<
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/how-monopoly-destroys-democracy/>
"My granddaughter, who is in the eighth grade, competes in a relatively new
sport known as Cheer, a kind of cross between traditional cheerleading and
competitive gymnastics. You are probably aware of Cheer, but you may not be
aware that every aspect of the sport is controlled by a corporate monopoly
called Varsity, which in turn is owned by the private equity firm Bain Capital.
As our friend Matt Stoller has reported. “Varsity controls virtually every
single tournament, including the fees, who gets invited, and through its
manipulation of the governing body for cheer, how they are organized. How did
Varsity acquire such control? Mergers. Using an array of tactics, but mostly
buying rivals starting in the early 2000s, and then accelerating into the
2010s. It bought Jam Brands in 2015, Spirit Celebrations in 2016/2017, and Epic
Brands in 2018. Varsity came to control or eliminate virtually all cheerleading
competitions, or roughly 90% of the market.”
Varsity uses that monopoly to do what monopolists always do—price-gouge
consumers. One abuse among many: If your kid competes at an out-of-town
tournament, you can only stay at an approved hotel, a practice known as
play-to-stay. Did somebody say kickbacks?
Varsity has been sued for illegal anti-competitive tactics and is now in the
process of trying to settle those suits while keeping as much control as it
can. If middle school and high school sports competitions have been taken over
by monopoly corporations, is anything safe?
My longtime hero and intellectual lodestar, Karl Polanyi, warned that in a
capitalist economy, virtually everything is capable of being turned into a
commodity. The internet age has only supercharged this tendency. As Shoshana
Zuboff wrote in her prescient 2019 book,
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,
on abuses by monopolistic platform monopolies, the product is you.
For the past five years or so, an important movement has gained momentum to
connect the revival of democracy with the revival of antitrust and the recovery
of a competitive economy.
Conventionally, the threats to democracy are mainly perils such as voter
suppression and efforts to overturn election results by fraud or force. Those
are genuine—but just as genuine is the increased corporate concentration that
destroys communities, wipes out small business, disempowers workers, and leads
to concentrations of income, wealth and power. The two forms of anti-democracy
reinforce each other"
Via Kevin O'Brien.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
