While David Dayen is out on vacation, Matt Stoller 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 Lillibridge 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.
Listen via Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
