The Latest from the Prospect
 â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â
Â
View this email in your browser
<[link removed]>
**FEBRUARY 20, 2023**
Kuttner on TAP
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
**** How Monopoly Destroys Democracy
The new movement to connect the restoration of democracy with the
revival of antitrust and competition
My granddaughter, who is in the eighth grade, competes in a relatively
new sport known as Cheer, a kind of cross between traditional
cheerleading and competitive gymnastics. You are probably aware of
Cheer, but you may not be aware that every aspect of the sport is
controlled by a corporate monopoly called Varsity, which in turn is
owned by the private equity firm Bain Capital.
As our friend Matt Stoller has reported
<[link removed]>.
"Varsity controls virtually every single tournament, including the
fees, who gets invited, and through its manipulation of the governing
body for cheer, how they are organized. How did Varsity acquire such
control? Mergers. Using an array of tactics, but mostly buying rivals
starting in the early 2000s, and then accelerating into the 2010s. It
bought Jam Brands in 2015, Spirit Celebrations in 2016/2017, and Epic
Brands in 2018. Varsity came to control or eliminate virtually all
cheerleading competitions, or roughly 90% of the market."
Varsity uses that monopoly to do what monopolists always
do-price-gouge consumers. One abuse among many: If your kid competes
at an out-of-town tournament, you can only stay at an approved hotel, a
practice known as play-to-stay. Did somebody say kickbacks?
Varsity has been sued for illegal anti-competitive tactics and is now in
the process of trying to settle those suits while keeping as much
control as it can. If middle school and high school sports competitions
have been taken over by monopoly corporations, is anything safe?
My longtime hero and intellectual lodestar, Karl Polanyi
<[link removed]>, warned that in a
capitalist economy, virtually everything is capable of being turned into
a commodity. The internet age has only supercharged this tendency. As
Shoshana Zuboff wrote in her prescient 2019 book, The Age of
Surveillance Capitalism
<[link removed]>,
on abuses by monopolistic platform monopolies, the product is you.
For the past five years or so, an important movement has gained momentum
to connect the revival of democracy with the revival of antitrust and
the recovery of a competitive economy.
Conventionally, the threats to democracy are mainly perils such as voter
suppression and efforts to overturn election results by fraud or force.
Those are genuine-but just as genuine is the increased corporate
concentration that destroys communities, wipes out small business,
disempowers workers, and leads to concentrations of income, wealth and
power. The two forms of anti-democracy reinforce each other
Elizabeth Warren summed up "the ruinous effects of consolidation on
our economy as well as on our democracy" in a recent speech
<[link removed]>
that you should read in its entirety, that ticked off all the ways we
need to restrain monopoly and restore competition. She gave that speech
at one of the most important conferences I've attended in many a year,
titled, Renewing the Democratic Republic
<[link removed]>.
The conference, convened by Barry Lynn and the Open Markets Institute
and co-sponsored by the Prospect, connects all the dots between the
destruction of democracy and the destruction of ant-trust and
competition. The video is available here
<[link removed]>
and well worth watching.
But antitrust has arisen from the dead. President Biden has appointed
two of the leaders of that resurrection, Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter,
to head the two antitrust agencies, the Federal Trade Commission and the
Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. Monopolies are starting to
be broken up, and other anti-competitive abuses banned. As David Dayen
has reported
<[link removed]>,
Biden tasked every major federal agency with using its powers to
increase competition.
Even more importantly, there has been a shift in public consciousness
and a new, broader conceptual framing of what it means to take back
democracy, economically as well as politically. "Just about every ill
we face today is made worse by monopolization," Barry Lynn told the
conference, <[link removed]> "soaring
prices for our homes, our food, our health care or...ever-lower wages
and ever worse jobs, surveillance, the destruction of the free
press...."
Taking back democracy also requires once again housebreaking capitalism.
Open Markets deserves great credit for bringing these two aspects of the
progressive movement closer together.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
subscribe. <[link removed]>
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter <[link removed]>
[link removed]
Trending On TAP <[link removed]>
Chemical Desolation in Appalachia
<[link removed]>
Freight rail companies are running their trains ragged to boost profits.
Sometimes they crash. BY JAROD FACUNDO
Does COVID-19 Damage the Immune System?
<[link removed]>
The balance of evidence strongly indicates that outside of rare cases,
it does not. BY RYAN COOPER
Amazon's Endgame
<[link removed]>
The company is transitioning to become an unavoidable gatekeeper in all
commerce. BY DAVID DAYEN
Â
[link removed]
Click to Share this Newsletter
[link removed]
Â
[link removed]
Â
[link removed]
Â
[link removed]
Â
[link removed]
YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
<[link removed]>
The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States
Copyright (c) 2023 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.
To opt out of American Prospect membership messaging, click here
<[link removed]>.
To manage your newsletter preferences, click here
<[link removed]>.
To unsubscribe from all American Prospect emails, including newsletters,
click here
<[link removed]>.
