Can Lina Khan Really Take On Monopolies?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2021
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
America has gone soft on monopolies. A small number of businesses control an ever-increasing market share with only muted protests from the Federal Trade Commission, the supposed antitrust watchdog of the U.S. government. But that all might be about to change with Lina Khan’s appointment as FTC chair.
Guest: Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project and the author of Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Stoller also writes the Substack newsletter, BIG.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You probably don't think all that much about the Federal Trade Commission. |
| 0:09.0 | I don't. |
| 0:10.1 | But Matt Stoller, he does. |
| 0:13.1 | The thing is, he doesn't think very highly of it. |
| 0:15.8 | Really, they haven't done anything for 30, 40 years. |
| 0:20.4 | And people were okay with that. I mean, haven't done anything for 30, 40 years. And people were okay with that. |
| 0:23.1 | I mean, haven't done anything for 30, 40 years. |
| 0:25.8 | That's like, that's harsh. |
| 0:28.1 | That is a harsh take. |
| 0:30.6 | Well, okay, so it's a little unfair to say they haven't done anything for 30, 40 years. |
| 0:33.9 | They've done a lot of bad things. |
| 0:38.0 | Matt works at a place called the American Economic Liberties Project. |
| 0:42.0 | He advocates against monopolistic business practices. |
| 0:45.9 | So if he had his way, the FTC would be preventing businesses from getting so big, they distort |
| 0:51.7 | the market, jack up prices. |
| 0:54.0 | But that's not what's happening. |
| 0:55.9 | It hasn't happened for decades now. |
| 0:58.2 | Okay, so let me give you an example. What is the most costly, inefficient, and basically |
| 1:02.8 | predatory sector of the economy? Healthcare. I mean, it's, the prices are insane. The quality |
| 1:08.7 | is bad. So the Federal Trade Commission is supposed to be dealing with things like hospital consolidation practices in the pharmaceutical industry, really the medical supply chain, right? |
| 1:20.4 | They have never stopped, for example, a single pharmaceutical merger, or at least not in the last 40 years. |
| 1:26.5 | One of the things they're supposed to do is they're supposed to oversee mergers and stop, you know, mergers that create |
... |
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