Trying to distract myself from the idea that Scott Baio is a speaker at a Republican National Convention, I’ve read a bit about the platforms to be adopted at the conventions. In 2012, I noticed a sharp move to the right in the GOP platform. I did not notice any concomitantly sharp move to the left in the Dems’. This year, they say the GOP platform will move even more sharply to the right (is it the “right” any more, or just “lunacy”), to the point where Snopes has had to debunk a claim that it will call for abolition of national parks.
Perhaps more interesting, and possibly a gleam of light in a darkening world: word has it that the Dem platform will call, for the first time since the 1980’s, for antitrust enforcement.
This is kind of a big deal to me. For one thing, it must reflect the influence of Sanders and Warren and thus makes a real political thing out of the groundswell of support for them.
For another, it seeks to reverse a long trend in which all restriction on corporate hegemony has been consumer- rather than producer-oriented. Like it’s OK for a company to seek to monopolize its entire field, controlling supply chain, production, and distribution to the deficit of competition, as long as the monopolization leads to low, low prices (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) The original idea of trust-busting was to benefit small producers, with competitive pricing a factor, not rock-bottom prices the only goal, wielded like a license to kill. Underpricing just to drive competitors out of business is technically illegal. But late-80’s New Democrat types took enforcement off the table as a political matter.
You can blame the Reagan revolution and the DLC for the switch. You can also blame Ralph Nader and the whole idea of making “the consumer” the focus of the economy. Not that we don’t need consumer protection. But Nader helped refocus Americans’ inveterate anti-corporate, populist energy away from antitrust and toward tort. One effect has been tolerance of new forms of monopolistic practice.
“Platforms don’t mean anything,” I’ve heard. Some of the Bernie people seem to be saying two things at once: “platforms don’t mean anything” and “it’s a scandal that more of Bernie’s agenda didn’t get in the platform.” I think platforms do mean something, though not everything — and it’s true that had the Sanders critique of TPP been admitted to the platform, we’d be seeing a sharp move leftward. This isn’t that. But I can’t see how the presumptive nominee, viewed as terminally slippery anyway, could reverse her position on TPP, now, and remain viable. The antitrust statements in the platform give me some dim hope for improvement in the party’s positions.
In at The End of The World 
Your post was like a bracing slap of aftershave with its focus on policy. Not that Trump’s kids and the woman who works at his winery, and the soap opera star, and the Universal Fighting Championship executive didn’t go deep into the policies that will “make America great again.”
Anti-trust is a lost issue, but so important. I think I might have posted this link before.
http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/03/15/what-happened-to-st-louis/
It’s a long, but worth-reading, article that focuses, in part, on how the collapse of any kind of anti-trust regulations had terrible effects on cities like St. Louis.
I’d also recommend Charles Fishman’s book, The Wal-Mart Effect. It’s a great look at the effects—positive and negative–of unrestrained economies of scale.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wal-mart-effect-charles-fishman/1100623522?ean=9780143038788
There is a particularly fascinating chapter in which an executive from Toro, a company that makes lawn mowers, talks about negotiations to build a Toro-branded mower for Wal-Mart. My father used to be in this business, and so I can attest that Toro is top of the line in lawn care. This executive details his negotiations with Wal-Mart on the compromises needed to produce a lawn mower that Toro could sell at a cheap enough price point for Wal-Mart. Less steel in the mower casing. Blades that would become dull very quickly. Eventually Toro withdrew from the negotiations because they didn’t want to degrade their brand by making a junky product.
I can’t argue against low prices. You can buy a decent enough 36 inch television for around $200. So, I own five televisions. And I mostly watch Netflix and HBO Go on my iPad. When I got my first job in 1987 making computer games, I bought a half-dozen button-down shirts from L.L. Bean. I remember this because I was on a budget. This was a big purchase. Those shirts were well made. They felt good. There was a lot of cotton in them. They lasted forever. I mean, the cuffs never frayed. They held up wash after wash and ten years later when the colors finally faded a bit, I wore them on fall weekends. Oh, and they were made in the U.S. These same shirts still cost about what I paid for them in 1987, but the quality is nowhere near what they were in 1987.
Not sure what my point is. I think it’s that low prices are great, but not the sole purpose of economic policy. If you buy a shitty lawn mower and then two years later have to pay someone 30% of the purchase price to repair it, or you have to replace your shirts every three years rather than every eight, are you really saving any money?
The answer is yes, if you are living pay check to pay check because you don’t have a union or cost of living raises or job security. You just kick the cost down the road.
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That stuff about Toro sounds like what I’ve read about Walmart’s practices. No competition on quality: competition only on price. To which, yes, the answer is “yes,” if you have no choice but to kick costs down the road. Like if you work at Walmart. So it’s a nice neat circle. For Walmart. Sort of like a reductio of Fordian socialism.
I remember unwrapping an L.L. Bean mail-order purchase when I was in college, and a friend from a less privileged background than mine said something like “seems expensive.” I said, “This shirt will last me my whole life.” He said, genuinely amazed, a light dawning: “Oh…*this* is what rich people do…”
That dude now has astronomically more money than I’ll ever have. (A low bar, of course, since I wasn’t as rich he as assumed when watching me open a preppy package, but that’s a different story.) Last summer I bought some comfy, all-cotton t-shirts at Walmart. Seemed fine, cheap as hell. This summer they’re riddled with holes. One point of all this anecdote, bringing us back to the GOP convention: Trump keeps talking about steelworkers, etc. That’s in line with his nostalgia porn about “the inner cities.” He never mentions the jobs so many more Americans now have, like fast food, Walmart, etc. None of this stuff we’re talking about exists for him or his audience. Well, it *exists* for a lot of them, but he’s the solution, because he makes it all go away, just by talking.
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