Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/18/23: Male Loneliness Epidemic w/ Shoe0nHead, James Li On Government Dietary Guidelines, Matt Stoller On Stopping Corporate Mergers

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the male loneliness epidemic w/ YouTuber Shoe0nHead, James Li on conflicting dietary guidelines in the news, and Matt Stoller talks about rewriting merger guidelines and how we can get involved in stopping big corporation consolidation.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Friend of show YouTuber Shuon had recently put out a long video about the epidemic of male loneliness that we thought was really interesting. So we invited her on Breaking Points to discuss it with us. Shu, welcome. Hi, thank you for having me. Yeah, of course.

So we pulled a little bit of what you had to say on the topic and we love to get your thoughts on the other side. But first, let's take a listen to a bit of the beginning of the video. I regret to inform you the beginning of the video. I regret to inform you, the men are not okay. That's right folks, the men are not okay. The men have no friends, no girlfriend, no college education, no money, are breaking their legs and inserting metal rods into their bones

to be a few inches taller, and listening to AI Batman help them overcome their pornography addictions. You deserve real love. Turns out the society that was built by and allegedly for men has indeed let them down. Now you might be thinking, oh look, another Boohoo Poor Men video by Shuon Head. Yes.

June, what inspired this video? So I've been talking about subjects like this since about like 2014. And like men issues and stuff like that. And I would criticize things like pop feminism. I don't know if you remember back in the day, like 2015, 2016, there was a big wave of like anti-man sort of quirky Tumblr type of feminism back in the day. And so that was my whole like bread and butter.

I would just talk about issues like that. And I would get like crapped on for that and everything called a men's rights activist and a pick me and everything. And then rewind now about nine years later, 10 years later even, a lot of the left is start, like the online left is starting to talk about these subjects, which is great. It's really refreshing to see that.

But it's kind of only in a reaction to the rise of people like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. And I feel like there was this void for a long time of people not really caring about men and how they're feeling and what they're going through and how alienation specifically affects them and how society, technology, things like that, what they're doing to men and their issues. And so I kind of feel like I needed to be like, hey, like, in a nice way, look, guys, I told you so. Like, we should have been talking about these issues

for a really long time. But it's nice to see that we're all on the same page now. I don't... Oh, go ahead. Oh, sorry. I feel like that it's a good thing that we're talking about this now, but it's almost like, oh, it's a little too late. I feel the same way. Yeah. I mean, we've been talking about it here for literally for years, also over on Rising. One of the most poignant elements actually was a lot of the comments that were left on the video, some of which we have. Let's go ahead and put some of these up there on the screen.

They say, quote, when you ask yourself, why am I not putting an end to my suffering? And only argument is it would make my mother sad. It doesn't feel good, bros. Let's go to the next one here. It says, I love how often they're saying, oh, you can't get laid, boo-hoo. When we talk about men being lonely,

is it all we care about is sex? When most of us just want somebody to hold us at night and to feel seen. We have another one that we can put up there. Sex is nice, it's easy to think it's gonna fix everything if you just get laid, but really it's not. Men need intimacy in more forms than just fucking. Let's go to the next one.

As a guy, all I want is for someone to care about me besides my mom and dad. Some of these are just absolutely brutal. There's a lot of longer, real stories that were left in some of your comments. We've seen similar reactions here to videos we've done about the plights of men and all that. And yet, as you said, it's only now becoming in vogue to talk about it as a reaction, not to even try and acknowledge the problem on its face. So, I mean, what did you make of the reaction? Was it what you expected? And what do you think are some of the better ways that people can talk about it?

So I was actually so surprised at my comment section. It was probably the most depressing comment section I've ever seen. All these men talking about how lonely they feel, how highly needed they feel, how social media has made it worse, things like that. And I thought the video would be a very like, you know, taken well video. Everyone would be like, oh, that's so true. But there was a lot of backlash. I think the best way that we can go about talking about this is just in a way that kind of just talks about the issue not just like oh you know um don't go to andrew tate uh don't go to the right come to us we need you you know like that sort of thing that's not really how you tackle this you talk about the actual things that

are affecting them um because if you're like oh oh, we only care about men because, you know, we want you on our side, that's not a good way to go about it. It's kind of transparent. And if you're sort of an apolitical sort of guy just dealing with these subjects, you're not really going to listen to someone like that. But if you actually care and talk about the subject, I feel like it will be a lot more effective of helping men in general, and they would be less inclined to go to people like Andrew Tate. So I think the best way to talk about subjects like this

would be like the alienation, how it affects men in general, how they're dropping out of college, things like that, which affects the pay that they get. And to men, especially men, I know like making money is a really big deal for everybody, but the way that men,

like a lot of men find women, how men like get a relationship is making more money than a woman. Yeah. And today, a lot of women have great jobs, which is great and careers and everything like that. But sometimes they're making more money than most men. And so there's this like, weird balance where it's like, okay, the women are actually, you know, they have their own money, and they have all this. And so like, the men are

being kind of like, left behind. And and like it's all really comes down. It's like most things. It's almost a trickle down from like economics. Right. Wages are really low, although people are working more hours, which also if people are working more, they don't have time to even hang out with friends or go on dates or anything like that. It's all really trickling down from economic policy, as usual. Yeah. I mean, obviously, as someone on the left, I think the left's like economic program would be much more beneficial, not just to men, but to everyone in the country. But I do think there can be a blind spot because we do focus so much on the systemic issues, which I do think is the most important thing, that there is a lack of people who are saying

here are things you can do in your own life and not have to wait for like, you know, 30 years for Congress to get their act together or to have a president who's going to like institute a living wage or whatever. I think there's a real void for that kind of a conversation, which, as you said, you know, part of the problem is when this emerges, it's oftentimes in the context of we're worried men are moving to the right and we need them to be our political allies. So what can we say to pander to them, to convince them that they should be on our team rather than a genuine concern for what's actually going on in their lives? Yeah. Like I said in my video, it's like the left has all

these great policies, but then absolutely drops the ball when it comes to cultural issues. So they don't really understand, like, how dating apps, for example, are, like, affecting men more than women and how, like, all these things they don't really care. They're just like. Can you actually talk more about that? Because I thought that was an interesting piece. Why would you say dating apps affect men more than women? So because there's this study that shows that like 80% of the women go to a very small percent of men. So like they're all basically picking the same man, right? Because like back when you had a... It's the Pareto principle.

That's correct. No, go ahead. Back when you had like you lived in like a little small town or something or you had like this community, it was like, oh, you met men and women met each other that way. And a guy didn't have to have like what what they say, like what a six pack, six figure, six Bugatti or whatever to get a woman. But now that people have like, I guess, more of a choice, they're not even, they're kind of window shopping on men, right? Because men, first of all, don't know how to take a picture to save their life. So it's like they're taking these awful pictures of themselves and people, they're just like judging a book by its cover and just swiping on them. Oh, they don't have this, they don't have that, whatever. and so it's a little harder for like a good normal guy to find a woman when they're all

going to the same men like you know with the six packs and everything and there's actually studies that have shown that men are actually um developing men on dating apps are more likely to have bulimia than women on dating apps there There's like, there's all this, there's like almost a, it's, you always think of like eating disorders as things that women have, but because of all the pressure of dating apps, men are starting to develop things like that. They're also taking more steroids than men who aren't on dating apps and things like that. It's actually really interesting. I want to get to some of the backlash that you talked about. I always find it fascinating.

You know, I guess, you know, I don't personally ever experience backlash because I'm mostly preaching to the choir on this, but you certainly did. We have one example here we can put up on the screen. And what it essentially boiled down to is that the solution to male loneliness is literally just being a better person. I don't know the best way to frame it, but it basically is like, well, if you were better, then if men stop being so shitty, effectively is the thesis, as then they would be better off. Probably the best way to say it. You especially encounter this in elite liberal circles where there are a lot of futurist female t-shirts.

What do you think your response, I think, to the backlash that effectively boiled down to that critique is? And where does it come from? I just think it's interesting that for all these groups, for all of their issues, it's always socioeconomic factors and things like this. And then when it comes to men, it's just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I think that's really funny and interesting. But that tweet in particular is funny because it also implies that lonely people are just bad people. And that's not that's not the case whatsoever. But the backlash was insane.

It was worse than I thought it was. A lot of people just didn't watch the video and assumed that I was blaming women, even though I did not even mention, I think I mentioned women like once. And it was to say that, you know, they're also lonely, but the way that the media is framing women being lonely is very different than how they're framing men being lonely. But no, I didn't blame women. And yet that's what the whole internet thought that video was about. For some reason, it was mostly, you you know alienation under capitalism and things like that uh technology i want to go full ted k but a lot to do with that and it was just you can't if you want it's okay

it's a safe space to go um but just to see the backlash of oh, of course it's a woman's job, you know, and it's like, no, I never said that. I never implied that. And it was the immediate. Let me ask because, I mean, obviously the nefarious characters in the space, like the Andrew Tates, it's not just like, go men and here's, you know, some tips to make yourself desirable, et cetera. I mean, there is a healthy dose of hating women that goes along with that. Obviously, yes. And I think that's why they. Yeah, right. And so I think that's why there's a sensitivity to it to be like fair to the people who level what I think are, you know, ridiculous, like critiques of your video, which didn't do any of that. Even though in the like,

is there a tension, though,, uh, identifying some of the legitimate issues that men are facing and saying like women have it too good or feminism has gone too far, et cetera. I'll give you an example of something that you said earlier, which is, I think, accurate that, uh, you know, men societally, like they're part of being core, being a man is being the breadwinner. And so when you have a partner or a lot of women around you are actually earning more than you, that can be sort of emasculating. So how do you approach that without the answer than being like these hoes need to get back in the kitchen, basically, and they need to earn less money than us, like God intended. Right. So that's the whole thing. Like, I don't

think, I think the issue is that men aren't fulfilled in their jobs at all. And the issue, again, always comes down to these like economic factors. They're working longer for less pay and things like that. And I don't think it has anything to do with feminism or anything like that. It's just that now, you know, women can also work, but men are doing terrible in college. I don't know if you've seen the statistics, but they're dropping out of college. And I think we really have to like get to the root of that. Like, why is that happening? And things like that. And I don't think, I don't think this like gender war is going to help whatsoever. It's just going to make things worse and that's why it's easy for people like andrew tate and all those types of people to point the finger right

like women are the scapegoat to this problem when it's really not and i feel like you need to really hammer on that like we're all part of society a lot of these things like alienation and technology affect women too it affects all of us it affects all of us. It affects all of us differently, too. So I think you need to, like, focus, hyper-focus on, like, the real big picture and not just scapegoat people who aren't doing nothing wrong. Women aren't doing anything wrong by, like, making money and having a job and, like, wanting a person who can provide for them. That's not, like like a negative thing. It's just that society, a lot of these things seem to be leaving men behind when it should be not dragging women behind or, you know, pushing women more like above everybody. It should be like pushing everyone who is behind further, whether it's, I don't know, like disenfranchised minorities or things like that.

Like everyone should be at the same level. And so we're starting to see things like leave some people behind. And I feel like we should get to the core of that before we start pointing fingers and like looking for scapegoats because that's not healthy at all. Yeah, I agree. One thing that I've noticed, and by the way, I already should go watch the whole video. I think, you know, you did a great job with it. I always enjoy your content, Shu. But, you know, one thing with the identity-focused progressive lens is it provides an explanation for why minority groups or historically oppressed groups aren't doing well, but it does not provide any analysis

for why white men, white cis men in particular, would be failing other than to say it must be you. Like, you must suck. That's the only explanation that we have for this because you're not black, you're not a woman, you're not trans, you're not, you know, historically disenfranchised. So it must be that you just suck. And so I think this is sort of where the rubber meets the road and why there's been a real failure here in terms of addressing what are obviously real issues. So thank you so much, June. It's always great to see you and always enjoy your work. Thank you. Yes, our pleasure. Thank you for having me.

The World Health Organization now classifies the low calorie sweetener aspartame as a possible carcinogen. This morning, the World Health Organization is out with what appears to be a troubling headline about the artificial sweetener aspartame. Many experts here in the U.S. are highly critical of the report. The FDA saying scientific evidence has continued to support the FDA's conclusion that aspartame is safe for the general population. I think the main thing is that aspartame is a safe substance, can be consumed in quite large amounts, much larger than the humans generally consume. Well, which is it? Should I be worried? Is the news fear-mongering again? Who should consumers turn to for trustworthy nutrition information? consumers turn to for trustworthy nutrition information. Based on my research, when there are conflicting dietary guidelines in the news,

experts recommend turning to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world's largest organization of nutrition and dietetics practitioners, representing over 100,000 credentialed dietitians, nutrition practitioners, and students. Taking a look at their recent press release addressing aspartame, they said that they quote, believe scientific research and evidence-based practice form the basis for healthful eating recommendations. And according to science, aspartame is safe until further evidence can be generated. But are their recommendations solely based on science, or are there other corrupting influences? Let's dive in.

Founded in 1917 as the American Dietetic Association by a group of women led by Lena F. Cooper and the Academy's first president, Lulu G. Graves, for the purpose of helping the government conserve food and improve public health during World War I, over the next 100 years, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics rose to prominence as the standard bearer for advancing the profession of nutrition and dietetics through research, education, and advocacy. That's who is educating our nation's dietitians who then go out and tell all of us how we ought to eat. This is Gary Ruskin, the executive director and co-founder of U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit public health research group

that investigates corporate wrongdoing and government failures that threaten our health, environment, and food system. Late last year, after an extensive five-year investigation and pointing through tens of thousands of pages of internal Academy documents that Gary and his team obtained through public records requests, U.S. Right to Know co-authored a bombshell study detailing the Academy's

symbiotic relationship with multinational food, pharmaceutical, and agribusiness corporations, and that the Academy acts as a quote, pro-industry voice with policy positions that sometimes clash with its mission to improve health globally. Recently, I spoke to Gary to really understand the magnitude of the kinds of conflicts of interest they found between the Academy and various big food companies. So first thing was that we found millions of dollars from ultra-processed food and pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies flowing to the Academy. Yes, the study reports that the Academy accepted more than $15 million from corporate and organizational contributors in the years 2011 and 2013 to 2017, according to its draft IRS Forms 990.

Top contributors include the who's who of big food, ConAgra, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Hershey's, General Mills, and Kellogg. So I think the question we should all be asking is how does such financial influence manifest in the Academy's guidelines and recommendations? The answer, as Gary found out, is all kinds of different ways. One of them being through these nutrition fact sheets. Cocoa and chocolate, sweet news. Did you know that cocoa packs a powerful antioxidant punch? Sponsored by Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition.

Eggs, a good choice for moms to be. Sponsored by thehey Center for Health and Nutrition. Eggs, a good choice for moms to be. Sponsored by the Egg Nutrition Center. Adult beverage consumption, making responsible drinking choices. Sponsored by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. For the sponsors, they corruptly buy influence. And it's all in black and white, like they admit it. Not only that, a number of the Academy's board of directors have extremely close relationships

with ultra-processed food and chemical corporations. Hope Warshaw has been a consultant to the Calorie Control Council, which promotes artificial sweeteners, and to McNeil Nutritionals, which manufactured Splenda and Sucralose. Mary Lee Chin currently consults with Ajinomoto, Bayer, and previously with Monsanto.

Sylvia Rowe is a former president and chief executive of the International Food Information Council, a food industry-funded front group that aids ultra-processed food and pesticide companies with product defense campaigns. And she's also a former vice president for communications of the Sugar Association. This is bad enough in most cases, but oh, there's more. Maybe the most amazing thing that I just never, ever would have guessed that we found was that the Academy actually invested in ultra-processed food companies. That's right. Internal investment documents obtained through FOIA show that in 2015 and 2016, the Academy held more than a million dollars worth of stock in Nestle and PepsiCo. You could argue free market, but funny enough, emails once again obtained through FOIA revealed that some of the academy's leadership

were aware that this presented a potential conflict of interest. This email was sent by Donna Martin, a prominent academy spokesperson. Quote, everything looks good to me. The only flag that I saw was that PepsiCo is one of our top 10 stocks. I personally like PepsiCo and do not have any problems with us owning it. But I wonder if someone will say something about that. Well, Donna, it's not a great look. I've been working on conflicts of interest for so long now to my mind, that is like belongs to the conflict of interest Hall of Fame. Conflict of interest Hall of Fame is perhaps right. But the ultimate goal, I think, the holy grail you could say, is to corrupt the dieticians themselves. Every year, the Academy hosts an annual food conference,

the FNCE, Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo, where big food shells out big money for speaking appearances and booths on the convention floor for an opportunity to showcase and convince nutritionists why their products aren't so bad, if you just know how to consume them in the right way. And perhaps the ultimate gift the Academy can give to big food is a dream article like this one on the Food Network. This dietician wants you to eat more processed food. Sub-headline, processed food is not a bad thing.

Here's why. This is how the ultra-precious food industry tunnels in and gets legitimacy for the standard American diet that is causing us so much pain and suffering. He's not wrong because regardless of whether you think the academy is or isn't able to stay independent and objective given their close financial ties to Big Food, Big Pharma, and other agribusiness corporations, the fact is Americans are getting sicker year after year. Obesity skyrocketing.

Type 2 diabetes on the rise. Cardiovascular disease, after a brief decline, it's on the rise again. All the while, definitely not coincidentally, healthcare is quickly becoming America's largest industry. McKinsey and Company projects profits across the entire healthcare industry to skyrocket from $558 billion a year in 2021 to almost $700 billion by 2025. A lot of people think food and nutrition has a big role to play if we are to reverse such trends. So I asked Gary, what do nutritionists think about the Academy's long history of financial ties to big food companies?

There are many nutritionists who have very uneasy, bad feeling about it, and who are truly troubled by the lack of integrity of their standard bearer organization and are you know and wrestle in a very sincere way with the corruption of their profession and maybe even more troubling is how the Academy has chosen to rule with an iron fist to combat such dissent in 2013 Carol Bartolato a registered dietitian in California, was

removed from an Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics panel for questioning the Academy's decision to hire a professor with ties to Monsanto to write its position paper on genetically engineered foods, get this, before the workgroup even finished its review of the scientific materials. She said, quote, why have a workgroup if its conclusions are not going to be the basis for the position paper? Yeah, that's sketchy. Despite the murkiness of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics affiliations, for the sake of journalistic integrity, I must let you know that the Academy has labeled recent allegations as, quote, inaccurate and misleading,

staunchly defending their corporate guidelines, which they claim prohibit external influence. Nevertheless, today's revelation should underline a crucial lesson for us in that we must continue to advocate for transparency, support the work of organizations that work tirelessly to obtain documents previously hidden from the public, to arm ourselves with knowledge, and to seek the unvarnished truth. Because our health literally depends on it. That's all for me this time. What are your thoughts? Do you have any personal experiences with nutritionists or dietitians you'd like to share? Please let us know in the comment section below. Also, if you enjoy these Beyond the Headline segments, I would highly encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel 51 5149 with James Lee.

The link will be in the description below. I'd really appreciate that. And as always, keep on tuning in to Breaking Points, and thank you forrust policy analyst. I have a great segment for you today on this big breakdown. It's actually some good news. It's about how the government listens to its citizens, and in particular to you, Breaking Point subscribers, because about a year and a half ago, roughly a thousand of you sent comments into the government on what seems like a really obscure question, which was about something very important, how to use antitrust law against big companies. And it really mattered. And I'm going to tell you why. But I'm also going to tell you another way, for those of you who submitted comments or who want to submit comments,

that you can actually help the government crack down on big business if that's of interest to you. OK, so it's a pretty grim moment in politics, but one of the positive aspects of the Biden administration has actually been something called antitrust policy, which is the law agencies that police competition in our markets. And they're trying to return America to the way we used to manage corporate power prior to the 1980s. Let's just take a look, a picture of the two of them. Okay, so Kahn and Cantor have brought cases against a lot of powerful firms. And indeed, there is a major antitrust trial against Google Search that's going to start in September. I'm going to do a segment on that in the next couple of weeks. And that is actually the first big trial against a monopoly since Microsoft 25 years ago. Now, last April, I told you about something else that Khan and Cantor are doing, which is, it seems technocratic, but it's not.

It's very important. It's called rewriting our merger guidelines. Now, merger guidelines are little-known interpretive documents which the government uses to explain how they will enforce antitrust laws against big business. Now, in that video, which you can look at in the description if you want, I explained why mergers of big companies are often really bad, but also why they are so pervasive in today's economy. And there's a policy reason behind it. I also said that you can help because the antitrust agencies opened what's called a comment docket. It's basically a website where you can tell your stories, where you can tell the government what you think. And about a thousand of you did just that.

Well, guess what? The new draft merger guidelines are out. And one of the ways that you can tell that they matter is that away from the political news, when you look at Wall Street, well, they are big mad. Okay, so here's Larry Summers, who's probably the most important economic policymakers of the last 30 or 40 years. And he's responsible for many things, including offshoring of jobs, the rise of monopolies, financial deregulation, and massive, massive inequality. Let's listen to what he has to say about these new merger guidelines. What is your perception of where

the administration is going on mergers and acquisitions? I guess I would say these things. I do not think it is remotely plausible to ascribe lower real wages or more men not working to anything about monopoly power. I think that traditional thinking has had it about right on what sometimes seems almost like a war on business. And so based on what's been put out for public comment and a very rapid study I've been able to do so far, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed. Summers is a very unpleasant man. And, you know, he's the guy who's been saying we need more unemployment to tame inflation. We need to, you know, offshore more jobs and so on and so forth. He's also really widely beloved and respected on Wall Street. He's a he's Democrat, you know. But don't worry, you know, there's a there's a lot of dissatisfaction among the Wall Street-friendly Republicans.

So let's take a look at the Republicans in the House and what they've done. So this is a proposed statute. They want to take away all money from the antitrust enforcers for actually modifying merger guidelines. OK. So that's the thing. This thing that everybody with power and money hates, that's the thing that you helped construct. It's the thing that you commented on. And if they hate it so much, that's probably a pretty good indication that it's good,

that it reduces persistent high profit margins among big business, which are really an indication of bad health in the economy. And it's good in part because they listened to you and because you participated. And they really did listen to you. So here's a woman you probably don't know, but who's very important. Her name is Doha Mekhi, and she's number two at the antitrust division. And she's explaining how the government staff read every single one of your comments, and there were 5,000 in total, and how that affected their understanding of antitrust law. So let's take a listen to what she has to say. We are lucid to sort of traditional antitrust harms, right? My prices went up, there are fewer jobs, etc. but I was moved by accounts from emergency room

physicians for example who talked about you know after a merger of their provider group or an acquisition by hospital that they were actually not able to provide as good care under you know the regulations or rules or whatever that were promoted by the acquiring company. There were accounts of maternity ward nurses that said after a merger, you know, they reduced the number of nurses on a hospital floor and they were rounding less frequently and they found that very stressful because they felt like they weren't able to deliver care. There were many more examples, agriculture, media, other really important industries in the economy. But hearing real accounts of how regular people,

many of whom are outside the Beltway, experience life post-merger was very interesting. Remember what Larry Summers said, where he said there's no evidence that monopoly power reduces wages. There you have Doha Meki talking about all the comments that they got, which showed that monopoly power and acquisitions do actually impact working conditions, which are actually a form of labor compensation. So there's an interesting disconnect between Wall Street, which I think is fairly represented by Larry Summers, and the rest of America, who I think is pretty fairly represented by what Do Hameki said. So that's why these guidelines create such anger. They reflect how normal people understand monopoly power, corporate power, and antitrust versus how

Wall Street has controlled it for 40 years. And in fact these new guidelines are an attempt to return antitrust back to the rule of law and away from recent decades of corporate domination. So now I've said a lot but let me just do a quick recap of the last video where I described the historical context. So here's what happened over the last 40 years in corporate America. In 1980, Ronald Reagan wanted to end antitrust enforcement. It was part of a very different context. He's very favorable to big business.

They thought antitrust didn't make sense. But the thing is, Reagan and his people knew that Congress wouldn't go along because, broadly speaking, the public likes antitrust enforcement. People don't like monopolies. So the Reagan administration pursued a strategy. And evidence of this came from documents in the Reagan Library, documents that were recently unearthed. And the strategy was not to change the law through Congress, but to simply not enforce antitrust laws. So essentially, it's an administrative rewrite of the law. Now, the main recommendation was that Reagan appoint antitrust leaders who would change enforcement priorities by issuing different merger guidelines, which was the way that the Department of Justice instructed courts and business leaders as to what was and

wasn't legal. In 1982, Bill Baxter, who was Reagan's antitrust division chief, he had Jonathan Cantor's position, and he did so. The impact of this new non-enforcement mandate had large and immediate effects on our society. So take a look at this chart. So the red arrow is the moment that the Reagan administration

issued their merger guideline rewrite. Merger mania started instantly in everything from retail to defense to banking. And indeed, mergers and acquisitions became so important, they came into the culture in a big way. They were the basis of the popular 1987 movie Wall Street, which coined the memorable term, greed is good, that characterized the 1980s. But it wasn't just Reagan who did this.

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, even Donald Trump all continued the framework that Baxter laid out. And over the next 40 years, there were successive merger waves to consolidate nearly every nook and cranny of American commerce. is going to trial in September, which is why I was a little bit hesitant, because his administration is a little bit more mixed. But the thing is, in terms of this 40, 45-year track record, it is hard to find a part of America that has remained unaffected, with much higher prices on vital medicines, but also medicines that are too low-priced, such that they're in shortage. You see reduced wages, and you know, just to give you a recent sense, massively irritated Taylor Swift fans, the consolidation of the ticketing industry and the live performance industry under Live Nation Ticketmaster. Now, over the course of the past 10 years, a lot of people have started to notice, reason being the financial crisis and other shocks to our system. Today, the Biden administration is actually starting to enforce antitrust laws again. But a few high

profile court losses, such as a recent court challenge to the Microsoft Activision merger, and one against the United Health Group's acquisition of Change Healthcare, show that the old way of thinking, the way that Baxter imported in the 1980s, is still very powerful among judges. And that brings us back to the merger guidelines. These guidelines help instruct the courts how to interpret a complicated area of law. They're not binding precedent, but they are a sort of influence, interpretation. And one of the problems with antitrust law is that successive versions of the merger guidelines since 1982 have told judges that most mergers are good. Most mergers of big companies I'm talking about, not the little ones that don't really matter or are actually helpful.

I'm talking about most mergers of big companies are good. And I'm not kidding or exaggerating. So here's a sentence from the most recent version of these guidelines written in 2010. It says, a primary benefit of mergers to the economy is their potential to generate significant efficiencies and thus enhance the merged firm's ability and incentive to compete, which may result in lower prices, improved quality, enhanced service, or new products. That's like Live Nation Ticketmaster. Did that improve anything? I don't think so. But those guidelines said that mergers like that do actually help things. So keep in mind, the 2010 guidelines, which is the most recent addition, they weren't some right-wing conspiracy. They were written by Obama enforcers. And this kind of guidance matters.

Right? So Trump, as I said earlier, was mixed, and he did bring a challenge to the AT&T-Time Warner merger, which was very important for a variety of reasons. But in 2018, Judge Richard Leon ruled in favor of the merger. He ruled against the antitrust division, and he cited the guidelines in doing so. Okay, so what are these new guidelines? They're in draft form. They're not finalized. What do they say? Well, they present 13 principles. Each of one is tethered to specific legal precedent on how mergers may violate the law. Now, some principles are well understood, like the idea that when you have two big companies that compete against each other, that each

own a big part of the market, and they merge and increase what's called corporate concentration, that's probably illegal. OK, we've always known that. That's always been part of merger law. But other principles haven't been enforced since the 1980s. So they extend arguments of concentration to labor markets and how workers are affected by mergers. There have been some good cases on that recently. But the guidelines say, look, judges have to look at labor markets, whether you have different rivals that you can work for or not.

Take that into account to see whether a merger substantially lessens competition or not. Still, other principles in these new merger guidelines are attempts to update guidance for how the economy has changed with the rise of institutions like tech platforms and private equity firms. So, for instance, one new principle is that the antitrust agencies should look not just at one merger, but at a whole series of mergers, the so-called serial acquisition problem. Such roll-ups where a firm or private equity fund buys a whole slew of small companies in one industry, the idea being to consolidate, it's common today in the economy, from dental clinics to portable toilets

to the income verification services of Equifax. The guidelines indicate that the whole suite of mergers are fair game, not just one specific merger. Now, I said this is kind of a new principle. It's not really new. It was actually in the original updates to the Clayton Act that Congress wrote in 1950. It's just that it hasn't really been put into practice for a long time. And so these antitrust enforcers are saying, no, we're going to actually enforce the law as it was written. Now, you can read the whole document if you want, including all 13 principles. I've put it into the description. It's relatively easy to read, but it is a policy document. Okay, here's where you come in if you want to continue

helping. These new guidelines are in draft form, and they will be finalized soon, at which point they'll start to be used in court cases and in a whole variety of different ways. Now, the antitrust enforcers, they came out, they asked for information about your experience with mergers. You gave it to them. Now they have these draft guidelines based in part on that feedback. But they're draft guidelines. They want to get more feedback before finalizing them. So the government has set up a site on regulations.gov where you can tell them about your experience with mergers or offer thoughts on antitrust law, mergers, big business, or unfair methods

of competition. I'll put a link in the description. Now, the site looks like this. I've circled the comment piece in red. So if you click on the button, you can just add your thoughts. Now, my organization has also added, created a website, which is shareyourmergerstory.org, which you can go to. I've put that in the description. And that makes it a little bit easier to participate. But you can do to. I've put that in the description. And that makes it a little bit easier to participate. But you can do it either on the government site or you can do it on our site. But the point is, is one of the few bright spots right now in our policy regime, and it's not a small bright spot. It's a big deal. It's just you don't see it on the political news, but it's a big

deal. It's kind of like the tectonic plates of politics. That bright spot is antitrust. That bright spot is how we deal with big business. And the reason, and this is what's important, the reason our enforcers can actually do anything at all here, despite all of the money coming at them, is actually because of you, because it's popular, because the public wants it. So your comments really do matter. And that's why I encourage you to actually, whether you like mergers or don't, give your feedback. Tell the government what you think about big business right now because they are listening.

Thanks for watching this big breakdown on the Breaking Points channel. I wanted to give you some good news. I want to let you know we do live in a democracy. You can help. Your voice does matter. Just want to let you know how you can participate just like the lobbyists do. And guess what? There's a lot more of us than there are of them. So if you'd like to know more about big business and how our economy really works, you can sign up below for my market power focus newsletter, Big, in the description. Thanks and have a good one. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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