Come work with me, pals! #hiring

Just learned a lot about the egg cartel. Big egg is worth the read.

Come work with me, pals! #hiring

Zuckerberg built a hot-or-not "Facemash" the year before Facebook, he's still in charge of Meta and being a multibillionaire certainly doesn't increase the chances of any sort of growing up. He was always a creep, he just has more platforms now. via @proptermalone.bsky.social @basel.bsky.social

“Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man, in a move parents described as “outrageous” and “upsetting.” Meta has 100% stopped even *pretending* not to be astoundingly evil. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

had to read the article to understand wtf was going on here which is that Meta is literally feeding Instagram pictures parents took of their teenage daughters to middle aged men as ads for Threads

The senate hearings were spurred by Basel’s reporting earlier this year.

Abundance Bros were big mad at @basel.bsky.social a few weeks ago. Can’t help but note that while they’ve been busy carrying water for kleptocracy, Basel is literally testifying against the monopolization & enshittification of firetrucks. You read that right. www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/u...

Today, during a subcommittee hearing overseeing disaster management, I addressed the manufacturers of fire equipment and trucks. Big manufacturers must answer for why fire departments are waiting too long and paying too much for the trucks they need. 1/2

The collusion seems to include providing the Russian authorities with materials (from their confidential asylum applications!) used to send forcibly repatriated dissidents to prison. The depth of betrayal here is beyond words.

At NatCon, there were two topics dominating everyone’s discussions: the imminent end of the right’s support of Israel — and the existential threat that technology posed to Western civilization. I wrote about the second discussion. www.theverge.com/politics/773...

Oh hey! Look who’s testifying at their first congressional hearing next week! 😄

Elon Musk's SpaceX "has received billions of dollars in federal contracts over its more than two-decade existence. But SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/t...

The Abundance/Effective Altruist crowd doesnt care about the role of finance in housing. In fact, they don’t even want to examine the role of finance within…the Federal Reserve! www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-abundan...

When the Federal Reserve jacks up mortgage rates, credit card rates, and auto loan rates on millions of Americans, the federal government literally does not count that crushing inflation as inflation. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/strikes-an...

This piece from Matt Stoller on the shape of the new Oligarchy in the US is interesting - the basic claim is that you have the general post-Reagan scam artistry associated with the GOP tied to a populist personality cult and the result is just bizarre. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/into-the-a...

Quite the broadside from Stoller against the Abundance crowd, and I had a bit of a jumpscare to see effective altruism return to the Discourse too. There's an underlying point about to be made, like, what sort of things fool what sort of people. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-abundan...

Put legislative vetoes on the list of post-Trump reforms (bullying the Court into accepting those reforms is also part of the reforms)

“There is no such thing as a canon of donut holes” is officially my new favorite phrase (real statutory interpretation heads know what I’m talking about)

FYI Bookshop.org has anti-prime free shipping rn!

In our latest interview, we explore the history of U.S. antimonopoly law with Basel Musharbash (@basel.bsky.social), author of the report “'Kings Over the Necessaries of Life': Monopolization and the Elimination of Competition in America’s Agriculture System" (farmaction.us/kings-over-t...)

And once again, #PrivateEquity is the villain. 😑 This isn't just capitalism. Literally, one private equity group bought up lots of small biz and now controls ⅓ of the sales. Oh yeah, and prices went up. Please read. Everyone needs fire trucks in their lives. thehustle.co/originals/wh...

of significant note: theres a lot of chicken epidemics that occur and result in culls of billions of birds (Newcastle outbreak was rly bad just a handful of years ago). But you didnt notice, because it wasnt being exploited like bird flu. To solve eggs, you must solve monopolies.

If you're interested in the intersection between farming and politics, or just "why egg $$?" agricultural scientist Taber is extremely on point. So is the info she shares from others.

Buying July 4th BBQ stuff? A lot that iconic "American" food is imported now. 🤯We had a food trade deficit of almost $60 billion in 2024. My @rethinktrade.bsky.social colleague @khetti.bsky.social has a new report out today explaining the rising US food trade deficit, its causes and fixes. 1/

The deficit is a competition policy/anti-monopoly & trade problem. Thanks to very smart people like @basel.bsky.social and great work at Farm Action we know that food and farm consolidation is a huge problem. The ABCD grain traders control 70%+ of the global food market share! 9/

In a new piece co-authored with Econ One’s Gavin Sicard, we explore whether DOJ’s inquiry into the egg industry, as reported by Capitol Forum on March 6, may have caused egg prices to plummet. If so, the implications would be big. Highlights coming. www.thesling.org/did-dojs-inv...

Messing With Texas: How Big Homebuilders and Private Equity Made American Cities Unaffordable www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-wi...

"The exorbitant rents and home prices of the post-Covid era have fed the emergence of over a dozen homebuilder billionaires just since 2022. The problem, as much as Klein and Thompson may wish otherwise, is oligarchy." www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-wi...

A detailed look at how housing has become unaffordable in Texas, conclusions that are equally valid in GB. "It’s a national phenomenon driven by... a bloated financial sector— and the monopolists it has backed to constrain housing production." www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-wi...

This is a thorough examination of high housing costs, if anyone's interested www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-wi...

The same consolidation of pies in tech is happening in residential housing. We are being squeezed in both where we live physically as well as where we connect and interact digitally. In both cases, nothing is being done to protect the consumer. www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-wi...

This "jenga" warning by Caroline Crenshaw, SEC commissioner, will resonate -"We are pulling apart our own regulatory foundation — block by block, case by case, and rule by rule. It feels all too familiar to those of who have lived through 2008." - on @alphaville.ft.com www.ft.com/content/c57c...

The American economy is increasingly being funded by capital markets instead of by banks. This new-look financial system is certainly innovative. But is it resilient? https://econ.trib.al/oLbFawt Illustration: Daniel Jurman

This long and detailed article is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand why home prices are so high! Messing With Texas: How Big Homebuilders and Private Equity Made American Cities Unaffordable open.substack.com/pub/mattstol...

tl;dr: it has more to do with two critical segments of the housing supply chain: the homebuilding industry, & the resale market. Both have changed massively in ways that progressively constricted housing production & juiced demand for houses as investment assets

No, the problem is selfish folks who don’t want to live in stacked matchboxes. The *lone* solution is to repeal all regulations on building new housing, and to let beneficent capitalists work their magic. We will have utopia for all people (who can to pay “market” rents)! No other ideas allowed!

Messing With Texas: How Big Homebuilders and Private Equity Made American Cities Unaffordable www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-wi... The people at the top of the pile won't be happy until they've reduced us all to renters of their stuff. And we just keep letting them get away with it.

Back in 2011, Dallas rated as a place where average families could afford homes. But median prices have tripled since then. One factor: a homebuilder oligopoly that’s squeezed out small builders. Another: a huge private-equity presence. @basel.bsky.social www.thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-wi...

Trump plans to eliminate most of our National Parks. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will be promoting this plan at the Senate on Tuesday.

The monopoly utilities like PG&E are at it again: Trying to kill off rooftop solar by taking away the financial benefits of installing solar. They’re obsessed with maintaining their monopoly so they can charge ever-increasing rates (enabled by state regulators). We must reject this monopoly play.

I'm not as cynical as @murshedz.bsky.social, but it is pretty embarrassing that @jeff-merkley.bsky.social and @warren.senate.gov are touting their amendment to the crypto-scam GENIUS Act instead of denouncing their Dem colleagues who are going to kill the filibuster of the crypto-scam GENIUS Act.

Judges just can't read. "Substantially," as it is used in Sec 7 DOES NOT mean competition must be "substantially lessened." @basel.bsky.social and I painstakingly detail how "substantially" grammatically functions in our article. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I am reading the FTC v. MSFT opinion now. This paragraph exemplifies a fundamental problem with merger enforcement. If you want to talk about reducing government waste, bright-line rules would solve the problem. Reviewing 3 million documents and devoting 15 hearings is absurd.

BREAKING: Trump has filed an emergency appeal asking the Supreme Court to let DOGE access personal information for millions of people in Social Security databases.

@basel.bsky.social and Farm Action have done good reporting on antitrust on eggs too…

You might think President Trump's interview with Terry Moran of #ABCnews was only about tattoos. But it also addressed food economics. Max Zahn from ABC News asked me yesterday if egg prices had dropped 87%. That was news to me (ha). @dlortega.bsky.social abcnews.go.com/Business/tru...

Get in, losers! We’re un-Borking the law and rebuilding a system of free, competitive enterprise

Get in, losers! We’re un-Borking the law and rebuilding a system of free, competitive enterprise

Oh hey, look what came in the mail today!