Politicians often use a simple but effective trick to pass some unpopular legislation: Doing it during summer time, i.e. at a time when journalists might not cover that news and when the public will pay less attention to it.
It’s not a far strecth of the imagination that corporates would be willing to resort to the same tactic. I’ve been on holidays for the last three weeks, and it seems my hunch was correct: There were plenty of activities showing that monopolies and regulatory capture are never far away.
This post will consist of a collection of news without any fully-fledged discussion around them. Here we go:
Some obvious abuses of monopoly or monopsony power:
Requiring ink to scan a document—yet another insult from the printer industry
ISPs complain that listing every fee is too hard, urge FCC to scrap new rule
Some cases of regulatory capture:
Frackers can use dangerous chemicals without disclosure due to “Halliburton loophole”
SoCalGas fought a key California climate solution for years. It cost customers millions
The list could go on. Even hardcore capitalists might find difficult to justify these behaviors - even tough I know some who will.
