Project 2029: Why Regulation Will Make Democrats Popular Again

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:00)
Hi, we're on vacation, but we have an amazing special episode for you. In the last year, we set out to ask some questions to the smartest people in their fields about what Democrats should do when they regain power. We hope you'll enjoy this special episode of Project 2029, A Reimagining. Hello, and welcome to Part 2 of Project 2029, A Reimagining. I'm Molly Jong-Fast, a columnist, podcaster and person you occasionally see on Cable News. In this episode, we're going to discuss regulation and antitrust. This is subject that many people in the Democratic Party are scared of, despite it polling really well with the base and also independence. Let's get you up to speed. You may have noticed that the Heritage Foundation's wildly ambitious Project 2025 has been implemented at lightning speed with nearly half of its goals reached in just nine months. The agenda Heritage set forth has moved at breakneck speeds to reshape America into a right-wing policy testing lab that is failing its citizens. In this series, we are imagining not only what Democrats can do when they regain power, but what they must do.
The popular reforms that change citizens' lives and get them to believe in the power and good of government. We've assembled some of the best minds to talk about how regulation and antitrust can be given a good name and can make the American people believe in it again. Let's start with the brilliant former chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2025, Lina Kahn.

**Lina Kahn** (1:45)
Yeah, so before I was an academic, I actually got my start in all of this as a business researcher and reporter, and I spent a lot of time just understanding how various markets worked. And through that work, found that for decades now, we've seen markets become more and more consolidated, more and more concentrated. So where decades ago you had dozens of competitors, you now just have a handful of companies that can control a market. And that's true in areas ranging from food and agriculture, to even go to the grocery store, you go down the snack aisle, you see hundreds of brands. Even there, you actually just have three or four companies controlling the vast majority of the brands there. So it's really, we see this illusion of choice that is really actually masking extreme concentration of economic power. Through my work, I was really struck by how this private power can hurt people. One of the stories I did was about chicken farming. And chicken farmers, because of extreme consolidation, oftentimes now dependent on a single chicken processor for their entire livelihood. And they would say that because that company has all that power, they can bully me, they can push me around, they can threaten to cut me off and kill my livelihood. And that means I'm scared and that means I'm too scared to even come and talk to the government. And it was just this real vivid illustration of how we think about oftentimes how if what you want is real freedom for people, you need to protect them from overreach by the state, by the government.
But I think we also need to protect people from overreach by monopolies and by private companies that have so much power that they can really infringe on people's core freedoms and their material well-being. Basically, we want an economy where people get a fair shot. And what that means practically is if you're a business person or a worker, you should be able to make a fair living, earn a fair wage, and not be worried that a big company is going to be able to cut you off or muscle you out. If you're a consumer, you should be able to get a fair shake too. And I think one of the weird features of our economy right now is that oftentimes it feels like you always have to be on guard looking around the next corner to make sure that some corporation isn't defrauding you or scamming you or screwing you in some way.
And I think that really also creates this sense of indignity and stress and, you know, how people experience real freedom in their day-to-day lives. Yes, depends on how government is working, but it also depends on big corporations not being able to get away with bullying you or abusing you.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (4:26)
And many of the people we will be talking to were formerly a part of the Federal Trade Commission, aka the FTC, which is the government body, which upholds regulations and helps enforce antitrust.

**Alvaro Bedoya** (4:41)
My name is Alvaro Bedoya, and I most recently was a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC basically fights the fraudsters and monopolists of the world. We sue the Jeff Bezos, the Martin Shkreli's, the Kroger's trying to buy the Albertsons of the world. And what we try to do is, number one, keep them from defrauding and deceiving people. And number two, keep them from tilting the playing field in their favor, so that small businesses and workers aren't getting screwed.