Organized Money

Last month, the veteran journalist Julia Angwin wrote an op-ed, “Meta Is Dying. It’s About Time,” which details the ways in which Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp have become a kind of zombie business: Think Yahoo, Myspace, and AOL after their dot-com peaks. On this episode, we invite Julia on the show to discuss her op-ed and dance on Meta's grave—just a little, because it turns out a dying company can still be a dangerous one. From Meta's money-burning forays into the metaverse, failed acquisition sprees, and gross exploitation of fraudulent ads on their marketplace, we discuss the ways Meta is losing reach and influence, while still maintaining vast power over politics and the gatekeeping of information.

Then, we pivot to talking about Julia's new book, now available for pre-order: “On Courage: How to be a Dissident in an Age of Fear,” a reported account of how dissidents from around the world fight against authoritarianism and how we can learn from them in our own struggles. Fighting autocrats doesn't just mean holding up signs and storming the capital; it can also mean small acts of resistance we can all practice in our own way to make big change in our communities.

California is known as a bastion of blue state values, but when you start to look at how the state’s legislative sausage gets made, you start to notice how completely borked America’s most populous regulatory state has become. Today on the show, we have Jamie Court, a consumer advocate and president and chairman of Consumer Watchdog, to break down California’s weirdness and some of his organization's recent work. 

First, we discuss how industries like insurance and ridesharing have captured so much of the state legislature, before honing in on how Uber specifically is running laps around its own regulators, with a fresh, bonus slush fund to boot. Then we discuss robotaxis and the role of the California insurance commissioner, currently held by the embattled Ricardo Lara, and how future commissioners might help untangle this morass. Finally, they get into why gas prices are so much higher in California than elsewhere in the United States. And no, gas taxes aren’t the whole story.

While David is out on vacation, Matt is joined by Organized Money alum Alvaro Bedoya as co-host this week. He's a former FTC commissioner and host of the new podcast The Fair Fight with Alvaro & Max.The idea for today's show came to us when Lance Lillibridge, an Iowa farmer and past president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, wrote on Facebook: 

"As a farmer, watching the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. merger debate sounds awfully familiar. A handful of dominant firms get bigger, independent businesses lose leverage, and the people actually creating the product get squeezed harder and harder. Farmers have lived this story for decades through consolidation in inputs and retail. Now more industries are starting to see the same thing happen to them."

Today on the show, we discuss the surprising commonalities between two different antitrust stories we've been following: the Paramount/Warner Bros. merger, and the decades-long squeeze of farmers in middle America. Representing farmers, we have Lance to expand on his thoughts, and representing filmmakers, we're joined by Kirby Dick, a Peabody-winning documentary filmmaker, to discuss how a concentrated economy affects their economic lives, and how to forge solidarity across industries and outlooks.

Union steamfitter Dan Osborne nearly pulled off a Senate upset in Nebraska two years ago. Now he's back, facing billionaire heir and former governor Pete Ricketts in one of the quietly critical races for Senate control.
David sat down with Osborne in Omaha to talk about what's changed and what hasn't. They cover the real squeeze on family farmers, why anti-monopoly messaging is starting to resonate with everyday voters, Citizens United, and what it actually costs a working person to run for office.
Osborne's pitch is simple: mechanics should be able to beat billionaires.

Spirit Airlines is dead, and everyone is pointing fingers: Was it the war in Iran that killed Spirit? Joe Biden's Justice Department? Antitrust regulation? Jet fuel? Lina Khan!?? Today on the show we demystify Spirit's demise with William J. McGee, Senior Fellow for Aviation and Travel at the American Economic Liberties Project. 
William is a long-time consumer advocate in the air travel space and has watched as the deregulation project which began in the 1970s has slowly whittled down competition, forming our current aviation oligopoly. William walks us through all the factors that lead to Spirit's liquidation, from jet fuel, to pricing squeeze from the big 4 airlines, to Trump's proposed bailout and creditors seeking a payout. Despite the popular narratives you might hear on CNBC, Spirit's undoing was multifaceted with history of blame going back 50 years, and many killers working in concert. 
Check out the white paper How to Fix Flying: A New Approach to Regulating the Airline Industry, by William McGee and Ganesh Sitaraman