#oligopoly — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #oligopoly, aggregated by home.social.
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“I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.'”*…
As Max Burns reports, a wave of corporate consolidation is reshaping the grocery industry; today, the U.S. has one-third fewer grocery stores than it did 25 years ago. The result is that just four corporations—Walmart, Kroger, Costco, and Albertsons—control more than two-thirds of the U.S. grocery market, This is squeezing workers, limiting competition, and giving this handful of retailers unprecedented control over what Americans pay for food…
If it feels to you like American consumers have fewer choices than ever before, your mind isn’t playing tricks on you. Federal regulators are approving corporate mega-mergers at the fastest rate since the 1980s. Consumers are feeling those industry-spanning consolidations everywhere, as hardly a sector of American life has escaped Wall Street’s goal of building the largest and most powerful corporate conglomerates in world history.
From power utilities and artificial intelligence to broadcast news networks and railroads, a few massive corporate players have come to dominate American commercial life in ways not seen since the Gilded Age trusts of the 19th century. Those consolidations have generated historic profits for executives and major shareholders while working families are faced with lower quality goods and services, fewer options, and a hostile labor market unfairly skewed toward the interests of the ultra-rich.
Democrats have been quick to criticize some of the nation’s biggest mergers as anti-worker and anti-consumer, but one critical sector of the U.S. economy has managed to escape widespread public criticism: grocery stores. Thanks to a record rise in special interest cash donations to both Democrats and Republicans, grocery-industry lobby groups have managed to keep prices high, wages low, and consumer choice limited while avoiding federal policymakers’ crosshairs. The result is an invisible crisis in the nation’s food industry that threatens to reshape how and what Americans eat.
In a corporate landscape defined by Republican deregulation, America’s grocery stores and food suppliers are consolidating despite active federal laws explicitly intended to prevent anticompetitive behavior. Perhaps the most important of those laws is the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, or RPA, also known as the Anti-Price Discrimination Act. For decades, RPA ensured fair competition by banning food suppliers from charging different prices to different stores; at least it did until the Reagan-era Federal Trade Commission largely stopped enforcing it in the 1980s. Even though RPA is still the law of the land, food suppliers like Pepsi now routinely ignore the law without consequence.
“Big corporations have buying power, and they can oppress and dictate to producers what they want to pay for crops,” Rhode Island Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos told me. “A corporation can come to a farmer and say ‘we’ll pay you this price for potatoes, but you can’t give that price to anyone else,’ so they fix prices in a way that hurts independent supermarkets and independent businesses.”
Megacorporations aren’t subtle about flexing their market power to fix prices in ways that protect other megacorporations. Last year President Donald Trump’s FTC dismissed an RPA claim against PepsiCo which alleged that Pepsi illegally offered grocery chain Walmart unfair pricing discounts while charging smaller chains more for the same products. When independent grocery stores undercut Walmart by lowering the price of Pepsi products, PepsiCo allegedly responded by raising wholesale prices or refusing to do business with the smaller stores until they raised prices above those at Walmart.
As independent grocery stores struggle, they become more likely to sell out to larger national chains, leading to consolidation that makes both prices and employee wages less competitive. As president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 3000, Faye Guenther represents over 50,000 grocery and retail workers across the Pacific Northwest. Guenther has spent years fighting the growing imbalance between rising prices and falling wages. Now, she says, things have reached a crisis point for regular Americans…
Read on for Burns’ looks at the impact on workers (TLDR: fewer jobs, lower wages), availability of stores (TDLR: or its opposite, food deserts), and food prices (TLDR: they’re rising), and for his suggested remedies.
The painful reality behind the joke “I’m getting stronger with age. I can now lift $100 worth of groceries with one hand!”: “America’s Grocery Monopoly Problem,” from @themaxburns.bsky.social in @damemagazine.bsky.social.
See also: “Grocery Retail: The Last Link in the Monopoly Chain.”
Also apposite: “Big Food Versus the People” (what court battles reveal about the ultra-processed food industry’s corporate litigation strategies). Further to which: “Is the recycling symbol free speech? A judge just ruled it could be“…
A pioneering California law meant to sharply limit use of the familiar “chasing arrows” recycling symbol has been blocked by a federal judge who said it probably violates the First Amendment.
In a preliminary injunction issued earlier this month, U.S. District Judge William Hayes halted enforcement of SB 343 after food, packaging and retail groups sued, finding that key provisions were “unconstitutionally vague” and likely infringed protected commercial speech. Enforcement of the law, passed in 2021, was expected to start this fall.
The decision is a blow to environmental advocates, who had hoped to remove the familiar symbol from a huge array of plastic products, in line with a statewide study showing that only a fraction are widely collected and actually recycled. SB 343 said only goods and packaging accepted by recycling programs serving at least 60 percent of Californians and then actually sorted for recycling — not collected and thrown away — could bear the chasing arrows.
Hayes’ constitutional reasoning surprised supporters of SB 343 because similar arguments against environmental marketing regulations have historically struggled in court….
Of course, there’s always eating out… but of course, that’s got its own issues: “The restaurant business is changing beyond recognition,” gift article from @economist.com.
Oh, and we might note that this is National Farmers Market Week.
* Steven Wright
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As we chow down, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 that the officially-adjudicated “first supermarket” opened: King Kullen in Queens, New York.
Grocery chains had been around since 1859, when The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) was established. But they rarely sold fresh meat or produce and relied on the old mercantile system of clerks puling items from shelves on request. As long-time readers may recall, the first self-service grocery store was the Piggly Wiggly, which shifted to self-serve in 1916.
The first modern supermarkets appeared just over twenty years later, offering a full range of food items, beverages, and household items under one self-service roof, often with an emphasis on low prices as well as convenience. There were a number of contenders for the “first supermarket” crown…
#acquisitions #business #consolidation #culture #Food #foodDesert #foodPrices #grocery #groceryIndustry #groceryStore #history #KingKullen #labor #mergers #Monopoly #oligopoly #Retail #supermarketTo end the debate, the Food Marketing Institute in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution and with funding from H.J. Heinz, researched the issue. They defined the attributes of a supermarket as “self-service, separate product departments, discount pricing, marketing and volume selling.” They determined that the first true supermarket in the United States was opened by a former Kroger employee, Michael J. Cullen, on 4 August 1930, inside a 6,000-square-foot former garage in Jamaica, Queens in New York City. The store King Kullen, operated under the logic of “pile it high and sell it cheap.” The store layout was designed by Joseph Unger, who originated the concept of customers using baskets to collect groceries before checking out at a counter. Everything displayed for sale in the store “had prices clearly marked”, meaning that consumers would no longer need to haggle over prices. Cullen described his store as “the world’s greatest price wrecker.” At the time of his death in 1936, there were seventeen King Kullen stores in operation. Although Saunders had brought the world self-service, uniform stores, and nationwide marketing, Cullen built on this idea by adding separate food departments, selling large volumes of food at discount prices and adding a parking lot. Moreover, the supermarket format as pioneered by King Kullen was not only cheap, but convenient, in how it combined so many different departments under one roof which had formerly required trips to separate stores. – source
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“I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.'”*…
As Max Burns reports, a wave of corporate consolidation is reshaping the grocery industry; today, the U.S. has one-third fewer grocery stores than it did 25 years ago. The result is that just four corporations—Walmart, Kroger, Costco, and Albertsons—control more than two-thirds of the U.S. grocery market, This is squeezing workers, limiting competition, and giving this handful of retailers unprecedented control over what Americans pay for food…
If it feels to you like American consumers have fewer choices than ever before, your mind isn’t playing tricks on you. Federal regulators are approving corporate mega-mergers at the fastest rate since the 1980s. Consumers are feeling those industry-spanning consolidations everywhere, as hardly a sector of American life has escaped Wall Street’s goal of building the largest and most powerful corporate conglomerates in world history.
From power utilities and artificial intelligence to broadcast news networks and railroads, a few massive corporate players have come to dominate American commercial life in ways not seen since the Gilded Age trusts of the 19th century. Those consolidations have generated historic profits for executives and major shareholders while working families are faced with lower quality goods and services, fewer options, and a hostile labor market unfairly skewed toward the interests of the ultra-rich.
Democrats have been quick to criticize some of the nation’s biggest mergers as anti-worker and anti-consumer, but one critical sector of the U.S. economy has managed to escape widespread public criticism: grocery stores. Thanks to a record rise in special interest cash donations to both Democrats and Republicans, grocery-industry lobby groups have managed to keep prices high, wages low, and consumer choice limited while avoiding federal policymakers’ crosshairs. The result is an invisible crisis in the nation’s food industry that threatens to reshape how and what Americans eat.
In a corporate landscape defined by Republican deregulation, America’s grocery stores and food suppliers are consolidating despite active federal laws explicitly intended to prevent anticompetitive behavior. Perhaps the most important of those laws is the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, or RPA, also known as the Anti-Price Discrimination Act. For decades, RPA ensured fair competition by banning food suppliers from charging different prices to different stores; at least it did until the Reagan-era Federal Trade Commission largely stopped enforcing it in the 1980s. Even though RPA is still the law of the land, food suppliers like Pepsi now routinely ignore the law without consequence.
“Big corporations have buying power, and they can oppress and dictate to producers what they want to pay for crops,” Rhode Island Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos told me. “A corporation can come to a farmer and say ‘we’ll pay you this price for potatoes, but you can’t give that price to anyone else,’ so they fix prices in a way that hurts independent supermarkets and independent businesses.”
Megacorporations aren’t subtle about flexing their market power to fix prices in ways that protect other megacorporations. Last year President Donald Trump’s FTC dismissed an RPA claim against PepsiCo which alleged that Pepsi illegally offered grocery chain Walmart unfair pricing discounts while charging smaller chains more for the same products. When independent grocery stores undercut Walmart by lowering the price of Pepsi products, PepsiCo allegedly responded by raising wholesale prices or refusing to do business with the smaller stores until they raised prices above those at Walmart.
As independent grocery stores struggle, they become more likely to sell out to larger national chains, leading to consolidation that makes both prices and employee wages less competitive. As president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 3000, Faye Guenther represents over 50,000 grocery and retail workers across the Pacific Northwest. Guenther has spent years fighting the growing imbalance between rising prices and falling wages. Now, she says, things have reached a crisis point for regular Americans…
Read on for Burns’ looks at the impact on workers (TLDR: fewer jobs, lower wages), availability of stores (TDLR: or its opposite, food deserts), and food prices (TLDR: they’re rising), and for his suggested remedies.
The painful reality behind the joke “I’m getting stronger with age. I can now lift $100 worth of groceries with one hand!”: “America’s Grocery Monopoly Problem,” from @themaxburns.bsky.social in @damemagazine.bsky.social.
See also: “Grocery Retail: The Last Link in the Monopoly Chain.”
Also apposite: “Big Food Versus the People” (what court battles reveal about the ultra-processed food industry’s corporate litigation strategies). Further to which: “Is the recycling symbol free speech? A judge just ruled it could be“…
A pioneering California law meant to sharply limit use of the familiar “chasing arrows” recycling symbol has been blocked by a federal judge who said it probably violates the First Amendment.
In a preliminary injunction issued earlier this month, U.S. District Judge William Hayes halted enforcement of SB 343 after food, packaging and retail groups sued, finding that key provisions were “unconstitutionally vague” and likely infringed protected commercial speech. Enforcement of the law, passed in 2021, was expected to start this fall.
The decision is a blow to environmental advocates, who had hoped to remove the familiar symbol from a huge array of plastic products, in line with a statewide study showing that only a fraction are widely collected and actually recycled. SB 343 said only goods and packaging accepted by recycling programs serving at least 60 percent of Californians and then actually sorted for recycling — not collected and thrown away — could bear the chasing arrows.
Hayes’ constitutional reasoning surprised supporters of SB 343 because similar arguments against environmental marketing regulations have historically struggled in court….
Of course, there’s always eating out… but of course, that’s got its own issues: “The restaurant business is changing beyond recognition,” gift article from @economist.com.
Oh, and we might note that this is National Farmers Market Week.
* Steven Wright
###
As we chow down, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 that the officially-adjudicated “first supermarket” opened: King Kullen in Queens, New York.
Grocery chains had been around since 1859, when The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) was established. But they rarely sold fresh meat or produce and relied on the old mercantile system of clerks puling items from shelves on request. As long-time readers may recall, the first self-service grocery store was the Piggly Wiggly, which shifted to self-serve in 1916.
The first modern supermarkets appeared just over twenty years later, offering a full range of food items, beverages, and household items under one self-service roof, often with an emphasis on low prices as well as convenience. There were a number of contenders for the “first supermarket” crown…
#acquisitions #business #consolidation #culture #Food #foodDesert #foodPrices #grocery #groceryIndustry #groceryStore #history #KingKullen #labor #mergers #Monopoly #oligopoly #Retail #supermarketTo end the debate, the Food Marketing Institute in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution and with funding from H.J. Heinz, researched the issue. They defined the attributes of a supermarket as “self-service, separate product departments, discount pricing, marketing and volume selling.” They determined that the first true supermarket in the United States was opened by a former Kroger employee, Michael J. Cullen, on 4 August 1930, inside a 6,000-square-foot former garage in Jamaica, Queens in New York City. The store King Kullen, operated under the logic of “pile it high and sell it cheap.” The store layout was designed by Joseph Unger, who originated the concept of customers using baskets to collect groceries before checking out at a counter. Everything displayed for sale in the store “had prices clearly marked”, meaning that consumers would no longer need to haggle over prices. Cullen described his store as “the world’s greatest price wrecker.” At the time of his death in 1936, there were seventeen King Kullen stores in operation. Although Saunders had brought the world self-service, uniform stores, and nationwide marketing, Cullen built on this idea by adding separate food departments, selling large volumes of food at discount prices and adding a parking lot. Moreover, the supermarket format as pioneered by King Kullen was not only cheap, but convenient, in how it combined so many different departments under one roof which had formerly required trips to separate stores. – source
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/24/trump-european-union-tariffs. #Trump wouldn't like the idea of the #EuropeanUnion attacking the #oligopoly #power of his "techbro" pals one little bit, especially as they've contributed so much to putting him in the #WhiteHouse & the #Republicans in control of #Congress.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/24/trump-european-union-tariffs. #Trump wouldn't like the idea of the #EuropeanUnion attacking the #oligopoly #power of his "techbro" pals one little bit, especially as they've contributed so much to putting him in the #WhiteHouse & the #Republicans in control of #Congress.
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The attribution cartel is in Digiday. Major browsers working together on an in-browser advertising feature.
They're going to make it as hard as possible to find and turn off, so one more good reason to start learning the "enterprise management" browser features
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The attribution cartel is in Digiday. Major browsers working together on an in-browser advertising feature.
They're going to make it as hard as possible to find and turn off, so one more good reason to start learning the "enterprise management" browser features
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Why do I think that restrictive covenants prohibiting competing grocery stores might be problematic for anyone but the entity trying to prevent competition?
Albertsons is infuriating Bay Area shoppers over vacant grocery stores
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/albertsons-california-grocery-stores-22346899.php -
Why do I think that restrictive covenants prohibiting competing grocery stores might be problematic for anyone but the entity trying to prevent competition?
Albertsons is infuriating Bay Area shoppers over vacant grocery stores
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/albertsons-california-grocery-stores-22346899.php -
#Neoliberalism is killing #Norway.
Yeah, I said it. It's going to fully convert us over to a #vassalstate and devolved #democracy into slaves under the tyranny of the foreign investor.
The #US is in the hegemon here, but the #EU pivoting hard into the "if you can't beat the US, become the US" mentality just means we got two guns facing us at the same time.
It's about time we do something about #neocolonialism, #oligopoly and foreign encroachment - and it starts with #Norwegian democracy.
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#Neoliberalism is killing #Norway.
Yeah, I said it. It's going to fully convert us over to a #vassalstate and devolved #democracy into slaves under the tyranny of the foreign investor.
The #US is in the hegemon here, but the #EU pivoting hard into the "if you can't beat the US, become the US" mentality just means we got two guns facing us at the same time.
It's about time we do something about #neocolonialism, #oligopoly and foreign encroachment - and it starts with #Norwegian democracy.
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@sglerman95814
That is all well and good, but I’m sure my grandfather and uncles found no comfort in those words when in #Nazi prisons or in the Nazi #slave labour camps. Not to mention ALL of those who were sent to #ConcentrationCamps either.Yes light and love are the healing aspects of our human history as long as you have a history a living. Otherwise, turning the other cheek just gets you nothing but more of the same, that is if you survive at all.
Nazis are to be wiped out, not saved.
#Antifa #ChristoFascists #Oligopoly #TechBros #AntiSocialRich #RogueCapitalism #FinancialVampires #Corruption #Greed #Racism #EugenicsOverlords and many other hashtags. Drive the Nazis out of govt everywhere. #RWNJs -
@sglerman95814
That is all well and good, but I’m sure my grandfather and uncles found no comfort in those words when in #Nazi prisons or in the Nazi #slave labour camps. Not to mention ALL of those who were sent to #ConcentrationCamps either.Yes light and love are the healing aspects of our human history as long as you have a history a living. Otherwise, turning the other cheek just gets you nothing but more of the same, that is if you survive at all.
Nazis are to be wiped out, not saved.
#Antifa #ChristoFascists #Oligopoly #TechBros #AntiSocialRich #RogueCapitalism #FinancialVampires #Corruption #Greed #Racism #EugenicsOverlords and many other hashtags. Drive the Nazis out of govt everywhere. #RWNJs -
It has been three years since this conference occured. Three years since a panel of very knowledgeable people have presented alternatives to the madcap economic systems which are leading us to a dead planet (at least for humankind and many of its econsystems). These alternative address major areas requiring dramatic changes:
#Wealth distribution to end #poverty and #inequity
#Decarbonisation to keep our planet alive
#Equality, #education and #enpowerment for all, especially #women
#Sustainable #food production and distribution
An end to #Consumerism and #GPD measured #Growth without advocating #deGrowth
And one more I forgot :( sry. (I should’ve taken notes)
It’s a long video, but if you’re searching for solutions to our social, environmental and economic #trainwrecks, this is a will spell them out for you.
This information has been widely disseminated to educators, activists, political leaders and economists worldwide. So my questions are: What’s holding us back? Why aren’t we seeing something other than a global rise in #Fascism #FossilFuelUse the #MilitaryIndustrialComplex #Billionairism and #Oligopoly ?
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It has been three years since this conference occured. Three years since a panel of very knowledgeable people have presented alternatives to the madcap economic systems which are leading us to a dead planet (at least for humankind and many of its econsystems). These alternative address major areas requiring dramatic changes:
#Wealth distribution to end #poverty and #inequity
#Decarbonisation to keep our planet alive
#Equality, #education and #enpowerment for all, especially #women
#Sustainable #food production and distribution
An end to #Consumerism and #GPD measured #Growth without advocating #deGrowth
And one more I forgot :( sry. (I should’ve taken notes)
It’s a long video, but if you’re searching for solutions to our social, environmental and economic #trainwrecks, this is a will spell them out for you.
This information has been widely disseminated to educators, activists, political leaders and economists worldwide. So my questions are: What’s holding us back? Why aren’t we seeing something other than a global rise in #Fascism #FossilFuelUse the #MilitaryIndustrialComplex #Billionairism and #Oligopoly ?
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@joannejacobs
The only individuals pulling up ladders are those in positions of #power (#political or #financial) to preserve their #self-interests. It was ever so and will remain that way until we, the people, come up with an #economic model that will curtail it (we’re still looking for that model, but there are candidates to look at). I don’t see #generational #warfare here, though it can be clothed that way as a means of shifting blame, anger, and attention away from the actual perpetrators, in what is, and always was #ClassWarfare (I.e. those in power cover multiple generations and hapless individuals are brainwashed by their propaganda).I don’t wish to get into an argument about this. I’m just trying to inject some ‘moderation’ in the discourse. Does the #BlameGame push my buttons? Yes it does. Perhaps I should leave well enough alone and not inject myself in conversations when that happens. Experience tells me it rarely ends well. It appears I’m still learning that lesson.
#AusPol #Grifters #Antifa #EatTheRich #BreakUpMediaMonopilies #TaxReformsNow #TaxTheRich #TruthInPoliticalAdvertising #EndPoliticalDonations ##Oligarchy #Patriarchy #Oligopoly #Technofeudalism #MMT #BanLobbying #Transparency #Accountability #SocialDemocracy #ProgressiveGovt
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@joannejacobs
The only individuals pulling up ladders are those in positions of #power (#political or #financial) to preserve their #self-interests. It was ever so and will remain that way until we, the people, come up with an #economic model that will curtail it (we’re still looking for that model, but there are candidates to look at). I don’t see #generational #warfare here, though it can be clothed that way as a means of shifting blame, anger, and attention away from the actual perpetrators, in what is, and always was #ClassWarfare (I.e. those in power cover multiple generations and hapless individuals are brainwashed by their propaganda).I don’t wish to get into an argument about this. I’m just trying to inject some ‘moderation’ in the discourse. Does the #BlameGame push my buttons? Yes it does. Perhaps I should leave well enough alone and not inject myself in conversations when that happens. Experience tells me it rarely ends well. It appears I’m still learning that lesson.
#AusPol #Grifters #Antifa #EatTheRich #BreakUpMediaMonopilies #TaxReformsNow #TaxTheRich #TruthInPoliticalAdvertising #EndPoliticalDonations ##Oligarchy #Patriarchy #Oligopoly #Technofeudalism #MMT #BanLobbying #Transparency #Accountability #SocialDemocracy #ProgressiveGovt
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I got mentioned in #BoingBoing—"When Meta, Google, and Apple agree on "privacy," watch your wallet"
https://boingboing.net/2026/06/03/when-meta-google-and-apple-agree-on-privacy-watch-your-wallet.html
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I got mentioned in #BoingBoing—"When Meta, Google, and Apple agree on "privacy," watch your wallet"
https://boingboing.net/2026/06/03/when-meta-google-and-apple-agree-on-privacy-watch-your-wallet.html
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@dangillmor And somehow this is the same company that Mozilla decided to partner with on ad tracking in the browser—now a project with Google and Apple involved too, to drive ad money away from legit sites and toward search, social, and app stores.
https://monopoly-report.com/podcast/episode-74-the-attribution-cartel-why-privacy-safe-is-not-what-it-s-made-up-to-be/d59dce94-05d6-4e60-a5c0-95727176a45f #privacy #BigTech #oligopoly
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@dangillmor And somehow this is the same company that Mozilla decided to partner with on ad tracking in the browser—now a project with Google and Apple involved too, to drive ad money away from legit sites and toward search, social, and app stores.
https://monopoly-report.com/podcast/episode-74-the-attribution-cartel-why-privacy-safe-is-not-what-it-s-made-up-to-be/d59dce94-05d6-4e60-a5c0-95727176a45f #privacy #BigTech #oligopoly
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Canada is a the world leader in rigged markets that pander to MBA fck-wits: “If I was WestJet’s CEO, I would not want any competition. I would want to make it as monopolistic or duopolistic for maximizing profit,” he told the Star.
#airlines #WestJet #competition #oligopoly #rigged #consumers #corporatism #Canada #Cdnbusiness #bussiness #markets #regulations
https://www.thestar.com/business/document-shows-westjets-push-against-federal-air-passenger-rights-regulations/article_04d36601-d56e-49f9-b8a1-650bc3ef3e94.html -
Canada is a the world leader in rigged markets that pander to MBA fck-wits: “If I was WestJet’s CEO, I would not want any competition. I would want to make it as monopolistic or duopolistic for maximizing profit,” he told the Star.
#airlines #WestJet #competition #oligopoly #rigged #consumers #corporatism #Canada #Cdnbusiness #bussiness #markets #regulations
https://www.thestar.com/business/document-shows-westjets-push-against-federal-air-passenger-rights-regulations/article_04d36601-d56e-49f9-b8a1-650bc3ef3e94.html -
As a famous comedy TV star in decades gone by was often heard to say: ‘Surprise, surprise, surprise.’ (I did watch Gomer Pyle but I wasn’t a fan, if that makes sense - but I digress)
“Report warns AI data centre boom threatens Australia's energy transition.” Who missed this? It has been the talk everywhere and US-side is now dealing with their own #DataCentre issues.
If it wasn’t enough for the #GenAISlop peddlers to hoover up the internet without so much as a thank you to creators of the content, digitising (mostly) library books (Libraries close and #TechBros give you access to the books — For A Fee) and flooding the digital world with regurgitated and confabulated information. These same #LibertarianTechHeads now want our water and energy to run their insane harware platforms. For what? More #Chatbots? More #CrapCoding. More #FakeImages? More #FascistPropaganda?
#NEM #Greenpeace #AusPol #TransitionToRenewables #ClimateChange #WaterResources #EnergyResources #GenAISlop #Oligopoly #TaxTheRich #NoBillionaires
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As a famous comedy TV star in decades gone by was often heard to say: ‘Surprise, surprise, surprise.’ (I did watch Gomer Pyle but I wasn’t a fan, if that makes sense - but I digress)
“Report warns AI data centre boom threatens Australia's energy transition.” Who missed this? It has been the talk everywhere and US-side is now dealing with their own #DataCentre issues.
If it wasn’t enough for the #GenAISlop peddlers to hoover up the internet without so much as a thank you to creators of the content, digitising (mostly) library books (Libraries close and #TechBros give you access to the books — For A Fee) and flooding the digital world with regurgitated and confabulated information. These same #LibertarianTechHeads now want our water and energy to run their insane harware platforms. For what? More #Chatbots? More #CrapCoding. More #FakeImages? More #FascistPropaganda?
#NEM #Greenpeace #AusPol #TransitionToRenewables #ClimateChange #WaterResources #EnergyResources #GenAISlop #Oligopoly #TaxTheRich #NoBillionaires
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RE: https://aus.social/@luciedigitalni/116580425841503618
'Looming over it all is Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp and chief executive of Fox Corporation, where Abbott sits on the board. The three of them – Abbott, Credlin and Murdoch – are, as one insider puts it, “incredibly tight, thick as thieves”. Murdoch’s media outlets are expected to back whatever Abbott decides'
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RE: https://aus.social/@luciedigitalni/116580425841503618
'Looming over it all is Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp and chief executive of Fox Corporation, where Abbott sits on the board. The three of them – Abbott, Credlin and Murdoch – are, as one insider puts it, “incredibly tight, thick as thieves”. Murdoch’s media outlets are expected to back whatever Abbott decides'
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https://www.ft.com/content/c3b70fde-3e8a-4661-a4cb-7dc1564f43b1?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Now the horrible zombies of #WallStreet #SiliconValley #billionaires will start buying up all these #bankrupt #farmers leading to even more consolidation and profits while condemning the rest to more pain.
#agriculture #food #land #water #farming #hunger #starvation #inflation #fertilizer #oligopoly
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https://www.ft.com/content/c3b70fde-3e8a-4661-a4cb-7dc1564f43b1?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Now the horrible zombies of #WallStreet #SiliconValley #billionaires will start buying up all these #bankrupt #farmers leading to even more consolidation and profits while condemning the rest to more pain.
#agriculture #food #land #water #farming #hunger #starvation #inflation #fertilizer #oligopoly
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Multilateralism for middle powers
" Multilateralism is shorthand for the much-invoked “rules-based international order”; multipolarity is the world of competing spheres of interest, what Stubb calls “an oligopoly of power”, where the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must.
We are not simply in a transition; we are in a fight for a future world order. And the path to a healthy outcome necessarily runs through international institutions, from the UN to settings far beyond it, where we must rethink membership and power for global cooperation to survive.The world is being reshaped by the “structural” forces of demography, climate and technology,
Part of the problem, Stubb argues, is that “the US is not a modern society by European or Asian standards”. This helps to explain the growing influence of a radical form of evangelical Christianity within the Trump administration. But it also accounts for the absence of adequate healthcare, education and housing that plagues the US, in particular, and neoliberal economies like Australia’s more generally.
Without strong multilateral systems, all interstate deals become transactional. A multipolar world runs on self-interest. A multilateral world makes the common interest a self-interest. " >>
https://theconversation.com/finlands-president-alexander-stubb-has-some-ideas-to-save-the-international-order-and-ourselves-280153
#Multilateralism #MiddlePowers #Australia #TheWest #InternationalOrder #SelfInterest #oligopoly -
Multilateralism for middle powers
" Multilateralism is shorthand for the much-invoked “rules-based international order”; multipolarity is the world of competing spheres of interest, what Stubb calls “an oligopoly of power”, where the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must.
We are not simply in a transition; we are in a fight for a future world order. And the path to a healthy outcome necessarily runs through international institutions, from the UN to settings far beyond it, where we must rethink membership and power for global cooperation to survive.The world is being reshaped by the “structural” forces of demography, climate and technology,
Part of the problem, Stubb argues, is that “the US is not a modern society by European or Asian standards”. This helps to explain the growing influence of a radical form of evangelical Christianity within the Trump administration. But it also accounts for the absence of adequate healthcare, education and housing that plagues the US, in particular, and neoliberal economies like Australia’s more generally.
Without strong multilateral systems, all interstate deals become transactional. A multipolar world runs on self-interest. A multilateral world makes the common interest a self-interest. " >>
https://theconversation.com/finlands-president-alexander-stubb-has-some-ideas-to-save-the-international-order-and-ourselves-280153
#Multilateralism #MiddlePowers #Australia #TheWest #InternationalOrder #SelfInterest #oligopoly -
Enshitification the Canadian edition.
"It’s a far cry from today’s flying experience, as passengers strain to fit into ever-shrinking seats, contend with new fees for previously included features and fight for compensation following cancelled and delayed flights. The road here was paved by the deregulation of the airline industry and the dominance of Air Canada and WestJet over the Canadian market"
#capitalism #consumerrights #markets #economics #regulations #oligopoly
https://www.thestar.com/business/how-flying-in-canada-went-from-glitz-and-glamour-to-cramped-misery-and-how-we/article_2a16ade5-0e4a-4e7e-a428-9747219a3be3.html -
Enshitification the Canadian edition.
"It’s a far cry from today’s flying experience, as passengers strain to fit into ever-shrinking seats, contend with new fees for previously included features and fight for compensation following cancelled and delayed flights. The road here was paved by the deregulation of the airline industry and the dominance of Air Canada and WestJet over the Canadian market"
#capitalism #consumerrights #markets #economics #regulations #oligopoly
https://www.thestar.com/business/how-flying-in-canada-went-from-glitz-and-glamour-to-cramped-misery-and-how-we/article_2a16ade5-0e4a-4e7e-a428-9747219a3be3.html -
I've never hated #capitalism as described in my #Economics classes or by its proponents. I hate #CronyCapitalism, #monopolies & #monopsonies & their "oli-" kin ( #oligopoly for example). I want actual #FreeMarket capitalism with strong #rules, enforced equally. I want true #AdamSmith capitalism.
Why The Rich Hate Capitalism -... -
I've never hated #capitalism as described in my #Economics classes or by its proponents. I hate #CronyCapitalism, #monopolies & #monopsonies & their "oli-" kin ( #oligopoly for example). I want actual #FreeMarket capitalism with strong #rules, enforced equally. I want true #AdamSmith capitalism.
Why The Rich Hate Capitalism -... -
Crazy to think how much power sits with just a few players shaping how AI develops. It's getting so big and interconnected you can’t even tell where one company ends and another begins. #AI #BigTech #Oligopoly #Monopoly
There Is Only One AI Company. ... -
Crazy to think how much power sits with just a few players shaping how AI develops. It's getting so big and interconnected you can’t even tell where one company ends and another begins. #AI #BigTech #Oligopoly #Monopoly
There Is Only One AI Company. ... -
🏴☠️Pirate everything.🏴☠️
Support your local library 📚.
Support authors and creators directly 💸. -
🏴☠️Pirate everything.🏴☠️
Support your local library 📚.
Support authors and creators directly 💸. -
Canada is just three Telecommunications companies in a trench coat.
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Canada is just three Telecommunications companies in a trench coat.
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Translation: Hi there,
It's your good buddies at Optus here.
Your thank you gift is waiting.
No, it's not a Triple Zero emergency service that doesn't go offline when you need an ambulance.
And no, it's not fair compensation for that time we had a nationwide outage and managed to not just take out your phone and internet, but also half of the national economy.
And no, it's not yet another free subscription to that bloody soccer streaming service. We finally took the hint and shut that down.
No, this time an AI subscription service is looking to deceive its investors by pumping up its paid subscriber numbers.
So we took a bucket of money from them in exchange for spamming our customers with a text message.
You know the deal. 12 months free. You won't get charged if you remember to cancel before the deal expires and then make it through all their dark patterns.
We know we can get away with it because we're one third of one of Australia's big corporate oligopolies.
I mean, what are you going to do? Chances are the whole reason you switched to us is because you were pissed off at Telstra.
And your only other choice is TPG/Voda/iiNet/WestNet/Internode/Lebara/TransACT/Crazy John's/Neighbourhood Cable... (it's all one conglomerate with awful mobile coverage now).
#Optus #perplexityassistant #perplexityai #perplexity #ausbiz #AI #enshittification #business #oligopoly -
Translation: Hi there,
It's your good buddies at Optus here.
Your thank you gift is waiting.
No, it's not a Triple Zero emergency service that doesn't go offline when you need an ambulance.
And no, it's not fair compensation for that time we had a nationwide outage and managed to not just take out your phone and internet, but also half of the national economy.
And no, it's not yet another free subscription to that bloody soccer streaming service. We finally took the hint and shut that down.
No, this time an AI subscription service is looking to deceive its investors by pumping up its paid subscriber numbers.
So we took a bucket of money from them in exchange for spamming our customers with a text message.
You know the deal. 12 months free. You won't get charged if you remember to cancel before the deal expires and then make it through all their dark patterns.
We know we can get away with it because we're one third of one of Australia's big corporate oligopolies.
I mean, what are you going to do? Chances are the whole reason you switched to us is because you were pissed off at Telstra.
And your only other choice is TPG/Voda/iiNet/WestNet/Internode/Lebara/TransACT/Crazy John's/Neighbourhood Cable... (it's all one conglomerate with awful mobile coverage now).
#Optus #perplexityassistant #perplexityai #perplexity #ausbiz #AI #enshittification #business #oligopoly -
CW: USpol
"It's totally fine to make us an even bigger player in an #oligopoly" says the behemoth owner of already-too-many television stations while censoring a late-night talk show host at the behest of the federal government for the sin of criticizing the President.
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»AI Will Not Make You Rich« #GenerativeAI is unlikely to create new #wealth for #inventors and #investors, as its value will be captured by #customers rather than its #builders. Unlike the microprocessor, which spurred a wave of #innovation and #wealthcreation, AI is expected to lead to an #oligopoly, with gains accruing to a few companies. https://joincolossus.com/article/ai-will-not-make-you-rich/?eicker.news #tech #media #news
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»AI Will Not Make You Rich« #GenerativeAI is unlikely to create new #wealth for #inventors and #investors, as its value will be captured by #customers rather than its #builders. Unlike the microprocessor, which spurred a wave of #innovation and #wealthcreation, AI is expected to lead to an #oligopoly, with gains accruing to a few companies. https://joincolossus.com/article/ai-will-not-make-you-rich/?eicker.news #tech #media #news
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4 cies control 90% of the global grain trade. Another 4 cies control 66% of the world's agricultural chemical market, with a similar cluster owns 53% of the global seed market. 3 corps sell half the world's farm machinery. Another 4 cies control 99% of the global chicken-breeding market, and 2 supply almost all the ducks. 4 firms run 75% of the world's corporate abattoirs and packing plants for beef; 4 others control 70% of corporate pork slaughter #agriculture #oligopoly https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/645538/regenesis-by-george-monbiot/9780735240391
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No, you cannot unsubscribe from #telus #spam, because #capitalism and #oligopoly, which are notoriously elements of fascism, because you know...history.
(Maybe I needed to use all caps?)
#cdnpoli #canada #mexico #fascism #antifa #elbowsup #bcpoli #vancouver #burnaby #canlab
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No, you cannot unsubscribe from #telus #spam, because #capitalism and #oligopoly, which are notoriously elements of fascism, because you know...history.
(Maybe I needed to use all caps?)
#cdnpoli #canada #mexico #fascism #antifa #elbowsup #bcpoli #vancouver #burnaby #canlab
