Post

Conversation

Alec Stapp
@AlecStapp
The antitrust populists have totally lost the plot: How in the world is breaking up Google going to revitalize St. Louis?
Image
Quote
Sam Haselby
@samhaselby
Zephyr Teachout on how Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, for all their charm, have fixed on zoning and environmental regulations as the problem, and missed the real story of the vast consequences of deindustrialization and baronial corporate power. washingtonmonthly.com/2025/03/17/an-
125K
Views
David Watson 🥑
Post your reply

Alec Stapp
@AlecStapp
Quote
Santi Ruiz
@rSanti97
Replying to @AlecStapp
>ask the wonk if this policy will revive the American heartland or if it's just antitrust >it's a good policy sir
4.2K
Santi Ruiz
@rSanti97
>ask the wonk if this policy will revive the American heartland or if it's just antitrust >it's a good policy sir
6.2K
Dion
@2024dion
Even in an imaginary universe where breaking up tech companies spread talent around the country it would head for boomtowns like Austin, Nashville, SLC, or Denver, not as much declining St Louis. There’s a lot that St Louis needs but this won’t do it
2.4K
Nicholas Bagley
@nicholas_bagley
They think the only kind of power that matters is corporate power. They don't acknowledge the power that other minority interests (homeowners, NIMBYs, community groups, environmentalist litigants) wield.
3K
Matt Darling 🌐🏗️
@besttrousers
Yeah, I mostly buy the argument that more stringent enforcement would be good, but the idea that it would make a noticeable difference in everyone's life (vs "we are 5% richer in aggregate") doesn't make sense to me.
802
Quinn Chasan
@QuinnChasan
To a person all of these "antitrust theory of everything" people are motivated by personal animus towards companies they don't like rather than serious policy analysis of any kind. I'm honestly surprised Teachout continues to get column space at all
504
joe sims
@Rock5491
These are not the antitrust populists, they are the antitrust ideologues. Politics, not antitrust, which to them is just another governmental tool for advancing their political objectives.
631
nws
@NeastWS
one big issue that's clear here is that they think breaking up big tech companies would lead to regional diversification because they simply don't believe that agglomeration is real. they think it's some sort of accident that talent is concentrated in certain cities!
119
David Schleicher
@ProfSchleich
They usually cite this one Phillip Longman Washington monthly piece as if it were empirical evidence. I mention this move in my piece exclusionary zoning’s confused defenders.
266
Rick von Hagn
@r_vonhagn
The real irony here is that Corning Inc’s future was saved in 2007 when Steve Job’s called up Wendell and asked if they could manufacture a durable glass screen for the iPhone. The sales from Gorilla glass literately saved the company through the great recession.
149
MarbleRabbit
@rabbit_marble
The population of St Louis had plunged from 850k in 1950 to 450k in 1980. There were a number of factors, but blaming "industrial policy of the 1980s-2020s" for it's decline is way off.
258
Saad Asad
@realsaadasad
Zoning reform shares goals with antitrust policy by reducing artificial supply constraints in housing markets. Allowing more development increases competition among builders, improving affordability.
143
Sociological Neuropathist🌍🙃🌏
@reluctantmutant
The author uses "bureaucratic behemoths" as a catch-all for barriers to wealth dispersal. Many replies to this refer to bureaucratic behemoths not explicitly mentioned between the em-dashes. This looks more like a piece of rhetoric than a policy proposal. Why the confusion?
32
justin alpert 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇬🇪🇹🇼
@JustinAlpert
I think they're saying that figuratively blowing up the coastal enclaves of the rich and wealthy would lead to entrepreneurs setting up shop in St Louis and other down on their luck towns. But I'm definitely not understanding the mechanism that drives that.
156
Virky Dormit
@Virky_Dormit
Think biggerer. If Matthew Stoller was installed of the Czar of Ma Bell, we would have 100 trillion dollars in surplus from the resulting equality.
136
SalParadise045
@SalParadise045
why wouldn't it be intuitive that corporate concentration makes wealth itself, lending, agglomeration effects, and multiplier effects being *relatively* more concentrated in the home areas of the corporate winners, making other areas relatively less well off?
145
dhanuraashi
@dhanuraashi
Quote
dhanuraashi
@dhanuraashi
Replying to @mattparlmer
This is what permanently radicalized me against anti-monopoly government action. AT&T was the greatest scientific machine in American history, and government broke it up just so prices could come down. An absolute crime. China would never break up BYD.
Show more
89
Angra Mainyu
@VoidAtoms
Underpants gnomes policy
Quote
Angra Mainyu
@VoidAtoms
Step 1: Break up Google Step 2: ??? Step 3: Rust belt revival x.com/samhaselby/sta…
203
Rob Cobb
@robcobbable
god I’d love to see someone with this set of views review Cowen’s Big Business and engage with its arguments
65
wahoowave
@wahoowave
Page & Brin buy puts on their shares and pump the tendies into the St. Lunatics. Nelly lays the cash pump into fast liquidity (as seen on the set of Country Grammar) and the locals use it to fund community businesses. This is 3D chess
58