BIG by Matt Stoller

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywood

> [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers.. Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.. Netflix’s strategy is straightforward market power exploitation.. cancelling shows that subscribers like, so it won’t have to pay creators the amount they would otherwise be able to get for making good commercially successful art.

> [Pre 1990s] The Paramount Consent Decrees and the Fin-syn rules were designed to break creative industries into a three-tiered structure: production, distribution, and retailing. Producers were prohibited from vertically integrating into the traditional distribution business. That way, there are fewer conflicts of interest in the content business; producers had to create high quality work, and if they didn’t, distributors could choose to sell someone else’s art. Policy removed power as the mechanism of competition, and emphasized art..

> We should aim to restore open markets for content again. This means separating out the industry into production, distribution, and retailing. We should probably ban predatory pricing so Netflix isn’t dumping into the market. And we should…

Incredibly dishonest article. It's shocking to see people support this. And I love the way it's framed in a conspiratorial tone, and uses coded language to make you doubt this is a quantifiable problem.

All while he ignored many parts of the text he allegedly was critiquing. I'm still shocked that this is getting upvoted.

The very first sentence in the article is this:

>This group, mostly on the left, insists that the biggest problems in America typically come from monopolies and the corruption of big business.

"Insists" is doing a lot of work here to support the rest of the article. But it's lies through omission.

>At a high level, I have never found these arguments persuasive

Irrelevant if it persuades you. This isn't a high school debate class, facts and metrics are what matters.

>One hallmark of a monopolistic market is rising profits.

Not even close to true in theory or practice. In theory, monopolies have ever way in order to set prices for whatever goal their after. They may also lower supply thereby lowering aggregate profits. Long term profits can justify anything now.

Anti competitive practices are mainstays of monopolies. Not whatever the author just made up.

>The Musharbash essay on Dallas—like too much of the antitrust left’s work on housing

Oh boy here we go! The boogeyman has been setup, the ominous "they" is out.. checks notes... make housing available for average people.

>is filled with out-of-context quotes, overconfident assertions lacking…

> I gave up completely when his view of why the DOJ keeps losing literally became "the judiciary is corrupt"

Why is that your view if that is what literally happens in a court of law?

> The best way to explain Bidenomics is to listen to a judge Biden recently appointed to the D.C. district court, Ana Reyes, who was hostile to the Antitrust Division when they brought a case against two smartlock makers. Last month, Reyes sat on an American Bar Association panel where she attacked the idea of stronger antitrust enforcement, focusing specifically on her skepticism around labor-related claims. She bragged to the audience of defense attorneys that during the antitrust case she heard, she 'pranked' government lawyers by spending three minutes pretending to dismiss their key witness, before saying ‘April Fools. "I have never in my life heard stunned silence," she later said gleefully.

> Having a corporate lawyer bully turned judge appointed by Biden killing an antitrust suit brought by Biden officials is a great example of Bidenomics, because it shows the lack of coherence of this administration’s policy. I’m a big fan of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, but another Biden judge - Jacqueline Corley - let through the largest big tech merger of all time, when Microsoft bought Activision, after Khan challenged the deal.

[1] - https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/strikes-and-bidenomics

I think this is at least part of the explanation. Market consolidation via mergers and acquisitions is definitely still happening - in some industries more than others - but it perhaps doesn't receive the same level of reporting as it used to. Maybe because it's become normalised, or because the narrative around monopolies seemed to shift for the better past of this century.

Matt Stoller has a very good blog about monopolies and consolidation: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/

To take one of the most recent articles:

> In October of 2023, Exxon, one of the biggest integrated oil firms, announced it would buy Pioneer Natural Resources for $59 billion, which was quickly followed by tie-ups between Chevron and Hess ($53 billion), Occidental Petroleum and CrownRock ($12 billion), Diamondback and Endeavor ($50 billion), and Chesapeake-Southwest ($7.4 billion). Other notable deals included Exxon-Denbury ($6B), Ovintiv - Black Swan, PetroLegacy, Piedra Resources ($4B), Permian Resources-Earthstone ($4.5 billion), and Civitas buying $7 billion of assets in the Permian. That’s a little less than $200 billion in mergers.

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/fear-and-consolidation-in-the-oil

> This is what happens when institutions are on the wrong side of history. Clearly, big tech does not represent an existential threat to civilization or even to economic well-being. The FTC is run by a graduate student with a paper to her name. She looks increasingly out of her depth.

Alternate take: Khan is the best thing about the US government right now.

Matt Stoller [1] has a good take on the Microsoft case, and in particular why it was really messed up that Microsoft won. Most of his takes are good, imo, because he believes that America is really messed up because of unchecked monopolies, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Although, what I don't see discussed as much is: suppose Microsoft won because their merger with Activision doesn't violate existing antitrust law. Well, _should it_? Those laws are just the ones we ended up with. And considering that monopoly behavior in America seems to making life much worse, year over year... yeah, instead of thinking there's something wrong with Khan for losing the case, we could see it as a need for stronger laws, which would give her FTC more teeth.

[1] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

> Thompson is responding to a specific paper.

yes, he's responding to [0] which was written by Musharbash and published in Matt Stoller's newsletter.

and as I said, he's being selective about what criticism he's responding to and what he's ignoring. because Stoller has also published, in the same newsletter, articles about RealPage price fixing [1, 2].

Thompson says:

> The antitrust left, however, claims...

if he's going to say "here's what the antitrust left believes" and then proceed to debunk it, I think it's reasonable to point out that his response is cherry-picking only part of what that "antitrust left" believes.

of course, if he wants to publish a follow-up article defending RealPage, I'd love to read it.

0: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with-texas-how-big-homebuilders

1: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/antitrust-enforcers-the-rent-is-too

2: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/up-to-a-quarter-of-rental-inflation