Thursday, August 01, 2024

Breaking Up the Giants of Harm

BREAKING: Donald Trump gets devastating news as billionaire Mark Cuban and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman join forces and unite over 100 venture capitalists to back Kamala Harris for president. And it gets even better... "We spend our days looking for, investing in and supporting entrepreneurs who are building the future," reads the "VCs for Kamala" website. "We are pro-business, pro-American dream, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-technological progress." "We also believe in democracy as the backbone of our nation," the site goes on. "We believe that strong, trustworthy institutions are a feature, not a bug, and that our industry — and every other industry — would collapse without them." "That is what’s at stake in this election. Everything else, we can solve through constructive dialogue with political leaders and institutions willing to talk to us. In this pivotal moment, we are united in our support for Vice President Kamala Harris," it reads. The announcement is a powerful rebuke to far-right Silicon Valley billionaires like Elon Musk who have thrown their support behind Donald Trump's fascist movement in the hopes of more tax cuts. Please retweet and ❤️ to thank Mark Cuban and his allies for supporting Kamala — and consider joining the growing exodus to Tribel, a new pro-democracy social network that is exploding in popularity because Twitter and Facebook are trying to stop its growth — which is only making Tribel grow even faster. Please follow us on Tribel to get all of our breaking news alerts sent straight to your phone or computer by clicking the following link: tribel.app.link/okwPIHYCIqb


Impacts of money laundering and terrorism financing: Final report




World’s Biggest Meat and Dairy Companies Spend More on Ads than Cutting Emissions — New Report

Brazilian meat giant JBS invested just 0.03 percent of annual revenues into climate measures, researchers 


Debt collector taken to court after flouting trade ban


  Whistleblower Report: Local LEOs Refuse to Share Information With FBI Due to ‘Disturbing Loss of Trust’.


Strata residents warned of inflated invoices for trades work


How the Financial Authorities Can Respond to AI Threats to Financial Stability

The best way for the authorities to respond to AI is to develop their own AI engines, set up AI-to-AI links, implement automatic standing facilities, and make use of public-private partnerships


Anthony Albanese: the weak link in the Albanese Government


Higher CEO pay in large health care systems linked to hospital consolidations, study suggests MedicalXpress (Chuck L). This is a big reason for consolidation everywhere. Odd that MedicalXpress tries to depict this as a surprise. The CEO of the selling company gets a big exit payoff. The CEO of the buyer gets a pay increase because running a bigger entity supposedly warrants a bigger comp package.


Rupert Murdoch is going to court to push his 3 more liberal kids out of his Fox and News Corp. media empires. “Murdoch’s three other children, who are said to have been blindsided by the move, have reportedly hired their own legal team to contest their father’s plans.”



Sex and Alcohol in Medieval Times: A Look into the Pleasures of the Middle Age Open Culture 


Kansas biologists find ‘super rare’ threatened species in the mouth of a hungry toad KSNT 


Breaking Up the Giants of Harm. To protect democracy and have a resilient economy, we must tackle corporate power. Again

“Governments and economic regulators have, since the 1980s, turned a blind eye to a handful of giant companies steadily gaining chokeholds in global markets. Banking, agriculture, digital technology, publishing, music, pharmaceuticals and more are dominated by firms that have grown too big, and too powerful. 

Their rising power harms consumers, workers, small businesses – and democracy. This report argues that the main regulatory tools that are supposed to protect us against the dangers of extreme corporate power – antitrust or competition policy – have been substantially ‘captured’ by monopoly interests. As a result, forcing the break up of dominant firms has fallen out of favour. 

This report calls on political leaders and regulators to take the harms of big firms on democracy and society seriously, and revive dormant recourse of forced breakups. It shows why we must break up dominant firms, when to break them up (and when not to), and how to do it. 

There is new hope: breakups are quite possible, and regulators are at last waking up to this option – though not fast enough. Report by Nicholas Shaxson and Claire Godfrey for the Balanced Economy Project. With particular thanks to Laurel Kilgour. Additional thanks to: Ian Brown, Maria Luisa Stasi, Max von Thun, Michelle Meagher, Tommaso Valletti. All errors and omissions are ours.”