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LINK State of the Plate 2021: High tech--or the human spirit? • Hightower Lowdown

"You can make a small fortune in agriculture these days. Problem is, you have to start with a large fortune ... This struggle pits corporate powers that view food as just another monetized commodity (no different from, say, plastic) against the people of agriculture (from farmers and artisans to cooks and eaters) who see what we eat for what it really is: sustenance for life, culture, and community. This difference between the two perspectives is profound, for they require two very different economic structures (large-scale industrialized v. family-scale and community-based), polar-opposite policymaking approaches (plutocratic v. democratic), competing natural resource goals (exploitative v. regenerative), and antithetical concepts of wealth distribution (trickle down v. percolate up) ... ""


"That’s why I don’t favor the term “anti- trust.” It’s too soft. I mean, who’s against “trust”? Anti-theft is more blunt, easily understood, and true. Americans have fought corporate dominance so hard for so long because monopoly power is nothing but organized theft: It steals our hopes for extending America’s fundamental principles of fairness and opportunity to all ... But will Joe Biden’s team crack down on the thievery? ... we don’t have to wait on recalcitrant Republicans and weak-kneed Dems in Congress to make progress. Put in place during the past 100 years, a tool shed of laws to counter monopoly power is still on the books, stored in the drawers in the FTC, FCC, SEC, Treasury, Justice, Federal Reserve, and Ag and other departments–just waiting to be put to work ... Here is a direct presidential path to long-term structural change, one that lets Joe actually be Rooseveltian by disempowering monopolistic thieves."


Question: How do you think we can organize an 'anti-theft' movement to dismantle monopoly?

AnonySchmoose 8 May 10
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4 comments

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Another answer to this is do what used to be policy. Only allow companies to occupy a minority stake in the market for that industry. Companies that exceed that must be split or otherwise broken up.

Policy like that used to be respected.
Now it seems almost impossible to reinstate such a policy or law.
Similarly, unions used to have clout, and now can't get a foothold.
I think that is because the corporations have too much power.
They'd rather rule the world than to help people even a little bit.

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I study and have work this out for the last 15 years. Through tiny house eco communities. Since housing is your first greatest expense and food is the third largest expense. You have self government and free trade with like minded people who work interwoven their life balances into a well oiled machine team.

Yeah,communes worked great........as did Communism.......

@AnneWimsey

This covid world order normal is far more outreaching dictatorship than the communism rule that I toured in USSR in the 70s. Our system of eco community is based on good sense health, freedom of thought and human rights.

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Food as commodity is what drives prices up for those foods. It's another example of Capitalism Greed that monetized a human necessity for Profit only..it needs to end.

I say it's corporationism, not capitalism. This covid world order has driven multimedia and multi inflation to the highest levels ever.

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Certainly a lot of monopolies rely on the Patent Office. Patent Office policies could be reshaped fairly quickly, including firing corrupt deadwood. Issues that come to mind: patenting living organisms, techniques developed at taxpayer expense, term of patents, the ability to renew patents by making small changes. Full disclosure: I have some animus against the PTO for allowing Lawrence Livermore to steal my preliminary patent which LL then rushed through a totally bogus and illegitimate patent covering a couple dozen claims which had zero embodiment (completely speculative and untested hypotheses). Shame on the PTO and major shame on Lawrence Livermore hacks.

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