786: How Changes to Antitrust Laws Could Crush Innovation & Jack Up Your Prices

Brian Nichols  
Do you want Washington bureaucrats telling you how much the items you buy at the store cost? Well, based on some changes to some antitrust laws, that might be the future you can come to expect. So naturally, we got to talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, hey there folks, Brian, if you're on The Brian Nichols Show, and thank you for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode I am as always your humble vote for you live from our cardio miracle Studios here in lovely Indiana folks take control of your heart health with cardio miracle is specially designed and formulated to help support circulation, improve blood flow and of course, enhance your overall cardiovascular health. Notice more energy less fatigue better rest and gentlemen, better sexual health as well. Hint Hint wink wink transform your heart health get cardio miracle today at cardio miracle.com use code TB and S for 15% off your order. Yes, the cardio miracle difference is real. I've been using cardio miracle now for four plus months and not only have I seen the cardio miracle difference for myself, but hey, family have a history of blood pressure always being high. Well guess what? You're surely seeing the impacts for myself firsthand. I know you can do and by the way, you have nothing to lose. Except that just on no unnecessary high blood pressure. The unnecessary I guess, sadness in the bedroom. Gentlemen, get your 100% money back guaranteed offer of cardio miracle head to cardio miracle.com code TV ns 15% off your order at checkout, quite literally the best heart health supplement in the world now, for today's episode right now you need to go get your cardio miracle before the US government starts to mess with things specifically in the world of antitrust laws making what you're purchasing online more expensive to discuss that and more. Joining us today, Carl Zevo welcome The Brian Nichols Show.

Carl Szabo  
Hey Brian, you clearly you clearly are a user because you're amped up I love it. Let's Let's rock and roll. The

Brian Nichols  
cardio miracle difference, Carl get you rockin and rollin? And I'll be definitely carrying it through the episode hopefully, as we talk about antitrust laws and how that's going to be impacting everybody as they are heading to the holidays this year, or maybe not this year. But maybe next year. Talk to us about what what's going on here in the world of antitrust and where the US government specifically the DOJ and FTC, they're starting to take some looks there. Yeah.

Carl Szabo  
Okay. So I do hope everyone's amped up, because antitrust law, sounds really, really drawn, it sounds really boring, I promise you, you may think it's boring. But if you don't pay attention, you're gonna regret it, because you're gonna pay for it literally.

We've got the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, these are two three letter agencies, you probably heard it Department of Justice, this Federal Trade Commission, they essentially regulate the entire US economy, they regulate everything, whether it is a gas station, a staples, whether it is a supermarket, or convenience store, they regulate it all. And they regulate it in a pretty, pretty tough regulatory way. And tough is not good in this case. Also, both of them enforce what's called the antitrust law. So that's pretty common in the US government, rather than having, you know, paying for one agency to do something, you can have two at twice the price. And that's basically what you're seeing here with the dual enforcement authority from both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. Okay, so what does that actually mean for me? What does that actually mean for you? Antitrust law is at the center of what allows businesses to operate give you a quick example. We're going through a chips crisis right now. Right? You know,

Brian Nichols  
he's talking about microchips. Yeah, you

Carl Szabo  
can't get you can't get microchips. It was really bad you couldn't get a car because they were missing in action. It's really bad right now. You can't get like a graphics card for your your video game system because the really rare. So you had two businesses that were going to merge together. You had arm and Nvidia and they were actually going to merge and they would actually be able to make more chips more efficiently at lower price. He says, sounds like a good idea, right? No, not according to the Federal Trade Commission, they decided, well, no, we don't like that. That'll be too successful. That'll be too, too enjoyable for people. We're not going to let it happen. And so what do we know? Well, I don't know about you. You can't, I can't afford a video card for my computer right now, because they are too darn expensive. Right now, the chips are going out the door. They're flying off the shelves as we do this AI push. But if we can actually make them better, cheaper, faster. That's great for everybody. But not according to the Federal Trade Commission. They squashed that merger. Another one for everyone who's doing the flying for Thanksgiving or for Christmas. Okay, two airlines, we're gonna merge spirit. And JetBlue. Not exactly airline behemoth. I mean, spirit is is probably the most budget of airlines. JetBlue runs a couple of routes. Right now, most every route is run by either United American Airlines, Southwest or delta. And without competition in the marketplace prices keep going up. I don't know about you. My ticket prices keep going up. Well, spirit and JetBlue wanted to merge so that they could compete with the big four. Federal Trade Commission said no, we're not going to do that. And literally just this past week, the Director of the Department of Justice antitrust division said, because we blocked that merger, we're helping consumers know you're doing the exact opposite, because of JetBlue. And spirit can compete with the other big for that that's more competition at scale, that's going to push prices lower. So what is this all part of it at the end of the day? This is actually I will give give her credit. Senator Warren has done an incredible job on this. She gave this out over what more than a decade to begin changing the way the American economy operates. And antitrust is a key part of that plan. If if she can seize control of how businesses grow, how businesses merge, how how businesses decide to innovate. They can control the entire US economy. So this is not some like esoteric discussion. This is actually right at the heart of Elizabeth Warren's plan. So what did she do, she put two of her acolytes in key political positions. The first is a man by the name of Jonathan Cantor, who is running the antitrust division at the Department of Justice. And the other is the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lena Khan. She's about 34 year old, 34 years old. And neither of which neither of these individuals has worked a day in their lives in a real job, a real blue collar job. Yeah, one of them worked for a law firm. But that's a little different from making stuff by hand. Neither of them have ever signed the front of check. They've only signed the back of it. And none of them know what it's like to build a business to grow a business to deal with invoices, losses, bringing on employees, how to expand, because they've never had to lean and calm. My favorite example, she's Kimani, she's Chair of the agency that runs the entire US economy. She went straight from college to law school, then do a think tank, then to Capitol Hill for a year, and then basically went to run the Federal Trade Commission. That's not the type of person you put in charge of a bakery, let alone the entity running the entire US economy, but because both of them are acolytes of Senator Elizabeth Warren, because both of them fundamentally believe that success is sinful, that in America, anyone can make it so long as they don't make too much. They were put in these positions of power, and now they're bending over backwards to break the things that make American Great, and the things that we love, like Google, like meta, like Amazon, like life saving technology from businesses like Illumina Grail, and that's going to impact us all.

Brian Nichols  
Let's give the steel man argument, Carl, because I'm sure this is what Elizabeth Warren's acolytes will be saying, right, they'll be saying, But Karl, an organization like Amazon, like JetBlue, and spirit named the the merger name the large entity, well, once they accomplished Dun dun dun monopoly status 50 50% Plus One of the market share all of a sudden, guess what, Carl, they can raise those prices on all those poor consumers that are going to have a terrible impact on the ability for consumers to buy these different products. Heck, they're gonna they're gonna disrupt this entire market entirely. That's not fair Carl, where Are we getting this argument wrong? Yeah.

Carl Szabo  
So Lena Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission became famous because she wrote a law review paper 20 years ago, and her complaint was Amazon's prices are too low. That was that was the harm was

Brian Nichols  
I'll say it again for the audience at home who's a little slogans on

Carl Szabo  
prices are too. Too low. Yeah, that's, that's not a slip. That's not a mistake. Like man, I would like in the current economic status, I would love to have the problem of something being too too low priced. Alright,

Brian Nichols  
so the anti the anti Jimmy McMillan, instead of the prices are being are the rents too damn high, the prices are too damn low. It just seems a little counterintuitive. But she

Carl Szabo  
thought that was that was unfair, unfair to all the other poor businesses that have to compete like Walmart, like Target like Best Buy that have to compete with Amazon. Well, you know what that led to that led to those other businesses lowering their prices. And who won? You won? I won your listeners, one consumers one. What did Amazon do that she didn't like as well? Well, Amazon started making two day delivery, free. And standard. If you remember back 1015 years ago, the idea of getting a delivery in two days. Was was a pipe dream, you pay a fortune for it? Nobody. Nobody did that. Now everybody does it. I don't care. If you're going to the supermarket, you're going to target you're going to Walmart, they all give free two day delivery. And why? Because Amazon did it first. And they pushed their competitors to do it. But to Lena Khan, this is bad. And why is it bad? That really doesn't make any sense is the end of the day. It's bad because she believes it's bad. It's bad, because she built her entire legal career on the fact that Amazon is inherently bad. And therefore if that's wrong, she's wrong, and she has no foundation to stand on. So when it comes to antitrust law, it is based, it's actually pretty easy to prove. There's a lot of laws out there that are pretty darn hard to prove murder is a good example of a law that's hard to prove. Because murder, you not only have to show the body, you don't only have to show the murder weapon. You don't only have to show that the defendant used the murder weapon you have to show that they meant to kill that person into trouble is actually pretty easy. All you need some some simple facts. One, as you outlined, Brian Moore, it's called market power of monopoly status market power. It's basically you need more than about 70% of the market share. That's one, two, you're abusing that market share. And three, that is harming consumers. That's it. You have those facts. You have a slam dunk antitrust case, an easy slam dunk antitrust case that isn't being brought, and I don't know why it would be something against somebody like Ticketmaster, right? Ticketmaster clearly has the monopoly because they're the only place buy tickets. They are intentionally preventing competitors from getting into new markets by telling stadiums if you somebody else will, will shut you out completely. And it's harming consumers. I don't know about you, Ticketmaster, the website stinks. The fees keep going up and the quality keeps going down. That's a slam dunk case of antitrust law. That's how you bring a case. It's not being brought because I have no idea. And instead, it's being brought against businesses like Amazon, and famously by Google over at the Department of Justice. And the arguments there are, well, Amazon has a monopoly on online sales. That is actually part of the complaint. Now, that just does that defies logic. My wife literally today just bought a bunch of stuff from Target. I just the other day bought something from another small seller called Quincy. We shop online at dozens of different businesses all the time. Sometimes Amazon sometimes somebody else depends on who's got the best price, who's gonna get it to me fastest. And sometimes who is a store that I can return it to in person. So the argument against Amazon breaks on its first prong. Second, that they're doing something sketchy. Let's set that to the side. You have to prove all three, and that it's harming consumers. I don't know about you. But my life is better because Amazon's in my life is better because Google is in it. I use those products because they are the best because they make my life easier. And when they don't give me the stuff that I want at the best prices and fastest times the best service. I go somewhere else. I'm not locked into any of them. So antitrust law was originally created in a world where you had like the one store you could shop it but now we have all the stores all the time. And that's what's completely missed. thing is just a sense of logic. So why are they doing this? Because they can seize control over businesses, they can seize control over the economy. And if you're one of these businesses, you're going to stop trying to innovate, you're going to stop trying to grow. Because the more you grow, the more you innovate, the better you make it. The lower the prices are, the more evidence that you are allegedly giving to the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice, to destroy your business. And I'm not just making this up. So I mentioned something called aluminum rail. This was a merger. That is the most common sense merger on the planet used to be part of the same company, they kind of split apart now they were trying to get back together, and they were creating kind of life saving drugs. The CEO, who proposed this merger, ended up losing his job when it got blocked. And that sent shockwaves through the entire economy, that if you try to do what it should have been just an obvious acquisition and lose, you're gonna lose your job. And so that has a real chilling effect on acquisition. It's on mergers. And that's really dangerous. At the end of the day, what this means for everyone who's listening as prices will go up, choice will go down, and lives will be worse off than they are today. And that's the end result. That's the misery. That's the goal. For some strange reason of Lizabeth Warren.

Brian Nichols  
It sounds like a nightmare, truthfully. But I mean, here we are, you know, end of the episode, and everybody's listening is like, well, doom and gloom. Carl, thanks. They really appreciate you. Making us all feel ago, we have a big downer now. But you you I know, you're not gonna leave us hanging like that, because Rumor has it that there is some legislation in the works called a one agency act that might be able to help us out here. Tell us more about that.

Carl Szabo  
Yeah, so basically, right now, antitrust law operates on something called the consumer welfare standard. It's very long story. Antitrust law has been around for 100 years, about 50 years ago, we have this whole thing of, oh, these, I don't like that business, therefore, we're going to enforce against it. And we decided that was silly. That didn't make any sense. 50 years ago, we had something called harm to competition or significant harm to competition, which basically meant if I lower my prices, and somebody doesn't, and my competitor doesn't want to lower that I made them worse off. But that makes consumers better off. So we actually evolved our antitrust law, we grew, we became smarter. And we abandon what I call medieval antitrust, what they still have in Europe. And we said, we're going to focus on how consumers are harmed how consumers are benefited. And that actually works really darn well, because a lot of data gives us clear guidance. And it prevents kind of rogue agencies like Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, from weaponizing antitrust law to go after political opponents, like we're seeing with the suits against Amazon, and Google and many others. Okay, so the one agency act, he set it up, Brian does two important thing. It's one, as the name would imply the one agency access, why do we have two government agencies doing the same thing? It's the old adage of the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. And simultaneously, why are we as taxpayers paying for two sets of analysts two sets of lawyers when we only need one? So with the one agency Act would say, you know, what, Federal Trade Commission, you get back to actually protecting consumers and you're doing a really bad job at that right. Now, consumer frauds up 300% under the current administration, you focus on consumer fraud, Department of Justice, you go enforcing antitrust law. That's step one. Step two is it puts into Law, the consumer welfare standard, it says, You know what, we are going to make crystal clear for every enforcer of antitrust law, that we are not returning to medieval antitrust, we are not going to do what Europe does, which is 50 years behind the American goal. It's like they're basically, you know, on analog, we're on digital, we're going to stay on digital. And we're going to enshrine into the Law, the consumer welfare standard, which has been one of the greatest tools for American success in the past 50 years. So that's one agency act, everyone should get out there and support it. Senator Lee is the author of it over in the Senate. It's illogical, make sense. Stop double paying for one product, which the government loves to do, and make sure that we stay the digital path pleasing, future driven antitrust approach, and we don't return to the analog medieval antitrust of Europe or Elizabeth Warren. Karl,

Brian Nichols  
I have another quick question here before we go to final thoughts and that is, we look in we see whenever a law is passed more often than not the folks behind set laws are doing so well. In the best of intentions, the best of intentions. And yet Fast Forward 50 6070 years those laws have ended up leading to just absolutely insane unintended consequences. Now, I'm not saying that the one agency act could lead us down that path. However, do you see any red flags or anything we should be aware of when we're going down this path here? So we don't have unintended consequences? Or I guess what's ways that you'd recommend to keep our eye on the prize here? Is it something with sunsetting various laws, bureaucracies, talk to us about what your thought process is there?

Carl Szabo  
I mean, like on a macro scale, I think we should sunset every regulation every five years and force agencies to rewrite them, I thought, the idea of one wanting to out for regulations under the last administration was a great idea. at a macro level, but when it comes to the one agency Act, the reason that and you correctly identify there are probably unintended consequences that we can't see coming down the pipe. But I will tell you this right now, right now we are on the wrong course. Right now, I'm hearing time and time again, that quote, Europe is ahead of us on antitrust law, Europe is ahead of us in taking, taking action on technology, Europe is ahead of us. And that's like saying the person running off the cliff is ahead of you. And we're lagging behind. And we need to catch up. If you look at Europe, right now, not a single innovation is coming out of that entire continent. Not a single tech company is coming out of that entire continent. If you look at the history of America, whether it is electricity, the light bulb, the television, the radio, the internet, the computer, all these technological innovations came from the United States. And that's because we fundamentally believe in freedom. We fundamentally believe in the freedom to experiment, to innovate, to create, to develop and to build. That doesn't happen in Europe. So anyone who's out there saying we should be more like Europe is completely wrong and unfortunate. Like, if we don't step up and shut down with legislation, clear legislation, this rogue medieval antitrust effort from people like Senator Elizabeth, Elizabeth Warren, people like Department of Justice, Jonathan Cantor, people like FTC chair Lena Khan, we're going to end up paralyzing businesses. So that's why it is essential that we do this now. Because we need to stop this train before it completely derails.

Brian Nichols  
Better get involved in politics, otherwise, politics is gonna get involved with you. I'm saying that here on the show since 2018, and boy, oh, boy, it's pretty darn true in it. Folks, we have these conversations on The Brian Nichols Show, twice a week. And we have these specific types of conversations not to scare you not to doom and gloom, but rather to offer viable solutions to the very real problems that we face. And it's one thing to identify a problem, right? It's another thing to address said problem. And far too often we see folks more on the right side of the political aisle. And I'll classify my audience more, more or less in that that camp, we tend to point at the problem and we screen problem. But we don't really bring the solution to the table. Folks are tired of just hearing there's a problem. They actually want to know that there are folks out there who have the wherewithal to meet that problem, where it's at and address said problem with a real, practical, tangible solution. not pie in the sky stuff, right? This is real stuff we can start to do to make things better overnight. Now, will this be a magic bullet? No. Is it the magic pill? No. And there never will be a magic pill. there never will be a magic bullet. But there will be means to take incremental steps towards the right direction. And I would say that, you know, Carl, this is absolutely a step in the right direction, especially when it's making folks like Elizabeth Warren, the Pocahontas, that she is so frustrated that you're having such success and having these conversations so Carl Zeebo, please keep it up. And with that being said, for your final thoughts, what do you have for us? And also, where can folks go ahead and continue the conversation with you on social media? Would they want to reach out?

Carl Szabo  
Yeah, I mean, my final thoughts are, look, this is the greatest nation on the planet I listed through all the amazing innovations inventions, that came from the United States of America. We once upon a time, you know, you you had the Renaissance and what killed it the dark ages what was the dark ages about it was about government controlling everything. You couldn't even farm land once the Lord let you do it. And how do we survive that? Well, we Got the enlightenment. And that's what our founders were doing and learning when they created the Constitution. That is the secret sauce for the United States of America is freedom. And it sounds pedantic. It sounds like something on a t shirt. I literally have a T shirt that says the word freedom. But it is the secret sauce from America is what makes us the best, the most innovative, the most creative, the most developmentally advanced nation on the planet, we must not lose that. The more power you handle the government, the more power it will seize and use against us. And antitrust is just one example. So you're exactly right, Brian, we can't just we can't just complain about something, we got to have a solution. That solution starts with things like the one agency act. And that solution starts with people not buying what we're being told. I literally had Jonathan Cantor and Lena Khan, as I said, these are super lefty progressives come out and told people that they were textual, and some people started drinking that Kool Aid. Don't buy it. Think for yourself, look at what they're doing, not just what they're saying. And when somebody says that they're a textualist, and then tries to like pass regulation through the executive branch. You know, they're not. So let's be smart. Let's get some legislation enshrined. And let's keep America the beacon that amazing, you know, guiding light on the Hill of freedom for the rest of the world.

Brian Nichols  
Carl Zevo, Vice President and General Counsel for net choice and professor of internet law at George Mason University's Scalia law school, Carl, it has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. And folks if you got some value from today's conversation, or heck, if you know some folks who would get some value from today's conversation, you know the drill, go ahead, give it a share. When you do please tag Yours truly, at beat nickels, Liberty x.com. Facebook is where you can go ahead and find yours truly, Carl working folks go ahead and reach out to

Carl Szabo  
you. Yeah, be sure to like follow and subscribe. I want to know your thoughts. So leave them in the comments below. That's kind of my job. But you can follow me on the X at Carl Zevo you can learn more about net choice at net choice.org ne te ch o ice.org. And on a lot, a lot of lawsuits, a lot of activity and we'd love to hear from you.

Brian Nichols  
And for our audio listeners Zevo SZ a b Oh and by the way for everyone listening today, all links are going to be brought up here in the show notes, Youtube description wherever it is you're consuming the episode today. find all those links right there in the show notes. And with that being said, where can you find the show? You found a somewhere so thank you for finding us but in case you want to find us somewhere else. Well for the audio version of the show. You can find it pretty much anywhere you get your favorite podcasts, Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, podcast addict, wherever it is. Just do yourself a favor, hit that subscribe button number one and number two, hit download all unplayed episodes, we have ballpark like 790 episodes of The Brian Nichols Show going all the way back to January 2018. And beyond Believe it or not, so That's option number one, option number two. Yes, we are a video show as well. So you can go ahead and find us over on the yes the traditionals YouTube rumble but also you can find the entire episodes uploaded to x.com as well as to Ben swans, sovereign s o v, r e n, which by the way, if you are joining us on sovereign wealth, congratulations, you're seeing today's episode before anyone else that's your sovereign exclusive and beyond that, if you guys want to go ahead and support the show, well, every little bit goes right back here into the program to help us pay for the electricity pay for the Internet pay for the studio space. All that and more all helps. So make a donation one time or recurring over at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash support. Also back to our cardio miracle studio sponsors. If you guys want to go ahead and take part in the cardio miracle difference, we'll make sure you head to cardio miracle.com use code TB and S for 15% off your order. But with that being said, that's all we have for you. So Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Carl Zevo we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai