The US government has abandoned antitrust. Today, companies facing antitrust jeopardy can just pay key Trumpland figures a million bucks, and they will make a discreet visit to the fifth floor of the DoJ building, have a little shoofty around the Antitrust Division and the whole thing will just…go away:
Pluralistic: The worst possible antitrust outcome (03 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Last year, Google lost an antitrust case to Biden's DoJ. The DoJ lawyers beat Google like a drum, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Google had deliberately sought to create and maintain a monopoly over search, and that they'd used that monopoly to make search materially worse, while locking competitors out of the market.
Pluralistic: Millionaire on billionaire violence (10 Aug 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
For the past year, I've been increasingly fascinated by a political mystery: how has antitrust enforcement become a global phenomenon after spending 40-years in a billionaire-induced coma?
Pluralistic: Capital formation (14 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Funny thing about competition: there's both a pro-market and an anti-market case for a competitive system. https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/13/one-chokable-throat/#too-clever-by-half
On Politics and Proton - a message from Andy
1.1K votes, 1K comments. Hi all, last night, a post from end of last year from my personal X account about antitrust policy in the US suddenly became…
Pluralistic: Expert agencies and elected legislatures (21 Nov 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Since Trump hijacked the Supreme Court, his backers have achieved many of their policy priorities: legalizing bribery, formalizing forced birth, and – with the Loper Bright case, neutering the expert agencies that regulate business:
Pluralistic: They’re just trying to earn a buck (07 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Life as a prisoner of the neoliberal mind palace must suck: it's a world where every person who suffers under predatory business practices is a "consumer" who has "revealed a preference" for being screwed:
Pluralistic: The first days of Boss Politics Antitrust (24 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
"Boss politics" are a feature of corrupt societies. When a society is dominated by self-dealing, corrupt institutions, strongman leaders can seize control by appealing to the public's fury and desperation. Then, the boss can selectively punish corrupt entities that oppose him, and since everyone is corrupt, these will be valid prosecutions.
Pluralistic: America is a scam (28 May 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Donald Trump is many things: a racist, an authoritarian, a rapist… but what he is, and has always been, above all and from the very start, is a scammer:
Pluralistic: Tariffs and monopolies (07 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
For all that orthodox economists hate tariffs in all their forms, the question, "do tariffs work?" is a complex one, which can't be answered unless you specify which tariffs, in what context:
Pluralistic: Trump’s CFPB kills data broker rule (15 May 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Something amazing happened from 2020-2024: even as parts of the Biden administration were encouraging genocide and covering up the president's senescence, a small collection of little-regarded agencies were taking a wrecking ball to corporate power, approaching antitrust and consumer protection with a vigor not seen in generations.
Pluralistic: Post-American compute for a post-American Internet (04 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Obviously, the non-American world has a digital sovereignty problem – Trump has means, motive and opportunity to order his tech companies to shut down any public official, large corporation, or individual who displeases him:
Pluralistic: Goodhart’s Law vs “prediction markets” (24 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
The most selectively believed-in verse in the conservative catechism is the idea that "incentives matter."
Pluralistic: What’s wrong with tariffs (02 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
It's not that the Republicans and the Democrats are the same…obviously. But for decades – since Clinton – the Dems have sided with neoliberal economics, just like their Republican counterparts, so the major differences between the two related to overt discrimination, to the exclusion of the economic policies that immiserated working people, with the worst effects landing on racial minorities, women, and gender minorities.
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.
Continue reading "Pluralistic: Bonta sold us out to Trump's oligarchs (22 Sep 2026)"
Anti-trust
Technology markets, and others that share their strong economies of scale , naturally tend to evolve into oligopolies, if not outright monop...
Pluralistic: The tax sharks are back and they’re coming for your home (27 Apr 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
One of my weirder and more rewarding hobbies is collecting definitions of "conservativism," and one of the jewels of that collection comes from Corey Robin's must-read book The Reactionary Mind: