#anti-trust

[misscammiedawn]

I noticed the Google thing right away and it pisses me off.

Every time I watch a new TV thing or movie I pull up the reddit discussion thread to see the chatter. A couple months ago it stopped working.

If I pull up Google results for House of Dragons finale I get this.

Seems normal. Posted a day ago. What about DuckDuckGo, my preferred search engine?

Okay, ignoring that little thumbnail crap there's a thread...

From 2 months ago.

Google have an exclusive contract for Reddit's data now and so DuckDuckGo is not up to date.

If I limit my results by the past week...

I get this crap.

And this is why Google deserve this anti-trust bullshit.

This is unfair and uncompetitive monopoly behavior and should be retaliated against with full force.

[thatstormygeek]

All this provides a surprising opportunity for Kamala because it’s all out in the open — Hoffman’s and Diller’s donations, their requests that Harris get rid of Khan, and their personal financial interests in her doing so. Here’s what I recommend Harris do: Openly tell Hoffman and Diller she thinks Khan is doing a great job and wants her to stay at the FTC — and if they don’t like it, they can keep their money. Maybe Harris can find a way to fit this message into her acceptance of the nomination at the Democratic National Convention: “I’m not going to allow Big Tech to dictate public policy! No more big money in politics!” With this one gesture, Harris would shut the door to billionaire quid pro quos and demonstrate her independence from Big Tech’s big money.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[The Daily Don]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 26, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Today, on the anniversary of the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon for using “a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to maintain its monopoly power.” The FTC and the suing states say “Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.” 

The states suing are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

While estimates of Amazon’s control of the online commerce market vary, they center around about 40%, and Amazon charges third-party merchants for using the company’s services to store and ship items. Last quarter, Amazon reported more than $32 billion in revenues from these services. The suit claims that Amazon illegally overcharges third-party sellers and inflates prices.

This lawsuit is about more than Amazon: it marks a return to traditional forms of government antitrust action that were abandoned in the 1980s. Traditionally, officials interpreted antitrust laws to mean the government should prevent large entities from swallowing up markets and consolidating their power in order to raise prices and undercut workers’ rights. They wanted to protect economic competition, believing that such competition would promote innovation, protect workers, and keep consumer prices down. 

In the 1980s, government officials replaced that understanding with an idea advanced by former solicitor general of the United States Robert Bork—the man whom the Senate later rejected for a seat on the Supreme Court because of his extremism—who claimed that traditional antimonopoly enforcement was economically inefficient because it restricted the ways businesses could operate. Instead, he said, consolidation of industries was fine so long as it promoted economic efficiencies that, at least in the short term, cut costs for consumers. While antitrust legislation remained on the books, the understanding of what it meant changed dramatically.

Reagan and his people advanced Bork’s position, abandoning the idea that capitalism fundamentally depends on competition. Industries consolidated, and by the time Biden took office, his people estimated the lack of competition was costing a median U.S. household as much as $5,000 a year. 

On July 9, 2021, Biden called the turn toward Bork’s ideas “the wrong path” and vowed to restore competition in an increasingly consolidated marketplace. In an executive order, he established a White House Competition Council to direct a whole-of-government approach to promoting competition in the economy. 

“[C]ompetition keeps the economy moving and keeps it growing,” Biden said. “Fair competition is why capitalism has been the world’s greatest force for prosperity and growth…. But what we’ve seen over the past few decades is less competition and more concentration that holds our economy back.”

In that speech, Biden deliberately positioned himself in our country’s long history of opposing economic consolidation. Calling out both Roosevelt presidents—Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who oversaw part of the Progressive Era, and Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who oversaw the New Deal—Biden celebrated their attempt to rein in the power of big business, first by focusing on the abuses of those businesses, and then by championing competition. 

While still a student at Yale Law School, FTC chair Lina Khan published an essay examining the anticompetitive nature of modern businesses like Amazon, arguing that focusing on consumer prices alone does not address the problems of consolidation and monopoly. With today’s action, the FTC is restoring the traditional vision of antitrust action.

President Biden demonstrated his support for ordinary Americans in another historic way today when he became the first sitting president to join a picket line of striking workers. In Wayne County, Michigan, he joined a UAW strike, telling the striking autoworkers, “Wall Street didn’t build the country, the middle class built the country. Unions built the middle class. That’s a fact. Let’s keep going, you deserve what you’ve earned. And you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid now."

Even as Biden was standing on the picket line, House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) released a new budget plan that moves even farther to the right. Yesterday, former president Trump backed the far-right extremists threatening to shut down the government, insisting that holding the government hostage is the best way to get everything they want, including, he wrote, an end to the criminal cases against him. 

“The Republicans lost big on Debt Ceiling, got NOTHING, and now are worried that they will be BLAMED for the Budget Shutdown. Wrong!!! Whoever is President will be blamed,” Trump wrote on social media. “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN! Close the Border, stop the Weaponization of ‘Justice,’ and End Election Interference.”

McCarthy is reneging on the agreement he made with Biden in the spring as conditions for raising the debt ceiling, and instead is calling for dramatic cuts to the nation’s social safety net, as well as restarting construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, as starting points for funding the government. Cuts of more than $150 billion in his new proposal would mean cutting housing subsidies for the poor by 33%, fuel subsidies for low-income families by more than 70%, and funding for low-income schools by nearly 80% and would force more than 1 million women and children off of nutritional assistance. 

The “bottom line is we’re singularly focused right now on achieving our conservative objectives,” Representative Garret Graves (R-LA) told Jeff Stein, Marianna Sotomayor, and Moriah Balingit of the Washington Post. The Republicans plan to preserve the tax cuts of the Trump years, which primarily benefited the wealthy and corporations. 

At any point, McCarthy could return to the deal he cut with Biden, pass the appropriations bills with Democratic support, and fund the government. But if he does that, he is almost certain to face a challenge to his speakership from the extremists who currently are holding the country hostage. 

This evening, the Senate reached a bipartisan deal to fund the government through November 17 and to provide additional funding for Ukraine (although less than the White House wants), passing it by a vote of 77–19. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) urged the House Republicans to agree to the measure, warning them that shutdowns “don’t work as bargaining chips.” Nevertheless, McCarthy would not say he would take up the bill, and appears to feel the need to give in to the extremists’ demands. Moreover, he has suddenly said he thinks a meeting with Biden could avert the crisis, suggesting he is desperate for someone else to find a solution. 

Former president Trump has his own problems this evening stemming from the civil case against him, his older sons, and other officers and parts of the Trump Organization in New York, where Attorney General Letitia James has charged him with committing fraud by inflating the value of his assets. Today New York judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump and his company deceived banks and insurers by massively overvaluing his real estate holdings in order to obtain loans and better terms for deals. The Palm Beach County assessor valued Mar-a-Lago, for example, at $18 million, while Trump valued it at between $426 million and $612 million, an overvaluation of 2,300% (not a typo). 

Engoron canceled the organization’s New York business licenses, arranged for an independent receiver to dissolve those businesses, and placed a retired judge into the position of independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization. 

This decision will crush the heart of Trump’s businesses, and he issued a long statement attacking it, using all the usual words: “witch hunt,” “Communist,” “Political Lawfare” (ok, I don’t get that one),  and “If they can do this to me, they can do this to YOU!” Law professor Jen Taub commented, “It reads better in the original ketchup.” Trump’s lawyers say they are considering an appeal. The rest of the case is due to go to trial early next month.

Finally, today, the Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s request to let it ignore the court’s order that it redraw its congressional district maps to create a second majority-Black district. Alabama will have to comply with the court’s order. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[theculturedmarxist]

Last Monday, one of the large number of Washington, D.C. insider trade publications - Politico - called out Biden antitrust policy as the single most problematic area for financiers. “In taking on tech giants and forcing the collapse of lucrative deals,” said Politico Morning Money, “Lina Khan has earned the status of Wall Street nemesis.” It’s true. The torpedoes launched last year - from rule-makings to challenges of Google and Spirit-JetBlue - are now exploding.

In this issue, we’re going to describe how the establishment is hitting back, in ways you don’t see, but which might become a political issue if the consultants and candidates who run campaigns actually notice what’s happening in Congress.

The short story is that big business is using partisanship to try and persuade Congressional Republicans, and some Democrats, to repeal antitrust laws, as well as drag antitrust enforcers before committees and harangue them in public. But among voters, within academia, and even in the conservative legal movement, antitrust is becoming far more relevant.

First, let’s set the context. This week, polling came out again showing Americans oppose monopolies and support antitrust laws, which isn’t a surprise. People dislike junk fees and unfair prices. We’ve all noticed high-profile monopoly-driven problems with episodes like the baby formula shortages, the failure of Ticketmaster’s ability to sell tickets, and ludicrously high prices for EpiPens and asthma inhalers.

This parade of incidents is one reason two-thirds of all Americans support anti-monopoly laws. That holds among both Biden and Trump voters, with more than 70% of both camps agreeing that monopolies are bad for the economy. And only 5% of Americans - across party affiliations - think that antitrust laws should be weakened.

One thing that surprised us is though people generally like technology firms, 46% still think the government should break up big tech, versus just 28% who don’t. What’s also interesting is that 52% of voters have heard little or nothing about the Biden administration’s economic policies, which means few people know what antitrust enforcers are doing. That could change relatively soon. Here’s Montana Senator Jon Tester, running for reelection in a very Trump-friendly state as a Democrat, attacking consolidation in the meat-packing and seed industries as a point of distinction between the parties.

It’s not just certain Democrats making the case. After all, in 2020, it was Donald Trump’s administration which brought the major Google antitrust suit currently being litigated. In academia, today legal scholars and historians are trying to reorient the history of America as one grounded in anti-monopoly thought, as this interesting collection of essays put out by the Tobin Project shows. And in key ways, conservative legal thinkers are ahead of the curve on consolidation. Take the highly influential George Mason law professor Todd Zywicki, who interviewed Biden antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter on the new proposed merger guidelines, calling them a “moderate” way to split the difference between traditional Chicago School conservatives and a newer populist sentiment.

That interview happened at, of all places, the Federalist Society, which is the beating heart of the conservative legal movement, where law professors, high-powered lawyers, circuit court judges and Supreme Court justices spend time networking and learning from each other. Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanagh all attended last Friday’s black tie Federalist Society event.

Indeed, that dinner was part of the organization’s National Lawyer’s Convention, which had multiple discussions of the threats to conservatives by monopolization, as well as originalism and antitrust law. Stephanos Bibas, Third Circuit Judge, was the moderator of the panel on antitrust, and he often expressed surprise and interest in some of the comments by panelists, which included, among others, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of Antitrust Doha Mekki, Michigan professor Daniel Crane, and conservative plaintiff lawyer Ashley Keller. It wasn’t just one panel, the interest was pervasive. Lina Khan, for instance, did a well-attended fireside chat. And the main event on Saturday was a debate between two conservatives over whether social media platforms had sufficient monopoly power that the state could regulate them as common carriers.

And yet, in certain corners of the establishment, the pro-monopoly tradition that started in the 1980s remains dominant. Last week, an appropriations bill in the House - one of the spending bills that keeps government working - was amended multiple times to repeal antitrust laws.

Let’s look at a few of those proposals. There was a pro-junk fee amendment from Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), which would “prohibit funding for the FTC to make Unfair Competition rule-makings.” Such wording sounds anodyne. But if you strip away the legalese, Fitzgerald is seeking to do away with the rule-making authority the FTC is using to ban annoying junk fees, which deceive customers into paying higher prices for food, hotels, event tickets, car rentals and more. It’s also the authority the FTC is using to prohibit non-compete agreements, which trap people in their jobs and deprive workers of some $300 billion in wages per year.

There was another amendment which would prevent the FTC from enforcing its unfair methods of competition authority outside the bounds of the Clayton and Sherman Act. This one would effectively end or weaken key parts of the FTC’s case against Amazon, particularly its use of algorithms to raise prices in tacit collusion with other sellers, as well as its actions against pharmacy benefit managers on lower insulin prices and its work against price discrimination towards small and medium size grocers.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) proposed an amendment to block the finalization of all rules that would affect more than $100 million of activity. This would get rid of things like the FTC’s ‘Click to Cancel’ provision that stops entities from cheating you with subscriptions, or the pre-merger notification requirement rule, which would help stop predatory acquisitions by private equity firms in health care. These are gifts to the Chamber of Commerce, at the expense of hundreds of millions of real people.

In this section of the underlying bill, Republican appropriators even included a provision to let auto dealers cheat customers with undisclosed added fees.

But this isn’t about Republicans, who in many ways are just being partisan and/or exercising muscle memory from the 1990s. In a separate appropriations bill, Rep.’s Massie (R-KY) and Democrat Lou Correa (D-CA) led a bi-partisan amendment to strip the Department of Transportation of its authority to investigate airline mergers. JetBlue, in other words, is doing a lot of lobbying, and is trying to win - through spreading around cash in Congress - what it can’t win in the JetBlue-Spirit merger proceeding. As a reminder, internal documents say this merger raises airfares by up to 40% overnight, so Correa and Massie are working hard to raise airline ticket prices.

The Massie-Correa amendment failed, with mostly Democrats against it. But a handful of Democrats who did vote for it - in addition to Correa, Rep.’s Lofgren (D-CA), Meeks (D-NY), Morelle (D-NY), and Panetta (D-CA) also voted to promote airline concentration - should have to answer for why. Correa is a particularly odd case and has attracted a lot of scrutiny for parroting big tech talking points, despite his district being near Los Angeles. Lofgren, from Silicon Valley, is also important, since she could take over the leading slot on the Democratic side of the Judiciary Committee if the current chair, Jerry Nadler, retires.

In other words, most, though not all, House Republicans seem out of touch with their own base on antitrust and monopoly issues. A whopping 206 House Republicans, many of whom represent “flyover states” most harmed by airline concentration, voted to block the Department of Transportation from investigating higher airfares and worsening airline service. So, even though 70% of the Republican base wants monopolies to be held accountable, only 13 House R’s - including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and outgoing Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) - want the federal government to keep doing so.

But it’s not just these amendments that matter. Tomorrow at 10am, there’s an antitrust oversight hearing in the Judiciary Committee, which is the main part of the House of Representatives that controls antitrust law. The Chair of that committee, Jim Jordan, is hostile to the anti-monopoly project, and the main witness is Antitrust Division chief Jonathan Kanter, who Jordan wants to rake over the coals for his aggressive attempts to go after big tech. I got a copy of the memo that Jordan’s staff prepared, and it reads a lot like it was written by lawyers for big business.

Under Kanter, it reads, antitrust enforcers have “pursued costly policy changes that harm American businesses and empower foreign governments.” This memo attacks the proposed merger guidelines that conservative Zywicki praised, and generally argues that antitrust enforcers are both losers who can’t do anything right, and also all powerful policymakers who block too much economic activity. Basically, it’s the old Yiddish joke about a restaurant. The food is terrible, and the portions are too small!

How much does this Congressional noise matter? Well the hope is this stuff is just a lagging indicator, and that House Republicans will catch up to their voters. It’s worth highlighting that none of the amendments will make it into law. The underlying funding bills were never brought to the House floor because of disarray among Republicans. And even if they did pass the House, the Senate would likely reject most of these amendments, with the possible exception of the auto dealer one. After all, there’s substantial support in many parts of Congress for stronger antitrust action.

However, there’s a catch. These proposals are a possible indication of what monopolists hope they can get done next Congress, if the elections go the way they want. I think that’s unlikely, since there are important Republicans in the Senate who are supportive of antitrust, but it’s possible.

Perhaps more importantly, these amendments and hearings are also an indication that members of Congress do not think voters will notice their choices that affect their constituents. All that said, the juxtaposition of very popular antitrust with ham-fisted efforts to weaken antitrust provides fertile terrain for doing some brute politics.

Another way to think about this is that establishment politicians like Rep. Fitzgerald are out of touch with actual voters. Fitzgerald is from a pretty red district in Wisconsin, a state that narrowly voted for Biden in 2020. Given where most Republican and Trump voters are on issues of corporate power, the attack ads write themselves: Establishment Republicans want you to pay more for groceries, healthcare, and travel, and are perfectly fine letting monopoly corporations make decisions about your daily life.

That kind of ad could be done in a Republican primary, or a general election. They could also be used in Democratic primaries, or general elections. It really does not matter. The point is, right now, lower prices are the top priority for over two-thirds of voters. Yet, most voters haven’t heard about what antitrust enforcers are doing. So while it sounds politically insane to propose knee-capping rules that would bring prices down, it will only be problematic if voters hear about it. As we saw above, Senator Jon Tester thinks it’s politically salient enough to bring up. It won’t take much more for big business to be on the ballot in 2024.

The pro-monopoly world is hoping that doesn’t happen, and they can keep these conflicts as quiet as possible. Unfortunately for them, people really do like complaining about Ticketmaster.

[thoughtportal]

google to remove Canadian news links

[n0thingiscool]

One can fucking HOPE

[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.

[scriobh-an-iontas]

You know, if we elected some leaders bold enough to enforce the Spirit of our anti-monopoly laws instead of just the letter of them we could have it back.

But I think we all know the odds of That happening.

“It is worth remembering that the internet wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be six boring men with too much money creating spaces that no one likes but everyone is forced to use because those men have driven every other form of online existence into the ground. The internet was supposed to have pockets, to have enchanting forests you could stumble into and dark ravines you knew better than to enter. The internet was supposed to be a place of opportunity, not just for profit but for surprise and connection and delight. Instead, like most everything American enterprise has promised held some new dream, it has turned out to be the same old thing—a dream for a few, and something much more confining for everyone else.”

— Pluralistic

[wat3rm370n]

I want to see Lina Khan stay as chair of the FTC.

My letter to U.S. Senators: 

I want to see Lina Khan stay as chair of the FTC. I approve and support the regulation of corporate monopolies, and I am relieved that inauthentic product testimonials will be penalized, and junk fees tamped down. Impending VP-elect JD Vance has expressed approval of Lina Khan in the press, and I think the Senate should urge and approve that so as not to interrupt FTC’s ongoing important work.

Please feel free to repurpose for your own letters to U.S. Senators. NOTE: Lina Khan and the continued fight against junk fees have been floated as a possibility in conservative press by weirdo VP-elect JD Vance. Make them prove it. The Senate has to approve any FTC replacement, and will possibly have some sway if there is demand for this from constituents.

JD Vance hints Elon Musk, FTC chair Lina Khan could be in Trump admin: ‘I agree with them both on some issues’ By Ethan Dodd Published Oct. 15, 2024, 6:05 “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job,” Vance said in February at an antitrust conference.

More info on how monopolies exercise corporate authoritarian governance: Matt Stoller Explains Monopolies on Better Offline podcast with Ed Zitron.

[ewanspence]

Is it the open internet when everyone goes through one filter which is beholden to shareholders?

[carlocarrasco]

What to watch on YouTube right now – Part 33

Welcome back, my readers, YouTube viewers and all others who followed this series of articles focused on YouTube videos worth watching. Have you been searching for something fun or interesting to watch on YouTube? Do you feel bored right now and you crave for something to see on the world’s most popular online video destination? I recommend you check out the following topics and the related…

[shrinkrants]

It’s rare that a presidential candidate is delivered an opportunity on a platter to enunciate what she’s for and against.

But Kamala Harris has now been delivered one — and it’s a silver platter, no less. . . .

Here’s what I recommend Harris do: Openly tell Hoffman and Diller she thinks Khan is doing a great job and wants her to stay at the FTC — and if they don’t like it, they can keep their money.

Maybe Harris can find a way to fit this message into her acceptance of the nomination at the Democratic National Convention: “I’m not going to allow Big Tech to dictate public policy! No more big money in politics!”

With this one gesture, Harris would shut the door to billionaire quid pro quos and demonstrate her independence from Big Tech’s big money.

Can Harris afford to do this? I think so, especially given her surge of support from small donors. If she did this, I suspect her small-donor support would explode even more.

It would also be good for America if Harris shut this door. Big money, especially from Big Tech, is the second-biggest threat to American democracy — after Donald Trump.

[maresident]

Beyond the Headlines: Understanding How Proposed Changes in Real Estate Commissions Will Actually Impact You as a Buyer or Seller

You’ve probably heard the news that there are changes coming in terms of how real estate commissions are paid. This might sound exciting and like a potential game-changer for you as a home seller or buyer, with headlines proclaiming things like: “Real estate commissions are being slashed!” “Selling your house will now be less expensive!” “No more paying 6% to real estate agents!” But…

[platformdecentral]

Apple to enable sideloading on iPhone users according to a report

The antitrust legislation known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which was passed by the EU last year, mandates that Apple must permit users to install third-party apps from sources outside the iOS App Store, a practice referred to as sideloading. Apple has not yet disclosed its compliance strategy for this legislation, but it is reportedly planning to do so in the near future. Sideloaded apps…

[originalleftist]

This is just one of the many, many ways, in which electing Democrats makes a tangible difference for the better.

Fuck "both sides are the same" propaganda.

If you want shit like this to continue, vote Democrat.

If you want billionaires to become trillionaires while most people work till they die, vote Republican.

The U.S. Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa, alleging that the financial services behemoth uses its size and dominance to stifle competition in the debit card market, costing consumers and businesses billions of dollars. The complaint filed Tuesday says San Francisco-based Visa penalizes merchants and banks who don’t use Visa’s own payment processing technology to process debit transactions, even though alternatives exist. Visa earns an incremental fee from every transaction processed on its network. According to the DOJ’s complaint, 60% of debit transactions in the United States run on Visa’s debit network, allowing it to charge over $7 billion in fees each year for processing those transactions. “We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in a statement. “Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing – but the price of nearly everything.”