With a word to the wise:
"any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard."
This is a REALLY important article. We're entering the era of algorithmic fraud. FBI raids Cortland Management (corporate real estate management firm, rents out 85,000 units across 13 states) who used RealPage to increase rents nationwide by coordinating landlord pricing decisions and holding apartments off the market.
The U.S. Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are expected to announce an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation as soon as Thursday, ABC reports. Details of the suit are unclear but it follows a two-year investigation into whether the company created a monopoly over the concert ticket market. Here's more.
#Capitalism#Monopolies#Antitrust#Competition: "Capitalism's theory proceeds from the idea that we are driven by our self-interest, and that competition turns self-interest into communal sentiment. Take away the competition, and all that's left is the self-interest.
I think this is broadly true, even though it's not the main reason I oppose monopolies (I oppose monopolies because they corrupt our democracy and pauperize workers). But even if capitalism's ability to turn greed into public benefit isn't the principle that's uppermost in my mind, it's what capitalists claim to believe – and treasure.
I think that most of the right's defense of monopolies stems from cynical, bad-faith rationalizations – but there are people who've absorbed these rationalizations and find them superficially plausible. It's worth developing these critiques, for their sake."