No. What I say is that the Supreme Court changed course in 1911 and limited the reach of federal antitrust law, a major about face that helped entrench corporate power. Wilson’s antitrust reforms didn’t change this outcome, but built on it & worked within it
For that reason, I conclude “the new FTC ... emerged as a project to regulate and normalize the corporate behemoths rather than dissolve them.” Here again, I am following progressive scholarship, particularly Martin Sklar, whom I cite
You can disagree with this interpretation, but it’s not a “factual error.” And again, there’s a lot of scholarship on this that this reviewer either doesn’t know or ignores
And it’s a minor point, but I don’t say the Clayton Act “established” the FTC. I say “Wilson’s legislation ... gave the FTC enforcement authority” and “set up” the FTC - as indeed the Clayton Act empowers & defines FTC enforcement, which I argue helped normalize new corp order
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A few further thoughts on the lefty unease with history on display in the @WIRED and @newrepublic write ups of my book. These folks try to take me to task for calling Woodrow Wilson a corporatist, a position the authors appear to dislike because Wilson was a Democrat
There is some irony here. The fiercest critics of Wilson as a corporatist come from progressive historians, who have argued for decades now that Wilson was basically okay w/ monopoly power & corporate power more generally
I think these historians are largely correct, and I cite some of the extensive secondary literature in the book. My lefty critics, however, don’t engage with any of this historical debate or even seem aware of it. They claim that calling Wilson a corporatist is a factual “error”
.@JoeBiden & Dems are jamming through a budget that will be full of left-wing giveaways, risks Medicare funding and gives crumbs to working people.
I’m proposing amendments to take on corporate power, which the Dems are too scared to touch. We need to start by axing tax breaks for corps that ship jobs overseas and cheat our laws every day
Then we need to take on Big Tech. We should move to block new mergers & acquisitions for the most powerful tech corps that are killing small biz
Some questions for the #BigTech moguls appearing today on the House side. @tim_cook does @Apple rely on forced Uighur labor in its downstream suppliers? Is @Apple#slavefree?
.@sundarpichai is @Google still developing a search engine for the #China market? Will you guarantee @Google will never censor on behalf of the #CCP?
Utterly false. The female victims, none of whom spoke English, were freed, not charged. The participants in the ring were charged. I’ll never forget seeing the conditions in which the victims were kept -
Not allowed to leave the parlors, forced to eat all their meals & sleep in a small room they shared with other victims. I remember the pink suitcase of one young woman who had only just arrived (from Asia via California), spoke no English, & hadn’t even had time to unpack
Before being forced into sex work. This is the exploitation you are defending. And it’s revolting
Okay, let’s get some facts straight. This article perpetuates a distorted history of Section 230 that I notice is becoming common in some quarters. Myth: Under Section 230, tech platforms & other publishers are treated the same; no special treatment nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/…
Uh, no. This mistake comes from lack of familiarity with the case law. Courts have interpreted 230 to allow platforms to alter & modify 3d party content *without being treated* like a publisher. Backpage, for example, was helping design 3d party content & still claiming immunity
In other words, under the guise of “content moderation,” tech platforms are now acting like traditional publishers but without the liability
THREAD/ Couple thoughts on these well taken points. First sentence below glosses over important tensions. Opening overseas markets/liberalizing trade on one hand & preserving peace / national security on the other are related but distinct goals
And my claim has been that in important respects, Bretton Woods, GATT placed the first in service to the second. Trade was meant to serve the end goals of national economic strength & domestic stability among member states
This is why GATT left such large areas of economy & industry untouched, and allowed nations such wide latitude in domestic regulation. It was never trade liberalizing or integration just for the sake of integration