The E.U. on Anti-Trust Enforcement: The Case of Google

On June 19, 2025, when the European Court of Justice, the E.U.’s supreme court, received a nonbinding opinion from the advocate general, Juliane Kokott, recommending that Google’s appeal against an anti-trust fine of €4 billion be dismissed by the court. The E.U.’s executive branch, the Commission, had found in 2018 that the company had “used the dominance of its mobile Android operating system to throttle competition and reduce consumer choice.”[1] I contend that the company’s written statement in response can be characterized as “stone-deaf” or oblivious to the issue at hand. Such is not an effective way of managing threats in the environment of business. Moreover, the response itself illustrates why governmental action on anti-trust on behalf of market competition is valid and necessary. I contend that the invisible-hand mechanism of a restored competitive market is more reliable than depending on managerial intentions even if they are to be based on motivation that is social-engineered from fines.

The fine of €4 billion is part of a total of €8 billion against Google for anti-trust violations over a decade, including on the company’s digital ad unit. So, a pattern of restraint of trade can be inferred. As if obvious to it, the company statement in reaction to Kokott’s recommendation included, “Android has created more choice for everyone and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and around the world.”[2] That the advent of android technology had given consumers another option says nothing about whether Google was also curtailing other options. That many businesses were using android technology is not a rebuttal to the government’s claim that Google was operating in restraint of trade. In fact, that many businesses were using Google’s technology means that the company’s market share, and thus market power, were enough for the company to be able to restrain competition in the industry. In wanting to brag (or advertise), the managers at Google who wrote and approved the statement were unwittingly making the government’s case. Unsuccessful companies do not have sufficient market-power to restrict or curtail competition as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil did in the U.S. until that company was broken up (rather badly) by the U.S. Supreme Court on anti-trust grounds. This example begs the question of whether merely slapping Google with fines is sufficient to arrest the company’s pattern of restraining trade. Both the pattern and the bragging illustrate the tone-deaf feature of greed that narrows cognition and perception. In applying a fine to Google, the E.U. regulators would be naïve in believing that the company’s managers would then be motivated to stop curtailing competition. At the very least, the Commission’s commissioner for competition would still need to watch Google like a hawk.

I contend that it is vital to the public interest, or common good, of a society that competitive markets be protected and even created out of oligopolies by governments; this is a legitimate role for government because price-competition forces suppliers to be price-takers rather than price-setters. Only as the former are suppliers oriented to demand. This crucial role of price in a competitive market was arguably Adam Smith’s best contribution, or “value added,” to economic theory. The “invisible hand” by which buyers and sellers are both price-takers can be understood as an impersonal mechanism that constrains self-interest and even gives rise to unintended beneficial consequences of self-interest as goods and services are allocated efficiently rather than according to the self-interested will of a monopolist.

Even more abstractly, self-interest stems from the sin of self-love, which is the putting of one’s own happiness above love directed to God, so constraining especially narrow self-interest is important so as to obviate the baleful effects from greed that is oriented only to one’s own private benefit. In other words, that such self-interest is based ultimately on the sin of self-idolatry (i.e., worshipping one’s own happiness even at the expense of loving God) means that a society is wise at the very least to constrain even self-interests that are economically aggregated with unintended beneficial consequences. Smith’s “invisible hand” impersonal mechanism, if protected by government anti-trust enforcement, is more reliable, I submit, than even intended beneficial consequences that are conditional on human intention and thus motivation. This is why downsizing Google in the E.U. is preferable to trying to motivate Google’s management to stop restraining competition in its industry by means of fines.

Pierre Nicole, a Jansenist priest in the seventeenth century, argued that self-love can have beneficial consequences. The consequences are intended, but only in so far as the benefits going to others are in one’s own self-interest. Courtesy, for example, although rooted in self-love and thus fully in accord with self-interest, constrains immediate or narrow self-interest that runs unfettered in Hobbes’ state of nature. Simply put, we can get more by being social with other people than by taking their food and even killing them. Smith’s impersonal market mechanism also constrains narrow (or immediate) self-interest, such as raw greed, even though the untended aspect of the invisible hand differs from Nicole’s intended courtesy, and the impersonal aspect of Smith’s market mechanism differs from Nicole’s personal motive to extend courtesy to others because it is in one’s interest to do so. Also, whereas the invisible hand constrains self-interest itself, though competition may ultimately be in a company’s long-term best financial interest, extending courtesy to others only constrains narrow (or immediate) self-interest. In other words, narrow self-interest, in which only private benefits to oneself are sought, is constrained by both approaches and so they can be compared. But courtesy can easily be turned off, as it depends on intention, whereas the invisible hand’s operation does not depend on market participants intentions to constrain their own self-interest. As self-love is a manifestation of the foundational sin of pride, according to Augustine, a person’s intentions to constrain one’s own self-interest in actions cannot be relied upon even though it is laudable when a person assumes an enlightened self-interest and even acts altruistically. In assuming a managerial role in a company, a human being comports oneself to one’s narrow economic role, which willows one’s intentions that go beyond immediate or medium-term financial interests, both in terms of salary and company profitability.

It bears remembering that even though part of the literature on corporate social responsibility in the twentieth century includes ethical principles, CSR programs have become largely marketing. Indeed, the fiduciary duty of managers to the stockholders as a group mandates that the managers be oriented to maximizing profit (and thus dividends and the stock price). This legal infrastructure encases narrow self-interest, which benefits from restraining trade in order to increase market power and profit. Therefore, it should not be surprising that Google’s written reaction to the judicial opinion of the advocate general bears no traces of responsibility to uphold a competitive market for the good of society, but can instead be interpreted as sheer marketing. Lots of businesses use our product! Rockefeller could have said the same. That titan, who viewed himself as a “Christ figure” and a Noah in saving rival refiners from destructive competition in the 1860s by forcing them abord his “combination,” was also found guilty of restraint of trade. His self-deluded intentions certainly could not be trusted by the Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of breaking up his company. In the 2020’s, the E.U. was surpassing the U.S. on anti-trust enforcement, but even so, I submit that motive-triggering fines are not sufficient to restoring and protecting market competition once there is an egocentric giant in the room.

---

1. “Google Hits Setback in Bid to Overturn Multibillion EU Antitrust Fine in Android Case,” APnews.com, June 19, 2025.
2. Ibid.

Musk vs. Trump: American Business and Government at Loggerheads?

When the wealthiest person in the world and the President of the United States cross swords, people are bound to notice. Such a very public clash between billionaires, one of whom is the most politically powerful person in the U.S., should not lead the rest of us to infer that the interests of large corporations and the U.S. Government, including the respective executives and elected representatives, typically conflict. Corporate and individual mega-donations to political campaigns, the proverbial “revolving door” between working in government and at a corporation, the reliance of regulatory agencies on information from the regulated companies invite the exploit of conflicts of interest such that legislation and regulations are even written by corporate lawyers for their respective companies’ financial interest. Furthermore, that many very large American-based corporations have interlocking boards of directors gives corporate America considerable unified force in seeing to it that Congress and the federal president remain friendly to business interests. That both benefit from the status quo and have de jure or de facto vetoes of reform proposals reinforces the staying power of the club. Even as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders enjoyed considerable media attention and crowds in his speaking tour against oligopoly (i.e., consolidation within an industry such that companies can set prices at will and can thus extract extra profit beyond that which would accrue in a competitive market), it would be wildly optimistic to hope for an onslaught of anti-trust enforcement from a Republican or Democratic administration.

Even though U.S. President Trump claimed in early June, 2025, that he had told Elon Musk to leave the Administration because Musk was “wearing thin,” and Secretary of State Rubio would doubtless attest to that, it should not be forgotten that Musk had spent more than $250 million “helping President Donald Trump win a second White House term.”[1] Musk “also spent more than $19 million in the final weeks of the 2024 election cycle to help Republicans win narrow majorities in Congress.”[2] Even though Musk was the richest person in the world at the time, to spend so much money and yet be inattentive to how his companies could benefit from government contracts and electric-car subsidies defies human nature. Indeed, even though Musk denied opposing Trump’s tax and government spending “Big Beautiful Bill” because of the cuts to EV subsidies, Trump had a point that the negative financial impact on Tesla was not a point in the bill’s favor to Musk. To be sure, Musk’s complaint about too much “pork” and thus deficit spending being major problems in the bill that the U.S. House had recently passed by a single vote is valid. Nevertheless, lest it be assumed that a dispute on public policy between two billionaires is in the interest of the poor and middle-class, Musk registered no complaint about the cuts to Medicaid, which finances healthcare for the poor who cannot afford private health-insurance, and food assistance for the poor.

Even in the midst of an argument between billionaires in business and government, we cannot assume that the conflict of political-economic interests among the elite results in the enactment of public policy that is in the public interest. In Trump’s bill, for example, even though less money would subsidize electric vehicles, there were no reductions of subsidies in the bill that passed the House for coal and oil companies. The grip of those companies in Congress and the Trump Administration could be assumed to be tight in spite of the global average temperature having reached 1.5C degrees, which the Paris Accord of 2016 set as a threshold. The cozy relationship amid climate change puts in stark relief the distinction between private interests and the public interest.

When asked at the Qatar Economic Forum in 2025 whether he would continue making political donations as he had in 2024, Musk replied, “I think I’ve done enough.”[3] It should not be missed that he added, “Well, if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it.”[4] It would be of value to the American political economy if he would do contribute to political campaigns aimed at breaking up the cosy relationship that CEO’s and (and the corporations) have with elected officials and regulators at both the state and federal systems of government in the U.S.; by “breaking up,” I mean something more substantial and structural than barring government officials and employees from being hired by corporations that have benefitted from the work of the officials and employees.

Instead, I recommend a return to competitive markets and even possibly limiting political-campaign contributions of corporations and the ultra-rich, for the financial influence of large concentrations of wealth on elected officials and appointees tilts the political economy away from being oriented to the public interest, which is not arrived at by the entanglement of certain powerful private interests. To be sure, going so far as trying to eliminate the gravitas of wealth politically would be utopian and thus a fool’s errand, but public policy could be formulated and enacted that is aimed at reversing or countering at least some of the self-interested tilt of the American political economy that so benefits members of the club—Trump and Musk included. Nor is Socialism necessarily the answer to protecting the poor and middle-class from the self-interested endeavors of the interlaced economic and political elites, for Adam Smith’s invisible hand can do wonders to regulate price if only competition is restored to oligopolistic industries, which includes even social-media companies.

Trump’s threat to cut off Musk’s SpaceX from government contracts and Musk’s acknowledgement that he might make sizable political donations even though he was disappointed in Trump’s bill for its pork and probable significant addition to the U.S. federal debt indicate that politicians have considerable discretion being able to benefit companies financially and that CEO’s can make use of such discretion by legally paying off political candidates and those office-holders who are up for re-election and would all too easy exploit a personal conflict of interest by bending public duty to private campaign-interest. Using ambition to check ambition is part of the genius of the American political system of checks and balances, but as the ambitions are solely among the wealthy, it cannot be assumed that the public interest is necessarily being served by the resulting public policies, for collusion even between contending ambitions does indeed exist even if the publicly-aired arguments among the elite of the political economy are more titillating.

1. Kevin Breuninger, “Elon Musk Says He Will Spend ‘A Lot Less’ on Future Campaign Donations,” CNBC.com, May 20, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

On the Hidden Police Power of Corporate America

After the UnitedHealthcare chief executive “was gunned down by a masked man outside a Manhattan hotel” in New York City, “a days-long manhunt” occurred that “spanned several states.”[1] The fact that only a few days were needed to find the suspect, Luigi Mangione, indicates just how massive and public the manhunt was. For it was not just any murder, as if the murder of a person who is the chief executive of a large corporation were worth so much more than that of the rest of us. I suspect that the influence of the company, and, moreover, corporate America, on local police in any U.S. member state is more than reaches the headlines. The case at hand my even suggest that that influence includes even tacit instructions to treat anti-corporate suspects of murder violently both in retaliation and as a visible reminder to other potential killers that CEOs are off-limits.

As Pennsylvania sheriff employees took Mangione from a vehicle to the back door of a courthouse, at least two of the employees shoved the suspect—and, remember, in the U.S. a suspect is presumed innocent unless or until proven guilty in a court of law—into a wall even though the wall was not on the way from the vehicle to the back door. In other words, the unnecessary violence was not on the way to the back door, and nor was the suspect resisting going into the courthouse. I contend that the unnecessary violence was at the behest of the corporation whose CEO the suspect allegedly shot. At that time, the evidence that would be found had not yet been found, as per the defense attorney’s statement in the courthouse. Whether the violence being maliciously applied by sheriff employees was merely to show the world how a suspect accused of killing a CEO gets treated by law enforcement, or to stop the suspect from speaking to the media present on his way to the backdoor is not clear. It seems to be possible, at the very least, that corporate instructions given to the police in Pennsylvania included: Don’t let the guy get his anti-corporate message out. This would be ironic, given that corporations had at the time the right of free speech, even through spending as if money constitutes speech.

That Mangione was not resisting going into the courthouse and yet was manhandled rougher than suspects were typically treated at the time may give Americans, as well as the world, a glimpse into the power that large concentrations of private wealth (which is what a corporation is) even as translated into raw violence. The use of police by companies in twentieth-century America to beat workers on strike is well documented. What I am suggesting is that local police were still susceptible to wealthy private interests such as corporations into the next century, at least as of the 2020s. I contend that any contact between police departments and the healthcare insurance company would properly have been limited to the police gaining information in the search for the killer.

Another indication of an over-reaction by local police occurred days after Mangione had been arrested, when Briana Boston was charged with a felony “with one count of making threats to conduct a mass shooting” during a phone call with Blue Cross Blue Shield, her health-insurance company, which was denying a claim that she had submitted. Obviously angry, she said, “Delay, deny, depose. You people are next.”[2] The phrase, “delay, deny, depose,” had been written on bullets by Mangione in reference to tactics that insurers use to avoid paying out claims and had become popular online. Because of the popularity, it could not be assumed that the woman was planning on writing the three words on bullets; the phrase had entered the lexicon. In fact, “(a)ccording to a consumer survey by KFF, more than half of insured [American] adults [had] experienced problems with their insurance provider, and some [of those adults] reported serious consequences.”[3] Strangely, the local police in Lakeland, Florida, said that her statement could be taken as probable cause of “making a threat to conduct a mass shooting . . ., according to the affidavit.”[4] A reasonable interpretation of, “you guys are next,” is that if Blue Cross continues to screw policy holders who do their part in paying premiums, someone may eventually go too far in retaliation. She did not say that she was going to take any violent action, or what that action might be. Given that she was momentarily angry, and perhaps justifiably so, the police employee who leapt to the conclusion that the woman was saying she would conduct a mass killing is ludicrous, and yet the police had the discretion (and thus power) to make an example of the woman by charging her with a crime carrying a fourteen-year sentence, without her having done anything. Had being angry at customer-service employees become a crime? Or, had free-speech that is objectionable to big business become a crime? If so, could corporations next go after certain thoughts, using employees of local police departments who dismiss protecting the public as dutiful sycophants?

We can turn the Lakeland police investigation on its head by investigating that department. It is significant that “Lakeland, Florida police said they were contact by the FBI . . . in response to the alleged threat.”[5] That the police did not waste any time and did not seem to second-guess the FBI may suggest that the FBI had been determined to snuff out the “potential” copy-cat. To be sure, the FBI may simply have been over-cautious, but even that could have been due to pressure from Blue Cross or elected officials who have received campaign contributions from the giant company. That both the FBI and the local police department in Florida would knowingly seek to charge an angry policy holder of a crime that carries a sentence of 14 years in prison indicates a grossly disproportionate reaction, which itself could point back to the deference that the FBI (and local police) give to business in doing its bidding, even to scare the public.

As an anecdote, once when leaving a restaurant after barely eating a very badly cooked meal, I was speaking to people in the shopping center’s parking lot about the food. The manager of the restaurant got wind of this and approached me even though I was no longer on her establishment’s property. “The police here are my friends!” she warned me. “Keep talking about my restaurant and I will get them to make you leave.” The manager’s sheer presumptuousness was laughable, so I kept talking as was my right. She did call her friends, who told me I had to leave the parking lot even though that lot was not owned by the restaurant. That the police dismissed my legitimate objection told me enough; I moved to another suburb of Phoenix only months later; Mormon-run Mesa was simply too corrupt (and drug-ridden).

If my small window into the deference that local police pay to small business in falsely enforcing law that is not really law is correct, it is not difficult to conjecture that the FBI as well as local police may be unduly biased towards, perhaps even de facto working for, large corporations. The sort of unaccountability in accusing a distraught policy-holder of mass murder (even without noticing that she had no record of violence and not even a gun!) and being willing to put her in prison for fourteen years, likely to send the public a message from the large corporations, is consistent with the lack of accountability generally on market participants that are so large and wealthy that even competition is stifled that so enrages consumers and thus prompts anti-corporate politics. The connection can be found in Adam Smith’s claim that one of the main rationales for government is to protect the wealthy from the poor, who would otherwise steal the wealth. Does this hold of the governments in the U.S., or is the public to be served? The official answer may differ from the real answer.

That the governments in the U.S. have allowed companies to become so large as to choke competition without anti-trust law being enforced—something that Adam Smith would not like—is yet another indication of the “under the table” power of large corporations in the United States, thanks in part to unlimited political campaign contributions being legal. Perhaps elected officials were the people delivering the instructions from the health insurance company to the Pennsylvania sheriff in Altoona: Be rough with the guy and don’t let him speak to the media. Push him up against a wall if you want. Grab him by the neck. Show the world what happens if someone goes up against corporate America.  Hence the anti-corporate political movement in a democracy that is premised on accountability rather than plutocracy with impunity.

My main point is that institutionally, or structurally, very large and wealthy private companies, whether corporations or privately held, are incompatible with not only market competition, which ensures fair prices (even at grocery stores after a pandemic), but also political democracy, wherein one person has one vote and thus is just as important as the next. Whether a man on the street or a corporate CEO is murdered, the police-response should be the same in terms of the cost and effort in the manhunt and how the suspects are treated. Innocent until proven guilty means that police violence against a suspect who is not being violent or resistant is itself a crime regardless of how rich the victim’s family or company happens to be. 

The case of the health insurance CEO’s murder in December, 2024 was deliberately not supposed to be a vehicle for getting an anti-corporate message out—with even violence being used to enforce this proscription—but how the Pennsylvania police aggressively treated the suspect unabashedly in public view can be seen as a poster advertising the interlarding of corporate power at the expense of accountability in American democracy. Both economically and politically, it can be asked whether large corporations are accountable in the United States; politically, the same question may be asked of the local police departments in the member states. The American governments in the U.S. could do worse than apply anti-trust law to a variety of markets and apply criminal law to local police departments whose actual paymasters can be characterized proverbially as the man behind the curtain—an allusion to the hidden Wizard in the film, The Wizard of Oz. Then again, perhaps Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a more pertinent film, as the senator played by Jimmy Stuart filibusters for hours and hours against corruption in his home state.

---

1. Jessica Parker and Nadine Yousif, “Luigi Mangione Fingerprints Match Crime-Scene Prints, Police Say,” BBC.com, December 11, 2024.
2. Pocharapon Neammanee, “Woman Arrested After Saying ‘Delay, Deny, Depose’ On Call With Insurance Company,” The Huffington Post, December 12, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5.Ibid.

Greedy Grocers: Exploiting Customers and Workers with Impunity

Adam Smith theorized that price competition on products and labor would allow the self-interests of the buyers and sellers to result in unintended beneficial consequences. For one thing, price gouging would not happen because, assuming low barriers to enter the market to sell, competitors would quickly drop their prices and gain market share. That grocery prices did not fall after the supply-shocks, including in shipping and hiring workers, ended with the end of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2023 is a pretty good indication that the grocery (and meat producer) industry was not competitive. Oligarchic markets—those in which just a few, often times very large, sellers exist—are devoid of the competitive mechanism that would otherwise maintain prices that are fair to buyers. That is, not only do competitive markets efficiently allocate goods and services at prices that connect supply to demand; such markets can also satisfy the ethical virtue of justice as fairness. Smith was not shy in admitted that a government willing to stand up to big companies is necessary to keep a market from slipping into the decadence of an oligopoly and especially a monopoly. I contend that both Americans and their elected representatives were blind, perhaps conveniently so given the power of large companies in American governments, both during the coronavirus pandemic, which ran from roughly 2020 to 2022, and even afterwards as Kroger and Albertsons colluded at the expense (literally) of their respective customers and workers.  

On February 26, 2024, about a year after the coronavirus pandemic ended in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission “sued to block the largest proposed supermarket merger in U.S. history—Kroger Company’s $24.6 billion acquisition of the Albertsons Companies, Inc.—alleging that the deal is anticompetitive.”[1] While testifying to a Federal Trade Commission attorney ,  Andy Groff, Kroger's senior director for pricing, said the grocery giant had raised prices for eggs and milk beyond inflation levels. In an internal email to other Kroger executives, he had written, "On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation."[2] Of course, the company’s strategy was to try to discredit Groff rather than assume responsibility for having taken advantage of the pandemic. It was telling, however, that at least at Albertsons, including its Safeway division, the practice of weekly discounts shown on the shelves was greatly diminished. So, we can add ending discounts to price gouging to understand the true sticker shock that customers encountered.

The price gouging alone was “not at all surprising," Drew Powers, the founder of Illinois-based Powers Financial Group, has said. Economists had “long indicated that the grocery sector, which is composed of only a few chains like Kroger and Walmart, was benefiting from supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, allowing the companies to hike prices beyond what was necessary to retain profits. According to Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor, "Supply chain issues, rising shipping costs, and increased wages certainly played their part in the higher prices we're currently seeing. However, the admission some prices were elevated simply because businesses knew they could doesn't help the case for those arguing price gouging isn't an issue."[3]  

Perhaps even more disturbing, but much more subtly, Kroger and Albertsons did not lower prices after the unique economic context of the pandemic had ended. In fact, both companies saw record profits into 2024 and a generally increasing trend from 2010 that belies any claim to have needed to raise prices during the pandemic to stay in business. In fact, the profits during the pandemic were greater than in 2018-2020, and record profits as of January 31, 2024. Not coincidentally, the grocers provided customers with just a slight reduction in prices of food items in 2024 even though the huge increases during the pandemic had been said to be specific to it. This demonstrates that the industry had ceased to operate in a competitive market. The following graphs from Metatrends.net of gross profits for the years (January 1) 2009 - (January 31) 2024 tell the tale, a picture being proverbially said to be worth a thousand words. 

Kroger (left) and Albertsons (right) Gross Profit ($)

That Albertsons increased prices excessively during 2022 can be inferred from the fact that the company's net income that year increased 51% from 2021 even though the pandemic was still occurring. In July, 2024, Newsweek stated the following: “Companies across multiple industries have been posting record profits since the [coronavirus pandemic] while consumers have faced the highest inflation in recent history. The math can only point to companies raising prices above the general level of inflation. As the old saying goes, 'Never let a good crisis go to waste.'"[4] And never let the end of a crisis be the end of the party, for the excuses can run their natural course if the herd animals (and their leaders) are gullible (and corrupt) enough.

That a grocery-store worker filed a class-action lawsuit against both Kroger and Albertsons in Colorado on November 25, 2024 for having colluded “against striking employees to keep pay and benefits down” may indicate that the giant chains took advantage of workers too.[5] The suit alleges that “the two competitors reached an illicit agreement not to poach employees or customers during a 2022 work stoppage.” This “gave Kroger an upper hand against its employees’ union during contract talks,” and Albertson too would likely benefit as it had the same union.[6] The word most erroneous here is competitors, and if Kroger and Albertsons were not competing for employees or customers, then it would have been easy for both managements to raise prices, essentially creating inflation (i.e., above costs and a reasonable profit), in taking advantage of the pandemic turned into a rationale for higher prices and then of societal expectations that price increases would happen and be legitimate.

That Kamala Harris ran for U.S. president in 2024 with only vague promises to help consumers with high food prices rather than a bold promise to wipe off the Sherman Anti-trust Act to apply it to break up both Kroger and Albertsons is so glaring that it could (and should) be asked whether, or to what extent, that industry, as well as the concentrated meat-producer industry, was made financial contributions to Harris’ campaign. Even President Biden’s decision to oppose the merger of those two companies ignored the likely possibility that the grocery (and meat-producer) industry was already too concentrated (i.e., oligopolistic) for price competition to have lowered food prices after the pandemic.  Both the president and the vice president (i.e., Harris) were too snug with the status quo, and perhaps relatedly too influenced, financially and otherwise, by the grocery (as well as meat-producing and even restaurant) industry. That the profits of Kroger and Albertson grew not only during the pandemic, but also in its wake, especially as compared with the pre-pandemic numbers, should have been an obvious indication that Adam Smith’s apotheotic competitive-market model could no longer operate due to the enormous sizes and few number of grocery chains in the United States. Enough voters may have been angry at Biden and Harris for not using the judiciary to restore competition—only acting to oppose the merger—to vote for Harris even though Trump would not likely apply anti-trust law even to the merger. A similar rationale concerning Biden and Harris actively supporting Israel militarily even after the UN’s top court had ruled that the occupation violated international law can be applied for why Harris lost. Enough of the American electorates wanted boldness in place of status-quo timidity that they were willing to vote against Harris and even for Trump even while disagreeing with his bold policies, such as on stopping illegal immigration.

---

1. “FTC Challenges Kroger’s Acquisition of Albertsons,” FTC Press Release, February 26, 2024.
2. Suzanne Blake, “Kroger Executive Admits Company Gouged Prices Above Inflation,” Newsweek, August 31, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. 
5. Dave Jamieson, “Worker Sues Kroger and Albertsons, Alleging Collusion Against Union,” The Huffington Post, November 26, 2024.
6. Ibid.  

Pittsburgh Businesses Encroach on Public Property with Impunity

Private property, competition, and the market-mechanism have come to be assumed to be integral to the economic system of Capitalism. The assumption that this cluster of attributes is necessary is faulty though, as, for example, the state can own some or all of the “means of production” (i.e., firms) that are subject to market competition, especially if privately-owned enterprises also exist. China had a mix of private and state-owned enterprises compete in several industries when the state opened the economy to competitive forces setting supply and demand. In Wisconsin, the Green Bay Packers, an NFL football team, is owned by the residents of that city, such ownership being Socialism, and yet that team has competed not only to win, but also in the hiring of players and managers. A competitive market does not require that the property of the means of production be privately owned. Even in the case of private ownership of companies, the widely accepted custom wherein the owners receive the residual profits after expenses is dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. Alternatively, creditors or employees/managers could receive any excess revenue after expenses have been paid. In short, Capitalism as it has come to be known and exercised is more arbitrary than capitalists may realize. Even the taken-for-granted distinction between public and private property is not as stark as may be typically supposed. This is no excuse, however, for businesses that knowingly encroach on public property as if it were their own private property. A Capitalist economic system predicated on private property may contain not only the seed of monopoly, as Marx claimed, but also a tendency of private enterprises to over-reach on the public domain. If so, government has a responsibility to prune back the overweening tentacles. Two examples make this point.

Once while walking on a narrow sidewalk, I glanced down at my phone and was instantly startled as I ran into and tumbled over a metal chair in the middle of the sidewalk. A restaurant’s employees had set up tables on the side of the sidewalk with chairs out into the middle of the sidewalk, and a bit beyond a table had been placed in the middle of the sidewalk, with a potted plant placed making it even more difficult to navigate around the tables and chairs. Who would want to eat in the middle of a sidewalk, with people passing by at close range? The manager of that restaurant was guilty not only of missing this rather basic point, but also of the incredible presumption that the public sidewalk was essentially part of the business’s private property, which astonishingly placed the public at a disadvantage on public property!

A month earlier, I had called the zoning department of the city. I had been assured that a restaurant cannot obstruct a sidewalk. However, the city then failed to act, perhaps capitulating to the business interest (and wealth). So, after I nearly fell from running into the chair, I called the city again. The employee who answered insisted that the city gives permits allowing businesses to permanently block or obstruct public sidewalks. So, I called again and spoke with another person who had more of a sympathetic ear when I explained that I had almost fallen, and that a hazard exists because numerous pedestrians walk into the street because of the obstruction. Two weeks later, with Franks Bar and Grill still interlarding on public property, I left a phone message for the code enforcement person. Two weeks after that, as the photo below demonstrates, the restaurant was still blocking the sidewalk. 

I know that the city had opened an investigations months earlier, so I surmise that the restaurant's owner or manager knew of the complaints and dismissed them. Additionally, I suspect that the city of Pittsburgh had bowed to the business interest at the expense of the public good. This is as much of a problem as is the presumptuousness and dismissiveness of a business that can take advantage of a corrupt municipal government.

Another example of companies encroaching on public "space" is the overreaching of security guards and private police employees presuming that their turf extends beyond a company's private property. When I lived temporarily in Pittsburgh, while I was walking on a public sidewalk along a hospital that was part of the University of Pittsburgh, I stopped at a food-truck only to realize that a security guard was perched on a small hill from which he seemed to have been presumptuously patrolling the sidewalk. In the distance was another security guard. 

Initially, I thought he was in line to order food from the food truck as I was. So I held back. Strangely, he likely viewed my standing position with suspicion, or, more likely, dislike as I was looking generally in his direction. Not all subtle, he strategically walked past me up close and stopped further along on the sidewalk, presumably there to talk to another food vender, yet his body position reveals his real orientation. 

The presumptuousness of that university-affiliated hospital was visible in the choice of the security guard’s uniform mimicking that of the police—including with a silver “badge” and handcuffs. If the hospital was breaching the state's monopoly of police powers, which in general is a larger problem, I submit that the visible artifacts added to the possible presumptuousness of the wearers that company security hyper-extends "off campus" even if the state permits it. The artifacts also misled the public into supposing that the company's police were the same as the city police. At the very least, a company's private security or "police" employees do not necessarily receive the same training as the regular police receive. There is also the problem of legitimacy from a democratic standpoint once the state's monopoly of police powers, as per the U.S. Constitution, is violated by companies. 

Just a public property is distinct from private property, a company's employees are distinct from a government's police force (and power). Encroachment onto a government's use of force puts a company in a conflict of interest in that its security employees are not in an even-handed position in disagreements between a company's management and its stakeholders. Human nature being what it is, we should not assume that the employees would be fair in cases in which a management oversteps its own authority ethically or legally. 

I contend that business managers have a tendency to overreach, even perceiving public property as fair game to be captured for the private, narrower, interest of a business as the public interest suffers. This tendency on the microlevel is the same as that which fuels a company in a competitive industry to become a monopoly. John D. Rockefeller, for example, pressured competitors unwilling to be bought by his Standard Oil company. The titan had the audacity to view himself as a Noah saving the drowning competitors from being ruined by the destructive competition especially in the 1860s, and as a Christ-figure saving them. Unlike Rockefeller, Jesus in the Gospel stories does not kill off people who are unwilling to accept his help. Rockefeller even pressured the railroads to pay Standard Oil a “drawback” when they carried the oil of his competitors. Such encroachment breached what was thought to be ethical business conduct at the time, which in turn included some practices that would come to be regarded as unethical. The titan’s presumptuousness thus extended to treating the railroads as akin to his own property. By such means of encroachment, Rockefeller built his company into a monopoly in the refining industry. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in 1913, but made the mistake of keeping in tact the same ownership in all of the resulting companies. The managements thereof were even allowed to be in the same building! A willingness to stand up to powerful businesses and competency as to how to break up their excessive market power from previous encroachments are both important if the private-property attribute of modern Capitalism is not to eviscerate the attributes of competition and the market-mechanism. Given the tendency of business managers to shirk the public interest, society needs some means of protecting public property from the inevitable encroachments.

Is Undoing Financial Reform In Line With Free-Market Ideology?

Legislating on the basis of an aversion to government intervention in financial markets can paradoxically result in more massive intervention. The latter can come to pass even amid an anti-interventionist ideology on account of the emergency conditions that call for the extraordinary incursion of government into a market. Undoing the Orderly Liquidation Authority of the Dodd-Frank Act in the U.S. is a case in point.

The full essay is at "Financial Deregulation."

Banks Guilty of Colluding to Set Euro-Dollar Exchange-Rate Basis: Toward a Competitive Market

In May 2015, Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and the Royal Bank of Scotland both acknowledged colluding to set the “fix” rate in foreign exchange markets, and agreed both to change their internal cultures and pay criminal fines of over $2.5 billion.[1] The U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, stated that her department would “vigorously prosecute all those who tilt the economic system in their favor; who subvert our marketplaces; and who enrich themselves at the expense of American customers.”[2] I submit that this does not go far enough, given the size and power of the banks and the condition of the sector.

Private gain at the expense of the public good is an old story. Corporations give to Congressional campaigns at least in part in hopes of being able to bend federal lawmakers to insert and approve a loophole that would keep the good of the whole from constraining quite so much the particular private interests. To be viable in the long term, a republic—even a republic of republics—must privilege the public good over potentially overweening private interests; otherwise, the implicit message can only be that anything goes—provided a company’s head knows where to send the dollars.

In using “a private electronic chatroom to manipulate the spot market’s exchange rate between euros and dollars using coded language to conceal their collusion,” the banks, or “The Cartel” as they referred to their group, “acted as partners—rather than competitors—in an effort to push the exchange rate in directions favorable to their banks but detrimental to many others.”[3] In other words, the banks acted as price-makers rather than price-takers; the market could not, therefore, be considered competitive. I submit that Lynch did not go far enough in settling for an acknowledgement of wrong-doing, promised change of internal cultures, and a fine; they do necessarily result in a competitive marketplace. Lynch said that the “penalty all these banks will now pay is fitting considering the long-running and egregious nature of their anticompetitive conduct” as well as “the pervasive harm done.”[4] Perhaps this so in terms of the size of the fine, but in giving the public confidence that the market would from then on be competitive. If firms in an industry are large enough that four of them colluding can set a price or rate, then the industry is oligarchic. To move it to a competitive basis, governmental action breaking up the largest firms (including in terms of ownership) is necessary. The justification lies in the value of the public good when economic liberty and property rights threaten to compromise the good of the whole.

To be sure, the U.S. Government would only be able to break up Citicorp and JPMorgan. Lest it be claimed that the resulting smaller firms would have less wherewithal to compete with Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland (as well as other banks), shedding less profitable divisions and focusing on developing a specialty-area can result in higher profits (i.e., from the sale of premium goods). Had lawmakers and President Obama given the U.S. Government the authority to break up financial institutions that have an unacceptable level of system risk (i.e, that a bank’s collapse could paralyze the entire financial system given the impact of high volatility on the market mechanism adjusting for risk), breaking up the largest American banks would not only make the sector more competitive, but also reduce the banks’ respective systemic risks. Were a crisis and ensuing short-sellers’ run on the banks occur, holding more dollars in reserves might not buy a bank much more time. It did not take long for Lehman Brothers to run through its cash once the short-sellers set in.

In short, the U.S. Attorney General could have taken a more systemic view and a related pro-active approach oriented beyond holding the banks accountable by including measures that would have provided the public with more confidence that the sector would be more competitive in the future.

---

1. Loretta Lynch, “Attorney General Lynch Delivers Remarks at a Press Conference on Foreign Exchange Spot Market Manipulation,” The U.S. Department of Justice, May 20-, 2015.

2. Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4. Ibid. Lynch said that the banks’ concerted actions “inflated the banks’ profits while harming countless consumers, investors and institutions around the globe—from pension funds to major corporations, and including the banks’ own customers—who placed their faith in the market and relied on it to produce a competitive exchange rate.” Ibid.

Democracy as an Anti-Trust Criterion: The Comcast Time-Warner Merger

As the U.S. Department of Justice and the SEC were reviewing the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner in April 2015, six U.S. senators signed a joint letter opposing the $45 billion deal. Comcast would control about 30 percent of the pay-television subscribers in the U.S. and an estimated 35 to 50 percent of the American broadband internet service.[1] That more senators had not signed on is telling with respect to how business-oriented American society had become.

At the time, the Justice Department was investigating whether the takeover would harm competition, while the Federal Communications Commission was evaluating whether the combined company would be in the public interest. For their part, the senators wrote that the combined company’s “unmatched power” would reduce competition and hamper innovation, as well as lead to higher prices, fewer choices, and worse service.[2] Opponents more generally “portrayed Comcast’s effort as a land grab that would give the company too much leverage in the industry.”[3] In short, one company would have too much power over the future of television and broadband. What about over Congress? The silence alone on this question is telling.

Beyond the industry-level impacts, which would admittedly be quite significant, the plutocric ramifications are also striking. That is, the giant company would have so much financial muscle that its forays into campaign finance would likely have an anti-democratic impact. Members of Congress, for example, would be subject to greater temptations to do Comcast’s bidding at the expense of their respective constituents (and states). As recipients of political-campaign donations, elected representatives have an incentive to look the other way as a large corporation gets even bigger.

In 2008, for example, the largest single contributor to Barak Obama’s presidential campaign was Goldman Sachs. The $1 million contribution helped insure that the White House under Obama would not come down too hard on the bank (or Wall Street). Interestingly, the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act of 2010 does not give the federal government the authority to break up banks that are too big to fail. Similarly, a “super Comcast” would insulate itself in Congress against populist attempts to break up the company in order to bring more competition to the television and internet industries. I submit that anti-trust law ought to be strengthened to include the protection of representative democracy from encroachments from large concentrations of privately-held capital (i.e., large corporations).

---

[1] Emily Steel, “6 Senators Urge Rejection of Comcast-Time Warner Cable Deal,” The New York Times, April 21, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Emily Steel et al., “Comcast Is Said to Abandon Bid for Major Rival,” The New York Times, April 24, 2015.

Anti-trust Enforcement in the E.U. and U.S.: Business, Government and Society

In 2014, the E.U. depended on Gazprom, a state-controlled Russian gas company, for one-third of the natural gas used in Europe. Meanwhile, Russia depended on the company for export-earnings. Moreover, both the E.U. and Russia view Gazprom from not only commercial vantage-points, but geopolitical ones as well. Both dimensions were in the mix as the European Commission weighed bringing anti-trust charges against the company in April 2015. At the time, the E.U.’s executive branch was already formally pursuing Google on anti-trust grounds. Relative to anti-trust enforcement in the U.S., the E.U.’s own represents a formidable attempt to open up competitive markets. We can generalize, in fact, to posit a more balanced “check and balance” between business and government in Europe.

Regarding the salience of geopolitics, the E.U.’s action could force Gazprom to “drop conditions with European utilities that restrict those utilities’ ability to share the gas with other countries.”[1] We need only recall Russia’s use of Gazprom to cut off natural gas to Ukraine in the midwinter “gas wars” in 2006 and 2009 to grasp the geopolitical weight on the Russian side of the “commercial transactions.” Even though an anti-trust action would also involve going after Gazprom for the more exclusively commercial practices of “thwarting its European customers’ efforts to diversity sources of supply, and . . . imposing unfairly high charges by linking gas prices to those of oil, rather than basing prices on global natural gas market rates,” the Commission’s decision-making process included the geopolitical element of Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine at the time. That is to say, going after even egregious commercial practices could have dire political consequences. Government regulation of business is not merely about market efficiency and effectiveness. In fact, Gazprom demonstrates just how salient geopolitics can be in the management of a company. 

In fact, government regulation is itself nestled in a broader social contract, even if implicit, between business and society. The greater a people’s ingestion of business values, the less likely is a government to pursue powerful companies on anti-trust grounds. Those companies may even have disproportionate influence politically. From this standpoint, the E.U.’s executive branch may seem biased.

For her part, Margrethe Vestager, the E.U.’s competition commissioner at the time, answered such criticism just prior to her visit to the U.S. In her view, going after Google for skewing search results in favor of its own shopping service is simply a matter of enforcing the law. “As enforcers, we build our cases on evidence and on interpretation of facts because the European Union as well as the United States is built on the rule of law.”[2] Although the definition of a market is different in the U.S., the relative dearth of anti-trust enforcement in the U.S. may have been her real message here. Rather than defending Google, Americans might see to it that their elected representatives represent constituents by pushing for more competitive and less oligarchic markets. 

To be sure, it is one thing for one government to go after a foreign company, and quite another for another government to go after a domestically-based company. It is also true, however, that a domestic company could have too much political leverage over its home government, especially if the societal values align with those in the business world. In the U.S., the relative value put on economic liberty and business values such as efficiency may ironically make anti-trust action in favor of more competitive (i.e., efficient) markets less likely; a pro-business society may actually be less favorable to the long-term best interests of a commercial system (while being more favorable to the more narrow interests of powerful companies).

---

[1] James Kanter, “Europe Is Expected to Charge Gazprom in Antitrust Case,” The New York Times, April 20, 2015.

[2] Jessica Guynn, “EU Enforcer Means Business,” USA Today, April 20, 2015.

Wall Street Banks: Price-Making and Law-Breaking?

The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found in 2011 that “two Goldman employees, Deeb Salem and David Swenson, tried to manipulate prices of securities used to bet against mortgages. Both tried to help Goldman pile on larger bets against the mortgage market, and they wanted to be able to buy such negative bets more cheaply, the report said. Goldman, as a broker, was able to affect prices in the market through the bids and offers it gave out. Mr. Swenson wrote in May 2007 that the bank should try to ‘start killing’ prices on certain positions so that Goldman would be able to ‘pick some high quality stuff,’ according to the Senate report. The strategy, Mr. Swenson wrote, would ‘have people totally demoralized.’ The pair were unsuccessful in their attempt, and both denied making it to the Senate committee. Mr. van Praag said last week that the report had no evidence of manipulation. Still, the Senate report said that ‘trading with the intent to manipulate market prices, even if unsuccessful, is a violation of the federal securities laws.’”[1] I submit that it was also unethical. 


The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available at Amazon.com.

1. Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson, “S.E.C. Case Stands Out Because It Stands Alone,” The New York Times, May 31, 2011.

On the Merger of Comcast and NBC: A Structural Conflict of Interest

On January 18, 2011, Comcast received government approval to acquire NBC Universal. This followed a lengthy review, which mandated a list of conditions. The most important of them is aimed at preventing the new media conglomerate from thwarting competition in online video. However, even though regulators described their review as the most intense scrutiny ever for a planned media merger, Comcast managers said they believed their company faced few onerous restrictions from the review. “I don’t think any of the conditions are particularly restrictive,” said David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast.[1] This statement ought to give readers some pause.

The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. Tim Arango and Brian Stelter, "Comcast Receives Approval for NBC Universal Merger," The New York Times, January 19, 2011.