negative externalities bear the social costs of their actions. For instance, a carbon tax on emissions encourages companies to reduce their carbon footprint. Conversely, subsidies can promote activities with positive externalities, such as subsidies for renewable energy projects.

Provision of Public Goods: Since private markets often fail to provide public goods due to their non-excludable and non-rivalrous nature, governments step in to provide these goods. This ensures that essential services like national defense, public education, and infrastructure are available to all citizens.

Anti-Monopoly Policies: To combat the inefficiencies of monopolies, governments can enforce anti-trust laws and regulations. These laws prevent monopolistic practices, promote competition, and protect consumers from exploitation.

Real-World Examples of Market Failure and Government Intervention

Climate Change: Climate change is a global negative externality. Governments worldwide have implemented policies like carbon taxes, emission trading systems, and subsidies for renewable energy to mitigate its impact. These interventions aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote sustainable practices.

Healthcare: The provision of healthcare often involves significant government intervention due to information asymmetry and the public good nature of health services. In many countries, governments provide universal healthcare or regulate the health insurance market to ensure that citizens have access to medical care.

Financial Markets: The 2008 financial crisis highlighted severe market failures within financial markets, such as excessive risk-taking and information asymmetry. In response, governments implemented regulatory reforms, including stricter capital requirements for banks and enhanced oversight of financial institutions.

Education: Education is another area where the government plays a crucial role. Public education systems ensure that all children have access to basic education, addressing the positive externalities associated with an educated population.

Conclusion

Understanding market failure and government intervention is essential for economics students, especially those seeking Public Economics Homework Help. By analyzing the causes of market failure and the various forms of government intervention, students can gain a comprehensive understanding of how economies function and the role of policy in promoting social welfare. Whether dealing with externalities, public goods, information asymmetry, or monopolies, government intervention is often necessary to correct inefficiencies and ensure optimal resource allocation. This knowledge is not only crucial for academic success but also for informed citizenship and policy-making.

By delving into these concepts, students can better prepare for their assignments and contribute to meaningful discussions on economic policy and its impacts on society.

source: https://www.economicshomeworkhelper.com/blog/market-failure-and-government-intervention/

[uae-new-competition]

UAE's New Competition Law Targets Monopolistic Practices to Support Businesses

The UAE's new competition regulation, announced by the Ministry of Economy, aims to enhance and safeguard competition, prevent monopolies, and combat harmful economic concentration.

At a media briefing, the Ministry highlighted the federal law designed to support economic growth and productivity, attracting both domestic and foreign investments. Abdullah Ahmed Al Saleh, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy, emphasized that this law establishes a comprehensive legal framework to boost competition and improve the business environment.

The law was developed through collaborative efforts involving 14 government entities and international competition studies. Key goals include protecting consumers from anti-competitive practices, promoting economic efficiency, and fostering a competitive business environment.

Key Highlights:

Regulates competition to boost investment and business operations, especially in digital markets.

Prevents abuse of economic dependency and bans excessively low pricing to eliminate competitors.

Covers all economic concentration processes with flexible criteria based on annual sales.

Encourages input from relevant parties on economic concentration applications.

Enhances federal and local government collaboration in enforcing competition laws.

Promotes consultation among regulatory entities to enforce competition policy.

Ministry of Economy Responsibilities: The Ministry will implement competition policies, investigate anti-competitive practices, and maintain a registry of complaints. It aims to foster a fair and efficient market, improve the business environment, and raise awareness about the importance of competition.

The new law defines competition as market-based economic activities and economic concentration as the transfer of ownership or control impacting competition. Establishments must submit applications for economic concentration to the Ministry at least 90 days before completion.

The Competition Regulation Committee will propose competition protection policies, scrutinize legal provisions, and recommend measures to the Minister.

In summary, the UAE's new competition regulation fosters a competitive market, protects consumer interests, and enhances the business environment.

[atomxmedia]

Impact of Digital Competition Bill on India’s Homegrown Startup Ecosystem

·

India’s digital economy is expected to grow at a quick pace due to the country’s widespread smartphone use, reasonably priced data, and the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world. The Indian government has introduced the Draft Digital Competition Bill in response to concerns about fair competition as international IT giants invest in India’s digital future. The purpose of this legislation is to promote fair competition for startups and MSMEs while controlling the dominance of Big Tech.

Regulatory Landscape

Since 2009, India’s competition laws, which are governed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), have changed. Amendments were made in 2023 to address concerns including deep discounting, preferred pricing, and data monopolies in recognition of the swift pace of the digital change. Based on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee, the Digital Competition Bill aims to prevent anti-competitive behaviours before they cause harm to the market through proactive measures known as ex-ante provisions.

Key Provisions of the Draft Bill

Certain businesses providing Core Digital Services (CDS) may be designated as Systematically Significant Digital Enterprises (SSDEs) under the proposed Draft Digital Competition Bill. Financial benchmarks and the size of the user base are among the requirements; organisations that reach one crore end customers in India are eligible for SSDE accreditation. By incorporating the majority of tech unicorns and expanding businesses, this threshold seeks to provide thorough market oversight.

Challenges for Indian Startups

The bill intends to encourage fair competition, but because of its existing thresholds, it might unintentionally tax domestic startups. Requirements for compliance may discourage investors and impede innovation, which might slow the 115,000 companies in India from growing. Due to increased regulatory scrutiny, these startups — which are vital to India’s digital economy and job creation — may find it difficult to compete with international behemoths.

Balancing Innovation and Regulation

Stakeholders urge for customised rules that take into account the particular difficulties experienced by Indian digital companies in order to lessen negative effects on entrepreneurs. In order to improve the law and make sure that innovation and investment are protected while maintaining competitiveness, it is imperative that the startup ecosystem be involved. Keeping an eye on market trends and preserving fair competition will be crucial to developing a thriving, inclusive digital economy in India.

Read more: Marketing News, Advertising News, PR and Finance News, Digital News

[almatyconsultinggroups]

Anti Monopoly Regulation & Competition Law | Almaty Consulting Groups

Almaty Consulting Groups provides expert guidance on anti monopoly regulation and competition law. Our team helps businesses understand and comply with these important legal frameworks. We focus on promoting fair competition and preventing anti-competitive practices. With our support, you can navigate the complexities of these laws effectively. Trust us to protect your interests and ensure compliance in your business operations. Let us assist you in fostering a competitive market environment that benefits everyone involved.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Is antitrust anti-labor?

If you find the word “antitrust” has a dusty, old-fashioned feel, that’s only to be expected — after all, the word has its origins in the late 19th century, when the first billionaire was created: John D Rockefeller, who formed a “trust” with his oil industry competitors, through which they all agreed to stop competing with one another so they could concentrate on extracting more from their workers and their customers.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

Trusts were an incredibly successful business structure. A bunch of competing companies would be sold to a new holding company (“the trust”), and the owners of those old standalone companies would get stock in this new trust. The trust would operate as a single entity, hiking prices and suppressing wages. If anyone tried fight the trust with a new, independent company, the trust could freeze them out, by selling goods below cost, or by doing exclusive deals with key suppliers and customers, or both. Once a trust sewed up an industry, no one could compete. The trust barons were rulers for life.

The first successful trust was Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which amassed a 90% share of all US oil. Other “capitalists” got in on the game, forming the Cotton Seed Oil Trust (75% market share), the Sugar Trust (85%). Then came the Whiskey Trust and the Beef Trust. America was becoming a planned economy, run by a handful of unelected “industrialists” with lifetime appointments and the power to choose their successors.

A century after overthrowing the King, America had new kings: “kings over the production, transportation and sale of the necessities of life”. That’s how Senator John Sherman described the situation in 1890, when he was campaigning for the passage of the Sherman Act, the first “anti-trust” act. The Sherman Act wasn’t the first time American lawmakers tried to protect competition, but it was the first law passed after the failure of competition law led to the hijacking of the nation by people Sherman called the “autocrats of trade.”

https://marker.medium.com/we-should-not-endure-a-king-dfef34628153

The Sherman Act — and its successors, like the Clayton Act, are landmark laws in that they explicitly seek to protect workers and customers from corporate power. Antitrust is about making sure that no corporation gets so powerful that it’s too big to fail, nor too big to jail — that a company can’t get so big that it subverts the political process, capturing its own regulators:

https://doctorow.medium.com/small-government-fd5870a9462e

If American workers are derided as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” who won’t join the fight against the rich because they assume they’ll soon join their ranks, then the American rich are “temporarily embarrassed aristocrats” who would welcome hereditary rule, provided they got to found one of the noble families. The goal of the American elite has always been to create a vast and durable dynasty, wealth so vast and well-insulated that even the most Habsburg-jawed failson can’t piss it away.

The American elite has always hated antitrust. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, abetted by Robert Bork and his co-conspirators at the Chicago School of Economics gutted antitrust through something called the “consumer welfare standard,” which ended anti-monopoly enforcement except in instances where price hikes could be directly and unarguably attributed to market power, which is, basically, never.

It’s been 40 years since Reagan took antitrust out behind the Lincoln Monument and shot it in the guts, and America has turned into the kind of aristocratic kleptocracy that Sherman railed against, where “great families” control the nation’s wealth and politics and even its Supreme Court judges:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. Monopoly threatens the living standards, health, freedom and prosperity of nearly every person in America. The undeniable enshittification of the country by its guillotine-ready finance ghouls, tech bros and pharma profiteers has led to a resurgence in antitrust, and a complete renewal of the @FTC and @JusticeATR:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Key to the new and vibrant FTC is Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who, along with Commissioner  Rebecca SlaughterFTC and Chairwoman Lina Khan, is part of the Democratic majority on the Commission. Bedoya has a background in tech and privacy and civil rights, and is a longtime advocate against predatory finance. He’s also a law professor and a sprightly scholarly writer.

Earlier this week, Bedoya gave a prepared speech for the Utah Project on Antitrust and Consumer Protection conference, entitled “Aiming at Dollars, Not Men.” It’s a banger:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-aiming-dollars-not-men.pdf

Criticisms of the new antitrust don’t just come from America’s oligarchs — the labor movement is skeptical of antitrust as well, and with good cause. Antitrust law prohibits collusion among businesses to raise prices, and at many junctures since the passage of the Sherman Act, judges have willfully perverted antitrust to punish labor organizers, treating workers demanding better working conditions as if they were Rockefeller and his cronies conspiring to raise prices.

This is the subject of Bedoya’s speech, whose transcript is painstakingly footnoted, and whose text makes it crystal clear that this is not what antitrust is for, and we should not tolerate its perversion in service to crushing worker power. The title comes from a 1914 remark by Democratic Congressman Thomas Konop, who said, of antitrust: “We are aiming at the gigantic trusts and combinations of capital and not at associations of men for the betterment of their condition. We are aiming at the dollars and not at men.”

Konop was arguing for the passage of the Clayton Act, a successor to the Sherman Act, which was passed in part because judges refused to enforce the Sherman Act according to its plain language and its legislative intent, and kept using it against workers. In 1892, two years after the Sherman Act’s passage, it was used to crush the New Orleans General Strike, an interracial uprising against labor exploitation from longshoremen to printers to carpenters to hearse drivers.

Bosses went to a federal judge asking for an injunction against the strike. Though the judge admitted that the Sherman Act was designed to fight “the evils of massed capital,” he still issued the injunction.

The Sherman Act was used to clobber the Pullman Porters union, which organized Black workers who served on the Pullman cars on America’s railroads. The workers struck in 1894, after a 25% wage-cut, and they complained that they could no longer afford to eat and feed their families, so George Pullman fired them all. The workers struck, led by Eugene Debs. Pullman argued that the strike violated the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court voted 9:0 for Pullman, ordered the strike called off, and put Debs in prison.

In 1902, mercury-sickened hatters in Danbury, CT demanded better working conditions — after just a few years on the job, hatters would be disabled for life with mercury poisoning, with such bad tremors they couldn’t even feed themselves. 250 hatters at the DE Loewe company tried to unionize. Loewe sued them under the Sherman Act, and went to the Supreme Court, who awarded Loewe $6.8m in today’s money, which allowed Loewe to seize his former workers’ homes.

This is what sent Congress back to the drawing board to pass the Clayton Act. Though the Sherman Act was clear that it was about trustbusting, the courts kept interpreting it as a charter for union-busting. The Clayton Act explicitly permits workers to form unions, call for boycotts, and to organize sympathy strikes.

They made all this abundantly clear: writing in language so plain that judges had to understand the legislative intent. And yet…judges still managed to misread the Clayton Act, using it to block 2,100 strikes in the 1920s. It appears that passing the Clayton Act did not save a single strike that would have been killed by the bad (and bad faith) Sherman Act precedents that led to the Clayton Act in the first place.

The extent to which greedy bosses used the Clayton Act to attack their workers is genuinely ghastly. Bedoya describes one coal strike, against the Red Jacket Coal Company of Mingo, WV. The mine’s profits had grown by 600%, but workers’ wages weren’t keeping up with inflation. The miners sought a raise of $0.10 on the $0.66 they got paid for ever carload of coal they mined. The company didn’t even pay the workers with real money — just “company scrip”: coupons that could only be spent at the company store. Red Jacket gave its workers a $0.09/car raise — and raised prices at the company store by $0.25/item.

The workers struck, Red Jacket sued. The Fourth Circuit refused to apply the Clayton Act, following a precedent from a case called Duplex Printing that held that the Clayton Act only applied to people who stood “in the proximate relation of employer and employee.”

Congress was pissed. They passed the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, with LaGuardia spitting about judges who “willfully disobeyed the law…emasculating it, taking out the meaning intended by Congress, making the law absolutely destructive of Congress’s intent.” Norris-LaGuardia creates an antitrust exemption for labor that applies “regardless of whether the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.” So, basically: “CONGRESS TO JUDGES, GET BENT.”

And yet, judges still found ways to use antitrust as a cudgel to beat up workers. In Columbia River Packers, the court held that fishermen weren’t protected by the exemption for workers, because they were selling “commodities” (e.g. fish) not their labor. Presumably, the fish just leapt into the boats without anyone doing any work.

The willingness of enforcers to misread antitrust continued down through the ages. In 1999, the FTC destroyed the hopes of the some of the country’s most abused workers: “independent” port truckers, who worked 80 hours/week and still couldn’t pay the bills. Truckers were only paid to move trailers around the ports, but they were required to do hours and hours of unpaid work — loading containers, hauling equipment for repair, all for free. The truckers tried to organize a union — and the FTC subpoenaed the organizers for an investigation of price-fixing.

But the problem wasn’t with the laws. It was with judges who set precedents that — as LaGuardia said, “willfully disobeyed the law…emasculating it, taking out the meaning intended by Congress, making the law absolutely destructive of Congress’s intent.”

Congress passed laws to strengthen workers and judges — temporarily embarrassed aristocrats — simply acted as if the law was intended to smash workers. But by 2016, judges had it figured out. That’s when jockeys at the Camarero racetrack in Canóvana, Puerto Rico went on strike, demanding pay parity with their mainland peers — Puerto Rican jockeys got $20 to risk their lives riding, a fifth of what riders on the mainland received.

Predictably, the horse owners and racetrack sued. The jockeys lost in the lower court, and the court ordered the jockeys to pay the owners and the track a million dollars. They even sued the jockeys’ spouses, so that they could go after their paychecks to get that million bucks.

The case went to the First Circuit appeals court and Judge Sandra Lynch said: you know what, it doesn’t matter if the jockeys are employers or contractors. It doesn’t matter if they sell a commodity or their labor. The jockeys have the right to strike, period. That’s what the Clayton Act says. She overturned the lower court and threw out the fines.

As Bedoya says, antitrust is “law written to rein in the oil trust, the sugar trust, the beef trust…the gigantic trusts and combinations of capital…dollars and not at men.” Congress made that plain, “not once, not twice, but three times, each time in a louder and clearer voice.”

Bedoya, part of the FTC’s Democratic majority, finishes: “Congress has made it clear that worker organizing and collective bargaining are not violations of the antitrust laws. When I vote, when I consider investigations and policy matters, that history will guide me.”

There's only three days left in the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon's Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.