It is interesting how this dream of...perhaps of certain kinds people(?)...being the boss pops up in different places.
I know it best from debates about charter schools in which some policy elites—especially in the first 15 years of this century, when charter schools really took hold—identified with school principals. They demonized central offices and spoke of the importance of principals being able to make their own decisions and of principals knowing the kids and their parents. As though a principal's relationship with a student has anything more to than the smallest fraction of importance, influence and power as the the student's relationship with their teachers(s).
But these policy elites never imagined themselves as the workers who did the core work of these small organizations—no, only as the bosses. And radically inflated the importance of those bosses. (I write this is as someone who believes deeply in the value of leadership and the importance of school principals. But no actual school principals would ever tell you that they are more important to students than the teachers are.) And they never think of the impact of size on teachers. Of course, they certainly never think about the additional burdens on small organization owners vs. branch managers.
As I've seen it, policy proponents of this smallness stuff are (wannabe?) theorists and strategists who can't imagine wanting to give up those roles to others. They are people who might be motivated by working with *people* as their real goal. They are not the kinds of people who might go into the "helping" professions. And they are not people who simply love the core work. Not teaching or the actual practice of law. Not the pleasure of physically building a house in front of your own eyes or creating a piece of pottery. Not the satisfaction of solving that electrical or plumbing problem and seeing it just work the way it is supposed to.
It is a view that lacks empathy of people with different goals and sources of satisfaction. So many people want to *leave* *work* *at* *work*. But the proponents of smallness cannot accept that there are people with different motivations than themselves, different contributor to what would make A Good Life. The insist that their higher form of humanity is people like them, and the world should be recreated to serve the goals of people like them.
I cannot communicate how hard it is convince these people that their view does not serve everyone, and likely only serves a small faction of people
I’m not familiar Cornered, but the way you describe them here makes it appears that they would have common cause with members at a DSA meeting, by encouraging a breakdown of barriers between workers and their labor with the proliferation of small businesses.
Also, I’m sure you may be talking about extreme cases, but it isn’t clear to me that it would necessarily be the case that the abundance folks and the anti-trust folks would be in conflict. Some anti-trust cases could perhaps promote innovation for example, one of their core tenants.
The entire antitrust movement as exemplified by Lina Khan is fundamentally wrong. It has nothing to say about lower prices but thinks big is per se bad just because. As we’ve seen and are still seeing people care a lot about prices. Making prices lower should be the goal. Big or small doesn’t inherently matter. I do find it telling that people like Khan have no real world experience and are just ivy league educated scholars. Everything they think of is purely theoretical and devoid of anything concrete.
I also can’t help but notice that many of the new antitrust people hate Obama. Maybe 5% of Democrats feel that way but they all managed to get hired by Biden. Of all the things the next Democratic president should do differently not hiring anyone from that crowd should be high up there. Policymakers should be laser focused on the cost of living and anyone not interested in that should be ignored.
Sorry not to be crass but this has to be a deliberate misreading of core tenants of Neo Brandeisian antitrust policies. First, whatever Lynn's book is talking about the point of modern antitrust law is that consolidation creates increased prices and direct harm to competititon. Warby Parker is great but Ticketmaster ballooning their ticket prices and colluding with scalpers makes tickets unaffordable for middle class americans. Rollups of medical practices arguably put pressures on doctors to increase the price of their services. Big tech monopolies undermine our democracy and give us lackluster products vulnerable to hacking.
The notion that Lina Khan only cares about small businesses because she cited one line of her paper which was about the hollowing out of small businesses by Amazon and statutorily ILLEGAL CONSOLIDATIONS is also dubious. Nobody is saying Amazon has not contributed massively to society, but there is no need for them to control large parts of the national economy and there being broken up would ensure they cannot do highly problematic practices like, to name a few: making it extremely hard to opt out of prime, price fixing for favorable products and their own branded products, and having horrible workplace safety regulations.
In dozens of cases these pro consumer, socially good antitrust policies were favored by the Biden administration: stamping out credit card fees, making it easier to cancel online subscriptions, banning noncompetes so millions of low wage workers were not functionally indentured servants in middle america, challenging mega grocery store mergers that would invariably increase prices.
Again, if the author understood the point of antitrust law this would all make sense.
The FTC going after Microsoft for buying Activision and Amazon for looking into buying Roomba left me considering that these aren’t really grounded people.
Was Microsoft going to corner the video games market? Was Amazon going to run over the other makers of autonomous vacuums? Why was this different from Amazon slapping a Basics tag on a Chinese OEM product and calling it their own? Have they cornered the market on AA batteries? Smart home speakers?
'''If the United States were to redistribute its GDP across a vast number of new small firms, that would mechanically increase the number of small business owners.'''
That is a mighty big assumption. It would not increase small businesses owners as much as you think since it would shrink GDP due to less effeciency and less R&D. Small firms typically don't make billion dollar bets on the future.
It is interesting how this dream of...perhaps of certain kinds people(?)...being the boss pops up in different places.
I know it best from debates about charter schools in which some policy elites—especially in the first 15 years of this century, when charter schools really took hold—identified with school principals. They demonized central offices and spoke of the importance of principals being able to make their own decisions and of principals knowing the kids and their parents. As though a principal's relationship with a student has anything more to than the smallest fraction of importance, influence and power as the the student's relationship with their teachers(s).
But these policy elites never imagined themselves as the workers who did the core work of these small organizations—no, only as the bosses. And radically inflated the importance of those bosses. (I write this is as someone who believes deeply in the value of leadership and the importance of school principals. But no actual school principals would ever tell you that they are more important to students than the teachers are.) And they never think of the impact of size on teachers. Of course, they certainly never think about the additional burdens on small organization owners vs. branch managers.
As I've seen it, policy proponents of this smallness stuff are (wannabe?) theorists and strategists who can't imagine wanting to give up those roles to others. They are people who might be motivated by working with *people* as their real goal. They are not the kinds of people who might go into the "helping" professions. And they are not people who simply love the core work. Not teaching or the actual practice of law. Not the pleasure of physically building a house in front of your own eyes or creating a piece of pottery. Not the satisfaction of solving that electrical or plumbing problem and seeing it just work the way it is supposed to.
It is a view that lacks empathy of people with different goals and sources of satisfaction. So many people want to *leave* *work* *at* *work*. But the proponents of smallness cannot accept that there are people with different motivations than themselves, different contributor to what would make A Good Life. The insist that their higher form of humanity is people like them, and the world should be recreated to serve the goals of people like them.
I cannot communicate how hard it is convince these people that their view does not serve everyone, and likely only serves a small faction of people
I’m not familiar Cornered, but the way you describe them here makes it appears that they would have common cause with members at a DSA meeting, by encouraging a breakdown of barriers between workers and their labor with the proliferation of small businesses.
Also, I’m sure you may be talking about extreme cases, but it isn’t clear to me that it would necessarily be the case that the abundance folks and the anti-trust folks would be in conflict. Some anti-trust cases could perhaps promote innovation for example, one of their core tenants.
The entire antitrust movement as exemplified by Lina Khan is fundamentally wrong. It has nothing to say about lower prices but thinks big is per se bad just because. As we’ve seen and are still seeing people care a lot about prices. Making prices lower should be the goal. Big or small doesn’t inherently matter. I do find it telling that people like Khan have no real world experience and are just ivy league educated scholars. Everything they think of is purely theoretical and devoid of anything concrete.
I also can’t help but notice that many of the new antitrust people hate Obama. Maybe 5% of Democrats feel that way but they all managed to get hired by Biden. Of all the things the next Democratic president should do differently not hiring anyone from that crowd should be high up there. Policymakers should be laser focused on the cost of living and anyone not interested in that should be ignored.
Sorry not to be crass but this has to be a deliberate misreading of core tenants of Neo Brandeisian antitrust policies. First, whatever Lynn's book is talking about the point of modern antitrust law is that consolidation creates increased prices and direct harm to competititon. Warby Parker is great but Ticketmaster ballooning their ticket prices and colluding with scalpers makes tickets unaffordable for middle class americans. Rollups of medical practices arguably put pressures on doctors to increase the price of their services. Big tech monopolies undermine our democracy and give us lackluster products vulnerable to hacking.
The notion that Lina Khan only cares about small businesses because she cited one line of her paper which was about the hollowing out of small businesses by Amazon and statutorily ILLEGAL CONSOLIDATIONS is also dubious. Nobody is saying Amazon has not contributed massively to society, but there is no need for them to control large parts of the national economy and there being broken up would ensure they cannot do highly problematic practices like, to name a few: making it extremely hard to opt out of prime, price fixing for favorable products and their own branded products, and having horrible workplace safety regulations.
In dozens of cases these pro consumer, socially good antitrust policies were favored by the Biden administration: stamping out credit card fees, making it easier to cancel online subscriptions, banning noncompetes so millions of low wage workers were not functionally indentured servants in middle america, challenging mega grocery store mergers that would invariably increase prices.
Again, if the author understood the point of antitrust law this would all make sense.
The FTC going after Microsoft for buying Activision and Amazon for looking into buying Roomba left me considering that these aren’t really grounded people.
Was Microsoft going to corner the video games market? Was Amazon going to run over the other makers of autonomous vacuums? Why was this different from Amazon slapping a Basics tag on a Chinese OEM product and calling it their own? Have they cornered the market on AA batteries? Smart home speakers?
'''If the United States were to redistribute its GDP across a vast number of new small firms, that would mechanically increase the number of small business owners.'''
That is a mighty big assumption. It would not increase small businesses owners as much as you think since it would shrink GDP due to less effeciency and less R&D. Small firms typically don't make billion dollar bets on the future.