The Man Who Killed Antitrust

Andrew Heaton (0:00)

In a world where the word monopoly has lost all meaning.

SPEAKER_2 (0:04)

See him, Mac, I'm the only outfit in town. You want to buy a Clydesdale in Manhattan, you gotta play by my rules and pay my prices.

SPEAKER_3 (0:13)

A monopoly is a large corporation I don't like, and I don't like corporations or horses.

Andrew Heaton (0:19)

One man is on a mission to find the truth.

Andrew Heaton (0:22)

You fellas know under what circumstances vertical integration is permitted?

SPEAKER_3 (0:28)

No?

Andrew Heaton (0:30)

Okay, uh, thanks anyway. Giddy up!

Andrew Heaton (0:34)

But this isn't your standard horse adventure about the different schools of thought on antitrust policy. It's about finding family wherever you find it.

SPEAKER_5 (0:44)

What if I'm your dad?

Andrew Heaton (0:46)

And the terror unleashed on a small town high school when an Egyptian tomb is opened on the spring break.

SPEAKER_3 (0:52)

Come on, Brittany, let's hook up inside of this old sarcophagus. Talk about vertical integration.

Andrew Heaton (0:58)

Andrew Heaton stars in this action-packed antitrust blockbuster.

Andrew Heaton (1:03)

Are we allowed to park here? It doesn't say no parking, but all of the cars have those parking things on the mirrors.

Andrew Heaton (1:11)

And William Shatner.

Andrew Heaton (1:13)

What if I'm your horse?

Andrew Heaton (1:16)

Sydney Sweeney as the mummy. Teehee.

The Political Orphanage presents Trust or Don't Trust the Antitrust, the Monopoly Mummy episode.

Andrew Heaton (1:32)

How big does a corporation have to get before it's too big? Mom and Pop Store. Adorable. We're rooting for them. Even though we don't shop there anymore because we go to the big box store that we hate, we are nonetheless rooting for the Mom and Pop. Mid-sized company, meh. But then at some point, they get all Blade Runner, right? Big scary corporation, private tyranny. When is that? When is the threshold? For example, the DOJ has just cleared Paramount Studios acquisition of Warner Brothers over antitrust objections from various attorneys general. What was already a behemoth is now gobbling up a giant. The result, film leviathan.

Film leviathan sounds like a studio. Is that already a studio? I don't know. The DOJ determined that even though Paramount now has access to the entirety of Warner Brothers film arsenal, the Hollywood landscape is not substantially less competitive. So, the merger will be allowed to proceed. Because competition is the god of market discipline, arguably better and stronger than Congress or regulatory law. Because a company can weasel around the intention of a law, it might even evade the law if it can get away with it. But when subject to external competition, companies simply have to fight or die.

Preserving competition, then, is the crux of antitrust law. Ideally, in a market economy, corporations all knife fight each other for the benefit of the endpoint users, us, consumers. Companies are all in a life or death Darwinian struggle with each other to get us to buy their stuff. And in an open and competitive market, customers go for the best deal. And companies make a profit by fighting for market share. They one up their competitors by improving quality or reducing costs or innovating new goods and services. Cheaper pianos, larger pianos, pianos the size of dump trucks. When competition gets suspended, though, that healthy tussle breaks down. Because then monopolies and cartels don't compete on prices. They don't have to. And as a result, they get sluggish and fat. There is no financial paranoia to compel innovation. They can just kick back and siphon off profits from us, the bovine clientele.

Even worse, monopolies can slap consumers around. If there are six airlines, and one of them decides to get rid of bathrooms, presumably Spirit Airlines, we can refuse to fly on Spirit. We could roll the dice with Frontier. But if, and some love crafty and corporate hell, Spirit Airlines becomes the only airline, then we're out of luck. We can either hold it or not fly. Or, very likely, Spirit Airlines will keep the bathrooms, but absent competition, and we'll just double or triple the airfare. Why not? Competition ceases to exist as a restraining principle when they set prices.

Today, everybody agrees, coercive monopolies are bad. Competition, good. We all like competition. Over the course of today's episode, the various viewpoints you are going to hear, everybody agrees monopolies are bad, and competition is good. If a single company is able to throttle the market and go all blade runner on consumers, or a handful of corporations form a cartel and refuse to compete, that is destructive to the market economy we all know and love. And the government needs to step in and rough everybody up to reintroduced competition. So from blue-haired progressives to cigar-smoking Reaganites, everybody agrees coercive monopolies suck. And when they form, the DOJ needs to jump in with a hatchet and ensure that there is an open, free and competitive market environment. So if we agree on that, monopolies are bad, competition is good.