You for coming on to discuss monopolies suck. Its a very timely book because the issues you write about in the book, the power of dominant companies in the u. S. Economy and the impact on workers and consumers and citizens is really a very hot topic in economics and policy making right now. And we will see but could play a big role in the incoming Biden Administration. So i thought we should begin with sort of the big picture about, that you lay out in the book. I think when people hear the title they might say of course, no one likes monopolies, no one likes dealing with monopolies. The religious book is about a bigger issue. You are warning about a warring trends across the economy that i think many people may not fully understand. I think you could maybe first set the scene for us and describe what you see happening. Guest first, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today about this book, and thank you to cspan for having here to talk about it as well. We all know monopolies suck, right . Thats not a surprise for anyone but whats been happening over the last several decades is our economy has engaged highly very consummate and its been consolidation on an ongoing basis that led to basically every major sector of our economy being run by just a few companies. We hear a lot about bit tech monopolies, but no matter what youre talking about tech or food or agriculture, named industry, youre going to have a monopoly problem. In the book and talk about monopolies but also talking about what are called duopoly where we had two companies that rule and industry and oligopolies are your three companies for a few companies that rule and industry because basically you do not have robust competition when you have only a few players, and there are a whole lot of harms that flow from that and i wanted to highlight to readers to let them understand what it means for their everyday life and how it affects them and underlined a lot of their pain experience on a daily basis. Host right. So it is as you write about across the economy, its our cable service, Tech Companies, but also healthcare, airlines, meaning many industries. Can you talk about how they got to this point . You sort of explain there was this revolution in economic thinking several decades ago around competition. Can you explain just how we got to this point in the economy . Sure. Antitrust laws we have been the United States have been around for a very long time. The main laws on the sherman act and that was passed back in 1898, and with some pretty good antitrust enforcement for many decades. We had a pretty deep concentrated economy for a large part of our history after we overcame the first gilded age. Really it started to get rolled back around the early 80s. It was the rise of the Chicago Schools, economics, and we know its all so known as neoliberalism, and kind of the takeover of antitrust law to change what is supposed to be focusing on. Antitrust laws, its all about making sure we dont have concentrated power, making sure the markets are functioning really. But what the Chicago Schools of economics did was they really only care about are making sure corporations are efficient. If corporations are efficient they will pass on those efficiencies to consumers in the form of lower prices. Consumers are going to benefit and so thats going to be what we look at when were deciding whether any company of violating antitrust laws either acquiring a company that it shouldnt acquire or heating in an anticompetitive manner to exclude competition. The cats is going to be will this be efficient and will that lead to lower prices for consumers . Unfortunately all these years later we found that this focus on efficiency thats not, in fact, lead to lower prices for consumers. What its done is justified every kind of anticompetitive behavior and acquisition as making basically bigger and better and if corporations become a streamlined, efficient machine by getting bigger and bigger. But actually no one is benefiting from this. Consumers are not benefiting. The only people who are benefiting from these super sizing of our corporations i really executives and major shareholders. Thats kind of how we got where we are. The antitrust laws have weakened by the courts as the court adopted this thinking of the Chicago School of economics and really rolled back the way the antitrust laws were being enforced. Right. Host right. So the Chicago School to go for a lot of thinking, even during democratic administrations come certainly during republican administrations. Right now what i think is interesting is theres a bit of counter revolution going on thats taken over in the last few years. I do notice on the bookshelf behind you, you have a number of books about this issue, break them up, monopolize. And your book of course. I wonder if you could explain a little bit about this pushback that has cropped up. Because i think in the last probably just three or four years, very recent, that theres been a real pushback thats actually created momentum in the other direction. Guest thats right. The authors of these books are all my friends. We are small but mighty movement. We are not a huge and well resourced despite some articles have come up recently claiming that, but i really have to give credit to the organization where i work now, the open markets institute. Its been this for, i mean, my director has been at this for a long time back in 2005 i believe it was he wrote his book called the inn of the line where he was predicting we would have shortages in the event of a pandemic because of consolidation of the supply chain. He started to open markets institute. First it was at new America Foundation but when they put out a statement criticizing google, they were ousted from the new America Foundation which was partly funded by google. They had been at it like i said for the better part of a decade, and finally its reached more people. People being able to see the problems we have been saying for a long time. I personally have been in the antitrust field gosh, a very long time, i guess 15 years now. I started seeing some of the challenges when i was in antitrust enforcer at the new york ag another antitrust laws were not working. It was after i left i was able to join this movement of thinkers really showing the Current System is not working, that our economy is becoming so highly consolidated at its networking for most people, and that antitrust enforcement has gone missing with huge harms related to it. I do have to give credit to the open markets institute and the movement that is growing everyday getting bigger every day. Basically 30 years of evidence to show its not worked. The writing on the wall is pretty clear. This is an issue being written about in popular books, certainly in mainstream media. Can you explain about life why do you think this counterrevolution, ill call it, has been sort of emerged and has been accepted . Guest i think its been successful because you cant ignore the problems anymore. The harms of having a highly consolidated economy are just so great, people are struggling and people want to figure out how to fix our economy. Our economy right now is really only working for a select few. Some have gotten richer and richer, have more wealth than 80 of the bottom of americans. Really just make a living is just so much harder than it used to be. And then with all kinds of the harms in terms of concentrated control over speech and how that has affected our democratic processes like elections. Harms to entrepreneurship, harms to just the cost to healthcare. So many harms that it comes out of allowing corporations to become so giant and our markets to be no longer competitive that i think the pain is really why they are being successful. The evidence is just you cant really ignore it at this point back. People always say to me, are you sure its going to happen . Its all too complicated to do anything about it. I say im confident were going to get our markets working again and get competition working again. Guess we dont have a choice. This current course is not sustainable. I really think its a matter of when, not if, and what were trying to do and im trying to do is make it happen sooner by getting people to understand how this affects their daily lives so that they can rise up and start pressuring the government to do its job in force antitrust laws and other antimonopoly policies so that we could have open competitive markets again. So this isnt the is an issue thats been taken up by progressive activists, and Elizabeth Warren when she was a candidate for president talking about the need, or she argued, she said it was important to break a big Tech Companies. At the time that was pretty radical for a president ial candidate to be talking about antitrust act in advocating for Something Like a like a breakua company. I think its interesting and it was you to talk about a little bit about how antitrust, antitrust in this country has a history of being very political come , like a century ago it was something that was very much on the mind of politicians, but then that changed it seems and it became something that was very apolitical i think until maybe right now. Antitrust law was concentrating power which is what it was intended for, it became a battle of experts doing regressions and, good Economic Analysis and he became so overly complex that no average person could really talk about it or be involved in it. It was honestly a deliberate complication of antitrust laws. Obviously to make it much harder to prevail against any corporation, there was just kind of this even for antitrust enforcer, youre talking about a years long, multiyears long, multimillion dollar often effort. It was really sort of Corporate Power to make it so complicated and would prevail, impossibleo meet burdens, basically. That was a deliberate strategy in favor of Corporate Power to take away this tool that really does belong to the people. Back when senator sherman pass the sherman act in 1890, he said it will not bear the king as a political power. We shall bear a king of commerce and trade. It really is an issue of democracy and concentrated Corporate Power. When we defeated the first round of robber barons we had in this country, the original gilded age, it was really a Citizen Movement that did that. The standard of oil was monopoly on the scale of what we have today of not global like the ones we have today but it was a big bad monopolist that will all the markets, controlled the political system, may have seen insurmountable to overcome standard and it was a journalist who did investigative reporting about standard oil company, expose all its misconducts and published it in a in a Magazine Article that been turned into a book, actually caused a popular uprising. I dont know if youve seen, there in my book, but theres all these wonderful cartoons from the gilded age where they were trying to show monopoly power in these images that would be very accessible to the average person to anchor them and get them involved in the movement against monopolies. It was only when the citizens rose up that the government did breakup standard oil and also passed the clayton act which then anticompetitive mergers. I really believe the citizens must be involved. We will not over, monopoly power unless we have an engaged citizenry. The reality is the concentrated economic power of monopoly translates to tremendous political power. The only way to overcome the millions of dollars of monopoly money is through the people. So yes it needs to come back to the people. This is needs to ensure we have a Quality CompanyAmerican Dream that is alive and functioning and that we are not being ruled by corporations both economically and politically. Host actually, this would be a good time to explain how we make decisions about antitrust enforcement in this country because it is not a decision that is made very openly or by congress. Its a very i think a journalist, secretive process. Talk about the antitrust enforcement regime in the United States just so people understand that, and how that process works and what enforcers, what really the job is in terms of enforcing the law. Guest sure. In the United States we have a few different types of antitrust enforcers. We have the department of justice. We have the federal trade commission. And at the state level with state attorneys general. They have their own antitrust laws, state antitrust laws, and have the power to enforce the federal ones like the sherman act and the clayton act i mentioned before. They get confused about who gets what type of case. Its just a matter of resources in specializations. Theres not an incredibly clear station between which goes to which agency. There are a few different ways they go about beginning enforcement, doing enforcement antitrust laws. There is the merger context with large corporations have notify the federal agencies when theyre going to acquire the company of a certain size. There is a certain amount of time that the agencies have to look at that merger pretty quickly and decide whether or not they are going to take a deeper look, which is called the second request, and get more documents and investigate it, whether they would just let the deal go through. If they do the second request, then to ask more documents. They do interviews and whatnot, and then they will decide whether or not to block the case, to block the deal. Fortunately, they dont just have unilateral ability to say okay, we have investigated this and we weve determined its anticompetitive. They have to prevail in court. They have to sue in court to block the deal and they have to win. And, unfortunately, the judges have bought into the Chicago School of economics ideology come so strongly its hard to win basic merger blocks. You saw that recently with the lawsuit against the sprint tmobile merger. That something that should have been straightforward, you know, a slamdunk merger block when youre talking about a horizontal merger among competitors where they had actually shown it would be billions of dollars or millions of dollars of price increases to consumers as a result of the merger. And still the judge denied to block the merger. The conduct of antitrust enforcers are looking at anticompetitive behavior, and they will find out about that either because some player in the market complains to them or they read a and use story, they get a tip and he might decide to investigate, for example, amazons mistreatment of thirdparty marketplace sellers or Something Like that. They investigate and again they have to decide can they win in court. Because the law said been so narrow in terms of the legal precedent that is, in the last 30 years, its hard to win those cases, particularly monopolization cases. Courts are trying to decide can win in court . Oftentimes the answer is no, even when it is clear to anticompetitive conduct. Thats kind of the problem why weve seen such weak enforcement. Theres this thought can win in court . Increasingly the at to that is no. I do think enforcers should be more aggressive, more willing to lose. Because even when you lose your showing congress, hey, these laws are not working and you need to step in and fix these bad Court Decisions that he made the antitrust laws so toothless. But yeah, that is the process. It is quite opaque. Theres not much for the average citizen to do in terms of seeing what these agencies are deciding, investigations are confidential. But once they do Supreme Court did it it becomes much more transparent process. Host if you think that its important for this process to be more political than it has been, how do you see going forward, or is there anything those interested in this issue can you actually to have a voice in this process . These investigations, he talked about that our merger investigations, that can take a year, essentially theres no announcements or progress announced by the agencies when they do that. The same goes for monopolization investigations when they happen. That doesnt seem be much of a role, if any, for citizens to have a voice, right . Guest well, i think that citizens are key to have turned around this week enforcement with that and thats the whole reason i wrote the book, to let people know this is what antimonopoly, so what monopoly rule means to you in your life when you were struggling everyday, you cant pay your bills, when youre getting gouged on pharmaceuticals, when youre having, you know, conflict with half of americans living in the fight america, what does monopoly have to do about it . The whole reason i wanted to make people understand what it means to their lives, so that they can get involved. I firmly believe citizens are key, but may not be at the agency level. It may be in terms of pressuring congress and their elected representatives to reform the antitrust laws. What we dont normally do is have Congress Passed laws and to let judges completely destroy those laws. What we normally do is if the jet age destroys the loss that were democratically passed, then Congress Needs to rein in the judges saying no, thats not what we meant when we said, when we say no, youre not allowed to monopolize, we didnt mean you could monopolize. We did mean you have to prove 1000 things in order to win a monopoly case. A big role for citizens is to be involved in supporting antimonopoly reforms in congress, supporting those candidates who are willing to be aggressive. Its a really brave move for people like congressman sicily who is in the house and headset the judiciary subcommittee antitrust subcommittee of the house judiciary to endeavor to do an indepth investigation of big tech and to propose all kinds of reforms. That takes a lot of bravery and we need to have his back. We need to support those lawmakers are willing to stand up to concentrated Corporate Power because theres tens of millions of dollars of monopoly money encouraging them not to do that. Thats what i think citizens are most involved and if Congress Changes some of these really bad Court Decision makes clear what the antitrust lost a function and use how we can get with simple rules that dont take ten years to eradicate and dont require billions of dollars of economics fees, fees for economies come in week can start to see real change. Thats just one part of the antimonopoly toolkit in reforming the antitrust laws but thats an Important Role for citizens to play. Host i wanted to talk about some of those recent developments, because as you have explained, you have been very critical of enforcers not doing enough. But just last month in october, the Justice Department sued google in a monopolization case. That was the first major monopolization case in 20 years. Thats a long time. So it seems that maybe the enforcers are changing and becoming more aggressive. You agree with that or not . Guest yeah. I mean, United States versus google was a big deal. The gipper folks criticize a thing somewhat narrow in scope it is only getting at the tip of the iceberg in terms of googles anticompetitive conduct. Google has eight products with over 1 billion users. It is constantly pulling levers to distort competition. The dojs first complaint is really only getting at a fraction of behavior but it still critically important that we finally have antitrust case against a monopolist under section two of the sherman act which is the provision that bars monopolization. Like you said the last main case was u. S. Versus microsoft. That was a long time ago. I was in law school. [laughing] that was actually my introduction to antitrust law, was the u. S. Versus microsoft. Its been a long time. Its a big, big deal that we finally turned the corner and its really only the beginning. Only beginning of what were going to see coming against google and then we also have the ftc is expected to sue facebook in the next month or two. We left states attorney generals adding to the google case with their investigations into other aspects of googles monopoly power and anticompetitive behavior. Its a huge deal. Host why is it that it took 20 years . I mean, google has been huge Successful Company for a long time. Probably about that long, right . And facebook is newer of course, but how do you explain if monopolies are such a problem in the economy, why would we go 20 years without a case against a big company . Guest well, i mean, as i was saying before the judges had really made it very difficult to prevail and im sure sherman act case isnt the one sicko after monopolization. Just another part of the sherman act called section one and when you have more than one company agreeing to restrain trade comes with a couple companies that fix prices and have agreed that going to charge the same amounts to consumers, when i was working as an antitrust enforcer, most of our experts went to the section one cases because they were easy to incorporate once you prove theres been an agreement to restrain trade, once you prove these copies have agreed to fix prices or to rig bids, then its called per se, its automatically illegal and you win in court. Most of antitrust agencies do have limited resources and theres enough section one violations going on to keep quite busy just doing that. Really section two is lower monopolization law with lower priority, and everything is well said merger mania for the last several decades. We were basically drinking from fire hoses i say. Its not like antitrust is doing nothing, reviewing billions of mergers, bringing cases for pricefixing but sherman act section to the monopolization laws got lower priority because they are harder to win in court because the course really rained it in and really narrowed it, the laws reach. Thats one of the main reasons, and again the whole triumph of neoliberalism in the courts. The other thing is with the google and the big Tech Companies, when were operating under the consumer welfare standard, it was a point i was making earlier that the idea that with let the corporations that they, consumers benefit in the form of lower prices. That was whole ideology behind it. You know, it didnt sit well with the consumer welfare standards to go after these companies because what could be better than free, right . That was really how they got away with it for so long when in reality as i explain in the book they are not free but were paying with our data pain and so many other ways as taxpayers and working in on skewers but you know, the currency is our data in our data is highly valuable. Some economists even say that if you had a competitor marketplace online it would pay for our data and they would continue to pay us on how our highly valuable data. Thats another reason why the Tech Companies belong without big enforcement because there is a myth they are Offering Free Services and therefore optimizing consumer welfare to a certain extent and although i would like to or just want to make one point that usc microsoft wasnt actually about price increases to consumers. But at the same time people will say yeah, but google is a Great Service and its a great Search Engine and gets me what i need but doj lays out actual things that google did that hurt the market as maybe we should cite as an example of how big tech, in your view, can arm competition or may be you could explain what that Justice Department is alleging . Its not just the data but about actual conduct that they engaged in. Right. No, basically what the Justice Department is alleging is a near clone of usc microsoft. [laughter] what happened with usc microsoft and lets look at it quickly, microsoft had a monopoly on computer operating systems and had 95 market share and so it told the computer makers if you want to sell a computer with microsoft or microsoft operating system well then you have to install our apps or our software or our browser and so it basically made it so that netscape navigator which was a competing browser had no shot at competing so this is a big distinction. Always ask yourself, is this competing based on merit to be the best or is this using muscle to kick out the other company and make sure they dont have a shot at competing . Was microsoft saying we will have better features than escape and then win or we will make sure they dont even have a chance and there are documents saying these things and we will make sure they dont even have a shot at competing. Because computer makers do not have a choice, they did not have an operating system they could use they had to accept microsoft terms and install Internet Explorer as the default browser in netscape navigator. The funny thing about this is if we hadnt brought that case against microsoft and the doj there would be nothing to stop microsoft from doing the exact same thing when it came to Search Engines so everyone got our browser and you would also take our Search Engine and if it were not for the usb microsoft we might not even have google today. That is the irony of this all. Google learn from microsoft that that works pretty well and google acquired the operating system and got that and then told filmmakers hey, you want or operating systems and oh yeah, theres no other option out there in the apple rating operating system is not licensable for phone makers and then you need to take all our apps to default so any other company that couldve been a competitor to google or search a whole other fleet of apps and maps and videos cannot even get to be the default in the android phones which has a tremendous market share worldwide. It really is the exact same thing and so you use an exclusionary agreement that it was the default Search Engine for all kinds of devices, not just Android Devices but also apple devices and to make sure that no other companies could even have the opportunity to compete. I know people say well, google makes the point easier to download and cap these days and i remember back in the days of microsoft you have to get the cd in the mail and install it. [laughter] than just going into the app store and downloading a competitor but google says we just choose us and they cannot choose others but the reality is people i think it was 12 billion they paid to apple last year so it was just that everyone was choosing google why would they even spend 12 billion to make sure that they were chosen or they were the defaults. Its kind of a loser argument in my opinion. Anyways, its not that they are just competing on being the merits of the best but they made sure no one else had a chance to compete. Right. You touched on this briefly but while the just disbarment and the ftc came to be or seem to be waking up from their slumber theres also action in Congress Just very recently from the antitrust subcommittee led by representative [inaudible] and you mentioned him briefly but that also is significant in that i dont even know when the last Time Congress took up antitrust in that way so maybe you could talk about what that committee did in the last year and what they will possibly be doing in the next congress. The work of the committee and these are the antitrust subcommittees of the house judiciary led by the representative in the work of the committee over the last 15 months is truly amazing, phenomenal and historic and exactly the kind of thing that congress should be doing all of the time but has not done in a very long time. To me, restored my faith in democracy that our elected officials were willing to take on Corporate Power in this way with the problems that we have of corporate lobbying and influence of money on politics in this type of taking on powerful corporations is just as a rare sight in my life so it was wonderful thing to see. I was honored that they invited me to testify in the very first hearing and the influence of google and facebooks monopoly power and Digital Advertising power on the journalism industry and then again, i got to testify at the last hearing which was looking at the proposing solutions for moving forward. They had many hearings over 60 months and reviewed millions of documents and hours and hours of interviews with folks who came forward to tell their stories and they created a 450 page report. For anyone who doubts these companies have anti competitive way behavioral there are 450 pages to read and of course i talk about it in the book if you do not want to read 450 pages but you know, its not just that these companies are on top because they are the best but they have taken there, you knowa chance to compete and you know, thats not legal. That is illegal under the antitrust laws. Im very optimistic of the proposal that representative cellini has put forward in his report and being included in legislation and hopeful that we will be able to make some real, you know, reform in terms of the antitrust laws encouraging things like interoperability so entrepreneurs and other upstarts can be compatible with new infrastructure. You know, essential infrastructure the companys control is all for having nondescript nation rules which are similar to what we had for Net Neutrality and im sure everyone has to do with these comedies which is nearly every Major Business is treated on the same term so there is a lot of aspects to it, its not just strengthening antitrust laws but it is incredibly wonderful to see and its really a historic turning point right now in our democracy and especially regarding camino, going after the tech platforms of course. Yet, the report describes the Tech Companies and focused on apple, facebook, google and amazon and describe them as gatekeepers in the economy and so in the different markets they basically said that each company in its own way is choking off competition, whether through mergers or other conduct. Actually the recommendation would go beyond just tech. We talked earlier in the conversation about prices and reports reclamation was to sort of remind you that rewrite or throw out that frame book of antitrust right now and consider enforcement decisions and much broader consideration like effects on workers and Small Businesses and that sort of thing. I dont know if that will go anywhere but do you see it as something from a blueprint, or whatever that could change enforcement more significantly than just through tech . Oh, definitely. All of us met and would like great job, now do every other sector of the economy. [laughter] but you know, some of the changes could certainly impact every sector of the economy. You know, if we get back to what antitrust law which was promoting competition then a lot of the harms that flow from allowing these monopolies to rule will go away so there is this difference between saying we will consider all these other factors in our analysis or the way i look at it is that once we start enforcing antitrust laws as intended which is just to promote competition then we will get all these other benefits from having open competitive markets so workers will benefit because workers are better off when they have many different possible employers to choose from and i have a whole chapter in the book about how wages have been depressed and how workers and employees of all kinds of taken a smaller and smaller share of the productivity and the value of that they create as our economy has gotten more and more consolidated in the Bargaining Power that workers have is so much less when there are only a few main competitors in each sector. We have seen wage stagnation and i think monopoly has a part of that. If you are not an employee may be your knowledge for newer and then you dont have opportunities to compete because youre blocked out of so many markets or squashed and challenged when you challenge a dominant clenched company. All of these benefits to workers and to entrepreneurship in two, speech they all flow from ensuring that our markets are competitive. They dont actually have to say we are focused on speech but just make a market competitive and we will have benefits because will of less concentrated control. You know, obviously to the extent that we are able to reform antitrust law across the board will see benefits in agriculture and camino, and pharmaceuticals and we will see them across the board if we reform antitrust laws to actually promote competition and this is what they are intended to do. I wanted to talk about talk and they didnt want to ask you about another industry but you right theres a chapter about healthcare and conduct in healthcare in my thought that you talked about my lawn which is the maker that many people will be promoted with with medication and they did a lot to any scribe in the book to sort of keep their hold on that market and could you talk about my lawn . Sure, my lawn is an important example for a couple Different Reasons but one thing is that when we are all being gouged on prices for pharmaceutical and essential medical care equipment we dont often think about monopoly power and i think the average person thanks this is a must up system in Healthcare System and we do have problems in our Healthcare System but we rein in the violations of antitrust law by big pharma i can guarantee you we would get billions of dollars back and we would really trim our healthcare costs because it is rampant. I spent most of my time at the new york state ags office focusing on healthcare because it was just like plane whack a mole every time it makes business sense to give big pharmaceutical comedies do inside the tube violates antitrust laws because the fines they pay are not as much as the games they make. Thats a basic criticism for antitrust enforcers. The Company Makes billions of dollars breaking the law dont find them millions of dollars, right . Cool, they will do that again. That worked out. [laughter] with myelin the one thing i was saying is it shows how monopoly leads to higher prices we pay in america because costs on average 600 and in france its 60. The other important point about myelin is when you allow markets to become congregated unit shortages and that has been a critical issue with the covid pandemic that people need to understand how much the monopolization of our economy made us as i like to say, sitting ducks, in the face of covid19 because we do not have enough anything so all are supply chains were so consolidated and when you two companies in the world making [inaudible] needed for testing thats a monopoly problem. Thats what we seen with epipen which myelin makes. The epipen that treats children with lifethreatening allergies needs to have constantly are often just not available through shortages. Parents are like if my kid is in school and someone is subpoena butter sandwich next to them and they could die and i cant get the medicine because its not available. Well, how is that possible that we have shortages . Myelin did so much anticompetitive conduct to make sure would be no other no other epinephrine injectors on the market that not only can it charge 600 in the u. S. But also can make sure there is no other options available when it runs out. And so you wrote about how they took steps to make sure that competitors didnt get into school. Rights. You know, this is all i should say to that and these are all allegations and a complaint by a competitor to myelin and i am not personally seen new documents but they are all in complaints by another Pharmaceutical Company goes trying to, with out competing injector and what myelin said to schools was if you allow the price than the discounted price then you cant stock any type of injector. Budget scrap schools have no choice but to say no to that situation, especially when the epipen is the dominant injector out there that most people know how to use and they have to make sure that they stock that so it took steps to make sure the schools didnt have alternatives available to them and this is after myelin spent lots of money lobbying to require all schools to have epi pens in the first place and there was a time when they had the most lobbyists at the state level in a group at the state level more than any corporations and i think that it was required by law and these epi pens were available and then to say only art epi pens and only art injectors so, you know, it creates, we have these Big Pharma Companies doing anticompetitive conduct to make sure that there are not other competitors on the market we get shortages and overpriced drugs. The other main way we see it is something called paid to delay and its literally pharmaceutical Companies PayingGeneric Drug Companies not to introduce the generic rugs. I always say generic drug manufacturer but [inaudible] there are many other examples in the book and the whole chapter and we wont have time to get into it but hospitals consolidation is another issue that forces them pretty active around but at the same time people watching this will know that in many communities there is generally one or maybe two hospitals typically controlled by Large Companies and that means higher prices when we get sick because theres only one choice. Rights, it also means that shortages and we had huge prices but not enough hospital beds and thats because reductions of beds going up into menace numbers and the also the other side of his that is its because depressed wages for healthcare workers. There was a time estimated the nurses should be getting paid far more than theyre currently getting paid and the reason why they are not is because they have the monopoly employers and so they dont have Bargaining Power in their bosses are not competing or their employers are not competing to hire them and sold their wages have really been depressed by the monopolization of hospital systems. In a sense you have a worker and it affects you as a patient and it affects you and your pocketbook so these are some of the ways it affects you on a daily basis and causes a lot of the pain points we all have in our daily lives. So, in a few minutes we have left i did want to ask you about what we were about to change administrations and i wanted to get your prediction on what you think, how these issues, you think these issues will be handed by a Biden Administration and the next congress. Yes, i think it is hard to tell what will happen with the Biden Administration. I think once he gets the appointment in terms of who is heading up the deferment of justice and the federal trade commission and we see who is in charge making the decisions we will have a better sense of that. That makes a big difference. I think there will not be any kind of rolling back of what the doj has done so far. You know, the case that the doj has brought has not any kind of innovative or foundry pushing case or the clone of u. S. Eat microsoft which is still good law so its not a case that i expect to be curbed in any way by the Biden Administration. I do think theres increasing pressure on the Biden Administration to take action and i think the Biden Administration experienced the dangers of concentrated control over speech we saw every literal decision that facebook made leading up to the election having huge impacts on the campaigns reach in the flow of disinformation and often really benefiting the trunk campaign. There was a study by a markup showing that the Trump Campaign paid less per ad then the Biden Campaign did and that was because its ads performed better which means are more likely to cause people to make a reaction and that is what facebook Business Model is programmed to do. It gets people to react to contact that causes fear or anger is favored content by facebook Business Model and they boost disinformation and misinformation so i expect the Biden Administration would have an appetite to encourage or ensure that our marketplace of ideas is robust that we can have a public sphere of debate again so that having each person getting their own targeted individualized stream of content that we dont even see the things and i think there will be a lot of evidence coming out in the next few months showing how much this information influences election and so i expect that the problem will continue to get attention. I think we will continue to have robust, you know, this new movement will continue and im very optimistic but like i said, i would like to see who he appoints to know for sure. What do you foresee in the next congress if anything . By this point we dont know whether senate will be controlled by democrats but if republicans hold control to see any movement there . Yakima antitrust is one of the very few bipartisan issues, you know, in our country right now so i think that anti monopoly is one way we could try to start to unite america. I think folks on both sides of the aisle realize its a problem and can agree that some of the more aggressive opponents have monopoly power are on the right so it is not necessarily the case that whether democrat or republican control influences directly anti monopoly policy and in fact, is like what kind of democrat and what kind of republican so im optimistic that the reforms that the senator has reporters will get more traction and their other lawmakers and senator warren and senator klobuchar and senator blumenthal holly, booker and we have a lot of different folks who are really focused on these issues right now so i do think we will see legislative reform and when the report came out they put out a memo that they did agree with all the findings of the report and they some of the remedies for the proposed remedies so i think we will see change and its just a question of other how aggressive it will be depending on and i have not had time yet to figure out who is taken to see if they are anti monopoly or not quite yet. Okay, with that, we are out of time. Thank you Sally Hubbard author of monopolies suck seven ways big corporations rule your life and how to take back control for it thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, david. This program is available as a podcast. All after words programs can be viewed on a website at otb. Org. Here are some of the current bestselling nonfiction books according to indy bound. Topping the list in the first volume of this president ial memoir, a promised land, former president obama reflects on his life and political career appeared Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkinson explores what she called the hidden caste system in the United States. After that is the best of me, a collection of stories and essays by author and humorist David Sedaris followed by china cartons modern comfort food and wrapping up our look at some of the bestselling books according to indy bound is a collection of comics by actor and comedian steve martin and cartoonist harry bliss. Some of these authors have appeared on both tv and you can watch the programs online at otb. Org. Youre watching booktv on cspan2. Every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Now on book tv we are live with author and Princeton University professor eddie claude who over the next two hours will take your calls and comments. Professor claudes books include democracy and black, jerez still enslaves the merit console and the recently published again and again james baldwins america and its urgent lessons for our own. Host professor eddie claude from princeton, in your most recent book and its urgent lessons for our own. The country had an opportunity