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LEVER TIME PREMIUM: How Reagan Created Today’s Monopoly Crisis | Otter.ai

LEVER TIME PREMIUM: How Reagan Created Today’s Monopoly Crisis

The Lever36min

Arjun Singh

00:00

I'd love to start with a step back look at anti trust and how anti trust is defined sort of the broader history of it in the US. When did this idea that concentrated economic power was something that the government should really deal with? And was something that was maybe problematic society at large?

Stacy Mitchell

00:22

Yeah, I mean, concerns about economic power go all the way back through through US history. Indeed, the idea that economic liberty was essential to political liberty was something that English colonists learned from native peoples of this continent. And, you know, you can look at some of those ideas really being, you know, the, the, the US revolution was very much infused with those ideas. I mean, when, you know, residents of Boston dumped 92,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor, the specific thing that they were protesting was the monopolization of the tea trade by the East India Company. So there was this understanding that that liberty and democracy really had to be built on on economic freedom as well as political freedom. In the early days of the Republic, it was states that had laws that constrained corporate power. And that began to break apart in the 19th century. Or I should say, that approach no longer works so well in the 19th century, because, you know, a group of men came along and harnessed this disruptive new technology, the railroad, and they realized that they could use control over the rails in order to build monopolies across the economy. So John D. Rockefeller, for example, who had Standard Oil, he entered into a deal with Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was a railroad magnate, whereby the rails carried standard oils, products and charged competing oil companies, huge prices, to ship their products by rail. And that's how Standard Oil became a monopoly. So the railroads were this linchpin for skirting state laws, because they spanned multiple states, and for these industrialists to grab monopoly power across different parts of the economy. And so that's what led to our first antitrust laws in the late 19th century. And I should say, I should say, really, that that what the railroad barons, the kinds of abuses that they perpetrated, you know, not only in building these industrial monopolies, but they also charged ordinary people, farmers and small businesses that had to get their goods to markets, it's exorbitant prices on the rails. And so there was this huge mass movement against the railroad, the power of the railroad barons, workers, small businesses, farmers across the country. So it was really this grassroots movement that led to the passage of our first federal antitrust laws in the 19th century. And, you know, we continue to add to those laws over the decades, it was really Franklin Roosevelt, who, who came in and fully animated those laws, put them into full activation. He very much he talked about when he campaigned this idea of, you know, how people were increasingly being controlled by this industrial dictatorship, you know, he defined corporate power very much in political terms. And his thinking was that the central role of government in a democracy had to be about just, you know, breaking up concentrations of economic power and really giving everyday people more economic agency. And his thinking was, we needed to do that both in terms of labor unions, so people would have a voice on the job, but also in going after monopolies and ensuring that people could start businesses and farms and be able to operate without this kind of coercive force of big business. And throughout the 30s 40s 50s 60s. We had very robust antitrust enforcement. You know, the government went after companies like a&p, big retail grocer, retail chain of its of its day. That's what helped begin the unionization. First time that the retail workers began to unionize was was when the government really put a mp back on its heels through an antitrust case. And independent grocers were then sort of freed by the breakup of a&p to really thrive in those years as well. Government went after AT and T and IBM and gotten got them to open up their patent vaults and so suddenly, things like the transistor, which would later lead to the computer revolution and the web were kind of released into the wild. So it was a period in which we had you know, this, this broader prosperity and, you know, innovation and so on, you know, of course, it was a period in which now Not everybody was was, you know, fully allowed to reap the benefits of that economy, people of color women, gay people excluded. But it's also worth noting that in that period, you know, the, the income gap between black and white Americans actually narrows quite considerably. We have growing numbers of people of color joining unions, we had more black owned grocery stores in the 1960s than we have today. And so there was a way in which some of that economic power, you know, also helped to see the civil rights movement and movements for political power. And so, you know, as I said, sort of worth worth reflecting on today. The one thing I realized I just gave you a very long history.

Arjun Singh

05:44

No, it was it was fantastic. Yeah. The one thing I don't

Speaker 1

05:48

want to just go back and say that really responds more directly to your question about what is the origin and purpose of these laws? You know, we all know that in order to have a democracy, we have to have checks and balances within government. So you don't have any one branch of government become overbearing and amass too much power and then begin to wield it in this oppressive fashion. The antitrust laws are just as important to the design of a democracy because they are a check and balance on the accumulation and exercise of economic power, which is just as important. So

Arjun Singh

06:21

what happened in the 1970s that changed this thinking, was it that people became kind of comfortable with the state of play? Or why do we see in the 1970s, this erosion or Yeah, change of thinking regarding antitrust and monopoly power?

Speaker 1

06:41

A lot happened in the 1970s. You know, on the one hand, you had antitrust enforcement has remained fair, fairly vigorous, at least in the early 70s. But it had really was no longer on the front pages of the newspapers, it had really faded from public view, partly because it was successful enough that people really stopped paying attention to monopoly issues. And also because other things were more coming to the fore. And so you antitrust really kind of receded into the bureaucratic shadows, it became this thing that kind of happened behind closed doors that economists did, and it wasn't really part of the public discourse. You know, more more broadly. So that was one factor. Another factor was that, uh, you know, the Democratic Party, there was a kind of ascendant faction within the Democratic Party that was becoming increasingly, you know, sort of embracing bigger businesses and bigger banks and kind of abandoning and distancing itself from labor and small business and farmers, the old New Deal coalition. You know, we also had Robert Bork, you know, who was Nixon Solicitor General and played this role, this role in Watergate, you know, he had gone back into being a legal scholar and wrote a book in 1978, called the antitrust paradox, in which he forwarded this, you know, theory and set of ideas that if you go back and read that book now, or just don't make any, it's complete nonsense, but nevertheless, he got some traction for this idea that we really should roll back antitrust and reorient what antitrust was all about. He said, You know, this was not about dispersing power, none of those broad concerns that had had, you know, had been behind the creation of our antitrust laws matter. He said, Oh, the only thing that matters is efficiency, you know, and that antitrust really is about how can we make the economy more efficient. And, you know, embedded within in that idea was that there was this set of, you know, the bigger that companies got, the more efficient they would be, and that would be great for consumers, and that he basically turned antitrust on its head, he said, you know that this is not actually about dispersing power, antitrust really should work to encourage the accumulation of power, and therefore we'll have a more efficient economy. And so he wrote these ideas into this book in 1978. And big business really saw an opening. And so when Reagan came into office, folks that were followers of bork, you know, work came into his administration, and they use that opportunity to undertake what is, you know, something, something that is very much akin to a coup. You know, they knew that they didn't have the political support to go and overturn the antitrust laws. So all of the antitrust laws remain on the books just as they were written just as strong as they were, you know, as they were when they were written. But what the folks within the antitrust agencies under Reagan did was that they wrote these new interpretations of the law. Very much in line with the thinking of bork, they said, Oh, the what these laws are really about is greater efficiency and big business and scale is good. And that thinking began to infect both the Republican and the Democratic Party It began to infect the courts. And you know, pretty soon everybody was looking at antitrust law, not actually reading the statutes not actually reading the history. But going on the basis of these sorts of forky. And interpretations that had been brought in under Reagan, you know, and that might have been the end of it, had Democrats come into office, and then challenge that. But these ideas were also in different ways embraced by Bill Clinton, and ultimately, Barack Obama. And so we've now had 40 years of this thinking that bigger business is good, and that we don't have to worry about the political implications of that concentration of power.

Arjun Singh

10:36

Now, this is probably a pretty big question. But from what you're describing, was there ever an intentional effort from the business community to really reinforce or push that dogma? And if so, and we can use the 1980's the Reagan era as an example? Do you know who might have been some of the players that were pushing that or some of the actors? But yeah, was there an intentional effort to really push this ideology further into government?

Speaker 1

11:08

Absolutely. There was a very intentional effort by large corporations to advance his ideology. The US Chamber of Commerce, in particular, in the 1970s, began to realize that they could, you know, as Democrats were sort of distanced the Democratic Party was distancing itself from small business and farmers, they realized, hey, we're going to start talking a small business game, we're going to start making everything that we're doing, we're going to do in the name of small business, and we're going to call for this, you know, shrinking of government regulation, and so on dismantling of antitrust, we're gonna say, hey, that's great for small business. And they were able to get away with that. And you see Reagan kind of imitating some of that language. So this was very much, you know, this is very much kind of under the radar effort by large businesses, a set of economic and legal ideologues, you know, connected to a set of political players that effectively gutted our the enforcement of our antitrust laws, with no actual political mandate and no process through Congress, you know, these laws were not overturned, they remain on the books.

Arjun Singh

12:25

Is there a company or a case that really emphasizes kind of that paradigm shift in the 1980s? Where, if there had been the conventional thinking of the 1960s, a, a certain company may have faced antitrust lawsuits, but because of this new mode of thinking, they were able to grow? Or were there certain trends that you started to see happening in this post coup period, I guess you can call it?

Speaker 1

12:52

Well, we started see, you know, in the 1980s, we started to see just massive waves of consolidation across the economy. This happen not only with huge numbers of mergers, were companies merged and then took control of different industries. But you also saw many companies exploiting and using tactics to eliminate competition and control markets using using the kinds of tactics that would have drawn scrutiny, you know, a generation earlier, when the antitrust laws were enforced. There are so many examples that would be you know, that there are many examples to pick from the the one that's coming to mind right now is, is Walmart, you know, Walmart started growing very rapidly in the 1980s. You know, it went from being the small regional chain, there were a number of small regional chains across the country and into being this, you know, nationwide behemoth. And it did that exploiting a couple of tactics that are technically illegal under the antitrust laws, but that have not really been enforced in 40 years. So one was what's known as predatory pricing, Walmart would go into a community, they would sell key goods, like a pharmacy goods, you know, different, excuse me, Walmart would go into a community and they would sell entire categories of goods below cost below their own cost. And, you know, local retailers, you know, local department store, local pharmacy, you know, they couldn't compete with that they had to pay their bills at the end of the month, they couldn't lose money indefinitely, but Walmart couldn't lose money at that store for months, years even because it had other stores elsewhere, it had, you know, was connected to Wall Street. And they would offer these below cost prices. And then once the local stores closed, Walmart would then raise its prices. And they took over one market after another using that tactic. The other thing that they that they employed was that they would go to suppliers, especially as they got a bit bigger and they would, they would essentially strong arm suppliers and they would say, Hey look, we're 20% of your sales 25% of your sales. So we effectively own you, whatever we say goes because you can't afford to lose our business. And what you're going to do, General Mills, PepsiCo, what you're going to do is you're going to give us better prices, better terms, more access to supply than every other retail out there. And you're going to charge higher prices to the independent, small grocer down the street. And so all Mart effectively used its power over suppliers to force up prices at competing grocery stores, those grocery stores closed in droves, we lost so many independent grocers and small family owned chains in those years, that just disappeared. Because the suppliers were charging them so much more than Walmart was able to get not because of any efficiency, I mean, a truckload of goods coming out of a warehouse. That services an independent grocer has the same exact efficiency as a truckload of goods going to a Walmart store, like this was not about efficiency. This is about raw power. Those tactics are illegal, but we stopped enforcing them. And this is how Walmart has grown to, you know, today, they capture one out of every $4 that Americans spend on groceries, they have more power over the food system than anybody more than the FDA more than USDA. They dictate up the food chain in ways that affect the well being of farmers that have driven lots of farmers out of business, that lower wages for workers and slaughterhouses and chicken processing facilities. They've driven out all of these small businesses. And what we now know is that every place that Walmart opens, becomes poor as a result of Walmart being there.

Arjun Singh

16:45

Is it also anti competitive, aka illegal for this tactic that you see, I think you'd actually written about x recently, where you have Dollar General, for example, plops themselves on three out of four corners of an intersection and sort of strangles out the competition. Is that also illegal anti competitive behavior? And if so, could you sort of explain what that tactic is, as well, that places like Dollar General on Walmart, employee to muscle in new places?

Speaker 1

17:15

Yeah, well, you know, it's, it's interesting, you know, as interesting isn't quite the right word. But, you know, as Walmart consolidated the retail sector, and you other big grocery chains, like, you know, Kroger and so on, really took over and drove all of these locally on groceries out of businesses out of business. The communities that were most effective were very small towns and rural areas, and black and brown neighborhoods and cities. Those are the places that traditionally have been served by local young grocers. But Walmart would come in to say, a metro region and open up in the outer neighborhoods and in the suburbs, they would still kill off those local grocery stores through the kinds of anti competitive tactics that I've been describing. But they wouldn't actually open in those neighborhoods. And so we see this growth of the big grocery chains, is what actually sets off the gross growth, the emergence of food deserts. And now we have so many rural and urban communities that lack grocery stores. In effect, what this consolidation did was it it kind of destroyed the business ecology of so many parts of the country, it's like kind of wiped everything out. And into that denuded landscape. Dollar General and Family Dollar invaded like an invasive species. And they have opened up huge numbers of stores, you know, we've got hundreds of stores on the south side of Atlanta dollar stores, you know, across North Tulsa, places where they have amassed in such numbers, that, you know, it becomes there's really no room in the market for anybody else. You know, if you want to open a grocery store there, there's just no room left in the market, because Dollar General and Family Dollar appealing off. You all have that business. You know, that kind of tactic of opening dozens and dozens of stores close together in a neighborhood. It's not necessarily a violation of antitrust laws, per se, but it's definitely a tactic that is about about market control, and dominance. And you know, I think they're really the issue is how cities think about land use policy and really being aggressive about putting in place policies that limit dollar stores. And we're in fact seeing a growing number of cities do that. But I also really want to point out that the dollar chains employ that same strong arming of suppliers that Walmart does. So they get specials package sizes that are not available to compete and grocers. They get special lower prices and other kinds of favors from the big food conglomerates that if you're an independent grocery store operating in those neighborhoods, you're paying much higher prices. In some cases, you're being told you can't even have a particular path package size. Meanwhile, block down the street, the Dollar Store has that package size at that lower price. Why in the world are we allowing, you know, companies that are that are these chains that are so predatory and so destructive, we know that they increase poverty in these neighborhoods that they, they stunt, the ability of those neighborhoods really to thrive. And yet, they're able to use their power to violate these laws in ways that give them advantage over a full service grocery store that actually meets local needs.

Arjun Singh

20:31

And one thing that you're talking about is making me think about so I live in Washington, DC, maybe two minutes away from me, there's a giant target with the grocery store and all that stuff in it. The other day, I was in one of the local convenience stores or grocery stores, it's owned by a very nice Latino man. And he straight up told me so no one's coming to my store anymore. It's really difficult. From what you're describing, Is there research to support to that these monopolistic companies have really undercut black and brown economic growth and wealth?

Speaker 1

21:06

Absolutely, you know, we had more, there were more black owned grocery stores in the United States in 1969. And there are today, you know, this, this wiping out of Independent Businesses, you know, we have lost, you know, you go back 40 years, and small independent businesses accounted for about half of economic activity, you know, so in any sector of the economy, just about, people had choices, you know, you could shop at an independent business, you could shop at a national store, but they were kept sort of imbalanced by our antitrust laws. And once we got rid of, you know, stopped enforcing those laws, those bigger companies have just taken over and driven out all of these small businesses. And that has huge ramifications, because, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, the, the pathways to the middle class, you know, include not only being able to form a union and to bargain collectively, with a large employer, they also include the opportunity to go out on your own and not have a boss at all. And we've really cut off that avenue, you know, big corporations have been able to use their power not only against workers, but against people who start and run small businesses. And the effects of that have been most egregiously felt in black and brown neighborhoods, where, you know, it is, you know, where business ownership has been really wiped out, and the ability to have economic agency businesses that are owned and controlled and about people in that neighborhood or that community has really been undermined by by the consolidation of economic power.

Arjun Singh

22:44

So I want to read ahead to Amazon, and where Amazon fits into this picture. Before we get into the weeds of it. Broadly, why is Amazon a frequent critic of those pushing for antitrust legislation? Why does Amazon constitute a monopoly?

Speaker 1

23:04

Yeah, you know, for a long time, we thought of Amazon as a retailer, that, Oh, here's a company who's selling stuff, it's a retailer. But all along Amazon's desire, Jeff Bezos, His strategy was really about gaining control of the underlying infrastructure of the economy, that he recognized that if you could build a platform, that was the place where goods and services are bought and sold, that you then could be a powerful middleman. And you could essentially do what those railroad barons did back in the day that you would be able to advantage your own products and services, give them top billing and search results. And you would also have the ability to levy these huge fees, these tolls, if you will, on the other businesses that had to, to use your platform in order to reach consumers. And that's exactly what what Amazon has built, you know, the vast majority of Americans start their shopping search on Amazon. And what that means is that, you know, if you're a company that makes or sells any consumer good, and you want to be able to reach people online, you have to go through this dominant gatekeeper. And Amazon has used that position, you know, not only to arbitrarily pick winners and losers, they can squelch a product if they want to, you know, for it for any reason at all or for no reason. They can favor their own products, but in particular, they've used it to create to levy these enormous fees. So 10 years ago, if you were your business selling on Amazon's platform, you paid about 14% You know, so for every dollar you earn sales you made you gave Amazon 15 cents or 14 cents, excuse me, for every dollar in sales you made you gave Amazon 14 cents in fees today that's now up to almost 50 cents and fees that they're taking right off the top. So it is you know it You know, they have built this is sort of extraordinary. You know, they have become, like the other tech giants, this kind of middleman this gatekeeper power that they exert. And it's, you know, it's it's not just as the railroads did, or I should say, just as those who, you know, harness the railroads back in the 19th century used monopoly control of the rail lines to build monopolies and all these different industries, we see Amazon doing the same thing, right, they control the platform, they control, you know, the dominant cloud services provider, and they, they increasingly control logistics and shipping of goods. And from those vantage points, they're now moving into healthcare, into finance into all these other areas of the economy and building out their power because they control this key infrastructure

Arjun Singh

25:54

has, going after Amazon using anti trust legislation proven difficult because of the laws that are on the books or because of a lack of of willpower, or an urge within the government to try and tackle Amazon, thinking back to what you were saying about kind of the Reagan people who came in, would you say that it's more on the regulatory front of a lack of will, or that the laws on the books don't know quite how to deal with Amazon right now.

Speaker 1

26:28

The antitrust laws on the books are very strong, and they anticipate all of the kinds of anti competitive tactics, let me start with the antitrust laws that are on the books are very strong, and they anticipate and really cover all of the monopolistic tactics that we've seen Amazon use, you know, Amazon, in some ways, is, you know, like the other tech companies kind of novel type of enterprise. But in fact, the kinds of things that are doing very much have these antecedents, you know, the railroads, other other parts of our history, that the laws were designed, you know, exactly to tackle those kinds of problems. So the rise of Amazon or I should say, you know, Amazon's ability to take control of, you know, ecommerce, was really driven by a lack of willpower on the part of elected officials to actually use and enforce those laws as they should, and by a kind of ideological blindness, where, you know, people in power looked, or people in government looked at Amazon and said, Oh, well, this is a company that's lowering prices. And that's, you know, that's what we should want without recognizing that this was a company that was steadily taking control over the, over the online market, and that once you have that power, you know, Amazon wasn't just going to be abusing and running. You know, bookstores and other retailers out of business wasn't just going to be hurting manufacturers. It wasn't even, you know, it was going to move beyond hurting just workers. And eventually it was going to also take take advantage of us as consumers, right? Like, you know, once you get that gatekeeper power you're using it against against both sides of the market. And that's what we see Amazon do do today. But for the longest time, there was this attitude of like, well, you know, they're lowering prices. So, you know, who cares how powerful they are becoming? And, you know, that was so incredibly misguided, because, you know, really, if you refuse to recognize the issue of power, it refused to recognize the idea that, you know, all of us, we're not just consumers, we're also people who produce value, we need to earn a living, and that that Amazon, you know, really was was problematic on that front. I guess I should also say that I mean, Amazon's tactics have evolved, you know, as it's grown more powerful. So in the early, or I should enter was early days, I guess. So earlier, Amazon, you know, one of Amazon's earlier tactics was predatory pricing. So when they were when they faced, you know, competitive upstarts, so there was, you know, diapers.com and Zappos, you may remember the shoe retailer, those companies actually kind of started to give Amazon a run for its money back in the arts, you know, like, Zappos was very popular, as was diapers.com. And Amazon, what Amazon started doing was they just started selling shoes at a loss. You know, they tried to buy Zappos, Zappos said, No, we don't want to be bought. So Amazon just started losing tons of money on shoes, and Zappos couldn't match prices without also losing money. They didn't have the kind of financial resources to be able to do that. And eventually, they agreed to be bought, you know, and so Amazon, Zappos is now owned by Amazon. So in those early days, Amazon use predatory pricing to wipe out all of these competitors. You know, and then more recently, what we've seen is Amazon's strong arming, and using its power over sellers to block the sellers on its platform from offering lower prices on other platforms. So effectively, Amazon has inflated prices across the web. And I'm not getting too into the

Arjun Singh

30:24

No, that's actually, you know, you got heard that my next question was actually going to be, what are the downstream effects in terms of pricing, hoping to get to that aspect of other people needing to raise prices? And if you're, say, a retailer that doesn't want to participate in Amazon, you know, and I know this is a hypothetical, but what other recourses Do you really have? Or do you really need to work with Amazon if you want to distribute your goods online? Because I imagine doing your own shipping and logistics can be a pretty big hassle for some of these places. But yeah, is there any alternative path if a retailer wants to sell online, but doesn't want to play with Amazon?

Speaker 1

31:06

Amazon's lock on the market is such that you really have no other choice. If you if you make or sell, if you're a retailer or manufacturer of a consumer product, you have no choice but to sell on Amazon, essentially, they capture so much of online product search. And that's where people go, you know, years ago, it used to be that people might go to a search engine, and they would type in running shoes. And they would get Amazon and the results. But they would get other you know, maybe a local running shoe store, they would get you know, other results as well. Now, most people because of prime, start there, start shopping right on Amazon. And so your choices, if you're competing retailer or small business, you can either sell on Amazon in it, or they possess it slightly differently. Your choices, if you're a competing retailer, or a small business is, you know, you can forego Amazon, have your own website, you can hang your but it's like hanging your shingle out there on a dirt road like there is no there's nobody passing by, nobody's ever gonna come into your shop or necessarily find you that way. Or you can sell on Amazon. But if you do that, you're gonna lose your shirt. Because the fees are enormous. They're changing their algorithm all the time, they'll just squash you, or they'll take all of your profit and more and you'll be losing money. And so the reality is that lots of independent, small businesses across the country are just completely stuck. They can't sell successfully online there are Amazon has prevented the development of other platforms. And you can't succeed selling on Amazon, you can't succeed selling on your there is no you know, there is no pathway to be successful in the digital economy. And as a result, what we've seen is that, you know, the most of the sellers on Amazon now are based overseas are often just sort of brokers connected to low wage factories in Asia. They're not really, you know, independent businesses, per se. And that's part of why Amazon has become such a chaotic place to shop with the sellers, you're not really sure who they are. And it's always changing and there's questionable, questionable products and knock offs. And all of that kind of junk suffocation, or in certification, as Cory Doctorow likes to say, of the site is directly a result of of monopolization and the fact that legitimate high quality businesses are just unable to make a go of the online market at this point because of Amazon's dominance. So

Arjun Singh

33:39

I thought of going last thing that I actually think could be very helpful to thinking a little bit about that is, is food prices, because I know you'd written a really good op ed about food conglomerates. Could you walk through how the consolidation of food companies has contributed to the price increases and grocery prices we've seen over time? You know, especially for someone who might not be completely new to all this stuff. How do you get from sort of point A to point B on that?

Speaker 1

34:09

Yeah, you know, antitrust, excuse me hold lesson. Antitrust can seem abstract to ordinary people. But in fact, it is one of the most important tools we have to deal with the things that most affect people in their everyday lives. And grocery prices is a great example of that. You know, as Walmart was consolidating control over the grocery sector it it triggered a whole host of mergers among grocery retailers. And so now we have just a handful of big national retail chains that control most of the grocery sales in the country. They operate under different brand names, but the ownership is just a few chains. And as those grocers consolidated power, food processing companies felt like oh, well, we've got to get bigger in order to do good associate with Walmart. And so you we saw this huge wave of mergers in the 80s and 90s and 2000s among food companies. And now we have just a handful of giants, your General Mills, PepsiCo, these companies that control many, many brands. And if you walked out a supermarket, the supermarket aisle, you know, most of the brands you're seeing, you might see different labels, but they're owned by just a couple of companies. It's, it's very few. And those companies, during the last few years recognize that they had an opportunity to raise prices, that they could use inflation as a kind of cover story, and raise their prices. And they have made huge profits. All of these food companies have been reporting record profits on these huge prices. And you know, they've used inflation as a cover story, but it's really the lack of competition that allows them to get away with it. You know that there are no competing food companies that you know so much of it, you know, that we have this this hourglass shaped food system where there's a bunch of farmers and food workers on one side, a bunch of consumers on the other, and a handful of big retailers and processing companies that control the choke point in the middle. And they have been using that power to squeeze workers squeeze farmers and now squeezed consumers and we've seen grocery prices soar. The answer to this is that we need to restore competition, we need to break up some of these big businesses. We need to block them from using monopolistic tactics to hold on to the market and we need to grow a new generation of small and midsize food companies and food retailers that will open up in places that need those grocery stores that will bring down prices and create real competition in these markets.

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