WSJ: Lobbyists Easily Destroyed Any Semi-Serious Antitrust Enforcers Left In MAGA

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/04/02/wsj-lobbyists-easily-destroyed-any-semi-serious-antitrust-enforcers-left-in-maga/

Trump DOJ Wimps Out On Ticketmaster, Again Revealing Hollowness Of MAGA ‘Antitrust’

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/13/trump-doj-wimps-out-on-ticketmaster-again-revealing-hollowness-of-maga-antitrust/

AI is good at certain things, like legal document review, where human beings are modeling and then verifying the output. It is terrible at producing reliable products. And that’s not going to get better, AI algorithms are big guessing machines, they do not “know” anything and cannot understand truth.

#MattStoller #AI #Utility #God
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-stop-telling-me

Pluralistic: Trump antitrust is dead (13 Feb 2026)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/13/khanservatives/

"A boomcession, where the rich and corporate America experience a boom while working people feel a recession, is a very unhealthy dynamic."

#MattStoller wrote an interesting post about his theory that our #EconomicStats poorly measure most people's economic reality. For example, there are many types of #EconomicTermites -- which boost #GDP growth, while not creating any actual additional value.

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-boomcession-why-everyone-but

#Economics #Consumers #Inflation

Pluralistic: Google's AI pricing plan (21 Jan 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/21/cod-marxism/

#MattStoller So what’s actually going on? Is Trump sincere? Is he unveiling a real new agenda? To answer that question, I want to offer a fourth event, one that few outside of the antitrust world noticed. And that is, the largest real estate brokerage in America, Compass, cleared its $1.6 billion purchase of Anywhere Real Estate, which owns Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran and Sotheby’s International Realty. The deal cleared much earlier than the companies themselves expected it to. Why? Corruption.

The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Gail Slater, wanted to launch an extended review of the merger to weigh whether it was anticompetitive, the people familiar with the matter said. Compass and its lawyers appealed above her, to the office of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, arguing that any worries could be addressed without an investigation. Blanche’s office agreed, the people said.

🧵

@wdlindsy Not sure if this is in your thread.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-george-w-trump
#mattstoller
Just as there is increasing support for cynical and nihilistic figures today, many in the 1920s felt warmly towards Mellon, Mussolini, and authoritarianism in general. U.S. Steel chairman Judge Elbert Gary encouraged Americans to “learn something by the movement which has taken place in Italy,” while progressive and New Republic founder Herbert Croly called Mussolini as substituting “purposive behavior for drifting and visions of a great future for collective pettiness and discouragement.”

To be sure, there were opponents of Mellon and the super-wealthy, like New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Tennessee populist Cordell Hull, as well as a Congressman elected in 1928 from Texarkana, Wright Patman. In 1929, Patman sought to impeach Mellon over self-dealing and bad stewardship of the Federal Reserve. But this crusade was seen as quixotic and absurd.

Pluralistic: California bans algorithmic price-fixing (09 Oct 2025)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/09/pricewars/

Pluralistic: It's still censorship (even if it doesn't violate the First Amendment) (22 Sep 2025)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/22/one-throat-to-choke/