A long long time ago, antitrust (aka, anti-monopoly) enforcement was commonplace. E.g., the Reagan Administration struck down the merger my boss arranged in 1987 because it would reduce the number of competitors in the tiny consumer packaged goods market research tracking industry from three to two. But then suddenly, by 1999, the Clinton Administration was approving the merger of the first and third biggest energy companies into ExxonMobil.
The Biden Administration has sued to prevent the book publishing industry’s Big Five from contracting to its Big Four by Penguin Random House buying Simon & Schuster.
From the New Yorker’s coverage:
A pattern of ruthless streamlining seems especially troubling in an ecosystem long marked by glaring whiteness. A 2020 joint study conducted by Lee & Low Books and Boston University revealed that seventy-six per cent of publishing employees identify as white. (All of the C.E.O.s who testified at the Prettyman federal courthouse last week are white.) Not coincidentally, the New York Times has determined that, in 2018, out of more than three thousand “widely read” authors, ninety-five per cent are white.
In reality, even greater monopsony profits would allow a shrunken number of publishers to further subsidize Diversity. But who can remember how the world really works in 2022?
