Readers of this blog have heard mention of the Powell memo a number of times before (see links at the end).
A few days ago, Cory Doctorow posted An Antitrust Murder Whodunnit about what has happened to enforcement of U.S. antititrust laws in the past 40 or years, and the Powell memo is prominently included.
I recommend the whole essay, which summarizes an academic paper by three legal and economics scholars, but here are a couple of key quotes:
The authors conclude that the change in US antitrust enforcement wasn't the result of reasoned argument, but rather, a mix of financial enticements and a covert influence operation.... the complete reversal in antitrust enforcement in the US was not the result of better arguments, nor was it the result of democratic deliberation. Instead, it was a self-accelerating mix of bribery and propaganda, funded by big businesses, which grew even bigger as a result.
Some examples Doctorow cites from the paper:
A 1974 poll found that 60% of Americans were in favor of increasing antitrust penalties (6% opposed this). In 1980, 64% of American said that "promoting competition" was "important, very important, or very, very important" (12% said it wasn't important "at all").
Yet, over the next two years...
"In 1974 there were 2.3 Labor PACs for every corporate PAC. By 1976, the ratio was inverted. By 1985, there were 4.4 corporate PACs for every Labor PAC."
Then there's the revolving door between regulators and the regulated (so well-described by Michael Lewis in The Big Short), which is a major part of how the sometimes-subtle bribery operates:
The average white-shoe law firm partner in 1970 earned twice as much as an FTC chair. That rose to 500% in the 1980s. Today it's 1000%. Wages for FTC and DoJ enforcers have been constant since 2000, while the cost of a house in DC has quadrupled over the same period.
There's a lot more in the essay (and the source paper, should you want to read it).
Antitrust is a deep and dreary-seeming area of policy, which works against it. We need people like Elizabeth Warren and Katie Porter who understand it working to bring it back under control.
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Forty-Three Years Since the Powell Memo, August 2014
Dark Money and the Koch Brothers, January 2016
What Will Historians Decide?, May 2018
Rebalancing the Courts, October 2020
The Best Money Can Buy, May 2021
We Have Been Warned, October 2021
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