Fundamentally rebuilding our democracy means engineering our corporations and markets to enable the freedom of the producer from the domination by the monopolist or financier.
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In this post, we will explain why licensing’s mix of consumer protection and labor market stabilization is a legitimate policy option for a wide range of occupations.
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In this post, we cover the basics of licensing, and then reframe current attacks on it.
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At the root of rural America’s angst are small towns whose economies have been taken over by a handful of predatory multinationals.
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Matthew Buck , reporter-researcher for the Open Markets Institute, writes in The Washington Monthly about the monopolization of America’s railroads.
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Since the 1970s, the US has seen a growing power imbalance between workers and employers. This story was not inevitable, but the product of conscious legal and political choices.
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The government tamed AT&T into behaving like a utility. It’s time to stop letting Facebook run wild.
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For the last year, public officials across America and Canada have held an embarrassing beauty contest to entice Amazon to place its so-called “second headquarters” in their region.
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In The New York Times, Open Markets board member Zephyr Teachout writes that a city that thrives on the energy of its neighborhood merchants should not offer incentives and giveaways to an internet giant known for squashing small businesses.
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Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway covers the story of a lawsuit by seven corporate agriculture interest groups against the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to halt the extension of a public comment period on a proposed mega-dairy expansion in Winona County, Minnesota. The suit highlights broader efforts by agribusiness to silence opposition from rural residents who speak out against large concentrated animal feeding operations in their communities. Her story from Food & Power, re-published on The Fern, is available here.
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Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway published a story on Civil Eats about how the Trump administration cleared the way for chicken plants to increase their processing line speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute. The change deals a blow to workers and reverses the efforts of labor and animal welfare advocates, who fought to halt poultry line speed increases in 2014.
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How America’s anti-monopoly laws got turned against the little guy.
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This week’s FTC hearings on the growing power of companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google only included economists who have taken money, directly and indirectly, from giant corporations that have a stake in the debate.
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Laissez-faire economics has left firms bending the knee to Beijing.
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Federal crop insurance and livestock indemnity programs mainly serve larger, industrial farms. After a disaster like Hurricane Florence, where do small farmers turn? Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway published a story on Civil Eats highlighting the damage done to farmers after Hurricane Florence and how the Federal crop insurance is failing small farmers.
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The Federal Trade Commission should get tough and break up Facebook. It has the power to force spinoffs of Instagram and WhatsApp, and needs to use it.
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Jeff Bezos runs a powerful monopoly that causes him to exert huge power and control. We shouldn’t be praising him but tackling his power
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The Republican line on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh stresses his dispassion. A typical example comes from Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who hails Kavanaugh as a judge who does “not rewrite the rules of the game” and “who call[s] balls and strikes.”
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