How Do You Deal with Life in Times of High Industrial Concentration?
Let there be sunlight (7 min read)
I keep thinking about that recent interview from The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart revealed that when he tried to invite U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair, Lina Khan, to his AppleTV+ podcast, Apple asked him not to do it. “I wanted to have you on a podcast,” Stewart said to Khan, wide-eyed. “And Apple asked us not to do it, to have you.” The audience fell silent. So did I, watching it. “They literally said, ‘Please don’t talk to her’–having nothing to do with what you do for a living,” Stewart quipped, to laughs. He continued, “What is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to even have these conversations out in the public sphere?”
“I think it just shows one of the dangers of what happens when you concentrate so much power and so much decision-making in a small number of companies,” Khan replied. Later, she added, “When you concentrate production, that concentrates risk.”
The dangers that high industrial concentration poses on daily life, on prices, on innovation, on human agency and choice, alongside the sophisticated mechanisms companies use to avoid the enforcement of anti-monopoly laws, is nothing new, particularly in the U.S. But when companies leverage their power and products to block public discourse on the topic, it gets chilling. If we can’t discuss and debate, then how can we learn? How can we imagine? How can we begin to redesign a more distributed, equitable, less-risky economy? We can’t.
Apple abruptly canceled Stewart’s podcast, The Problem with Jon Stewart, last October, citing “creative differences” between them, i.e., tensions escalated over which topics to discuss, particularly regarding China and artificial intelligence. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Apple over an alleged swath of anticompetitive course of conduct, including the blocking of super apps, suppressing mobile cloud streaming services, excluding cross-platform messaging apps, diminishing the functionality of non-Apple smart watches, and limiting third-party digital wallets.
Stewart knew the dangers of the situation, activated the sunlight-as-disinfection mechanism by leveraging his celebrity privilege and The Daily Show forum to give Lina Khan a spotlight, and to whistleblow Apple’s refusal to invite her on his podcast. But the risks of expressing public concern over rising industrial concentration–whether it’s on a high-profile podcast, this newsletter, or an everyday conversation with a friend or colleague–have intensified over the last few years, particularly when many of us are seeking job stability, and when public discourse on these matters can be tracked, blocked, or distorted by the algorithms and products made by, well, the companies themselves.
Full disclosure, I am writing this on a MacBook. Because I appreciate the design of Apple products. Because Mac was the first computer I ever used, at six. Because my design and tech peers have culturally reinforced to me over the last decade that Apple must be carefully studied as a canonical example of how “good design is good for business.” Because it feels too daunting to switch a lifetime worth of my data and my increasingly-attention-deficit mind to another operating system. This is, of course, by design. And yet, I don’t want to live in an economy designed to let Apple, or any company, have so much power that they can silence public discourse on the matter.
I was born right after the Reagan administration reshaped the federal judiciary, from 1981 to 1988, appointing new members of the Supreme Court who were more likely to doubt the efficacy of government intervention in business affairs. With a few exceptions, including the breakup of AT&T in 1982 and the case against Microsoft in 2001, the court took a permissive stance towards companies seeking dominance.
Since then, mergers and acquisitions have multiplied, and monopolies are now embedded into nearly every aspect of daily life, from appliances to shoes to books to eyeglasses to Vitamin C to airlines to railroads to mattresses to champagne to glass bottles to candy and cowboy boots. (Ever since Cowboy Carter came out, I’ve been curious to buy a pair of cowboy boots, only to discover that four of the biggest brands are owned by Berkshire Hathaway, lol-sob.) Some of the most extreme consolidations exist in the most high-risk spaces: hospitals, health insurers, pharmaceuticals, and medical device industries, to name a few. I fear, some days, that it has become far too difficult, for my generation and younger, to even imagine our economy any other way.
Over the last thirty or so years, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Google have used mergers and acquisitions to gain market power, acquire data, and extinguish threats from potential competitors. These companies have also employed a number of tactics over the years to absorb talent and make it hard for employees to leave, which I experienced as a former designer at Google, from golden-handcuff salaries to opulent benefits (my onboarding included participating in a team game at the Google bowling alley) to your identity tied up with the company, and thus, you shall be known as a “Googler,” “Amazonian,” and discern your priorities according to a model framed as “Meta, Metamates, me.” (To be fair, ego and entitlement are rampant in tech which stifles collaboration, but these identity-based labels and frameworks only create new problems.)
In this post big-tech-glamour-era, talent is leaving, tumultuously. There’s the ongoing layoffs and retaliations, including a software engineer at Google who was fired just last week after protesting Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract, jointly held with Amazon, to provide AI and cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military. Talent is also leaving by resignation, in light of aggressive RTO policies, the slow, silent burnout, and a lack of career opportunities to innovate, particularly when innovation mutates into acquisition. Simultaneously, of course, big tech is gaining talent, due to the acquisitions, the high salaries, and the promise of high impact across a mass market of people with some of the most sophisticated tools and resources available. All of this is creating a painfully competitive job market, which can exacerbate concerns over job stability, which can make it difficult and risky to express public concern about life in these times.
Since 2017, a mere ten tech companies have acquired a total of more than 100 artificial intelligence and machine learning companies, with Apple, Accenture, and Microsoft claiming the most acquisitions. Recent recordings shared with The New York Times revealed that after using nearly every book, essay, and poem written in English available on the internet to train their AI tools last year, Meta discussed buying publishing house Simon & Schuster to procure more books. (The publishing industry, unsurprisingly, is also dominated by a small number of companies, known as the “big five,” which includes Simon & Schuster.) Employees at Meta said they had used text sources without permission and discussed using more, even if that would incite lawsuits.
I asked ChatGPT to write a joke about the dangers of monopolization in the style of Jon Stewart, to crack the tension of how utterly grim this feels, but I was left with bot banality. “Monopolies are like that one person who hogs the karaoke mic all night – they leave everyone else feeling silenced and wishing they could just change the tune." Bad joke, but at least it’s not inaccurate? At least I can still chat about high industrial concentration with a bot created by a company with a $13 billion investment and 49 percent ownership stake from Microsoft? At least, for now?
When it all feels too grim, public discourse and solidarity is where I find hope. A 2023 poll conducted by the American Economic Liberties Project found that 60 percent of people in the U.S. believe that big tech companies “have too much power in the market, which puts competitors at a disadvantage and hurts both smaller businesses and consumers.” Although this is only one poll, I find hope that this sentiment was the majority result. I find hope in the work of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and in its chair, Lina Khan. I find hope in Jon Stewart and The Daily Show’s courage to have these conversations out in the public sphere. I find hope in the fact that my bipartisan family agrees that big tech, big pharma, big cowboy boots, big anything, holds too much power in our economy. I find hope in my chats, debates, and conversations with friends and colleagues about how we’re grappling with life in times of high industrial concentration, even if we disagree. I find hope in this newsletter, and your courage to read it, and share it, if you want.
Moving towards a more distributed and equitable economy, of course, will require more than conversations and polls, but public discourse is the first step. It’s the night vision we need to navigate in the dark. Where would our democracy be without public discourse on the dangers of high industrial concentration? Our publishing and media industry? The internet? AI? These entities are already in such a fragile state that I don’t want to imagine where we would be without public discourse on these matters. Let there be sunlight.
If you enjoy this newsletter and want to further support my work as a writer and creator in the age of AI, consider subscribing, upgrading to a paid subscription, or sharing Tech Without Losing Your Soul with your friends and colleagues. <3