Episode 268: Rich Uncle Money-Bork, Welfare Queen

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Monopolies are nothing new. Government allowing companies to merge and acquire and metastasize into monopolies, though, that is relatively new. The ideas that support monopolies come from a handful of jerks supported by other jerks, who provide trucks full of money. I focus my hairy eyeball of criticism today on one such full truck funded fuck in this Episode 268: Rich Uncle Money-Bork, Welfare Queen.

In this episode, I read from: Matt Stoller's book, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy; Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway's book, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us To Loathe Government and Love the Free Market; A Wikipedia page on Robert Bork; my computer's quickie dictionary; and Tim Wu's book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. I also recounted from memory Rebecca Stott's book, Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough. [NB: I misread Stott's last name in the show as "Scott." I apologize for the error.]

I play: Former Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, delivering a lunch keynote address at the 2022 conference on Antitrust and Competition; and Cory Doctorow, from an interview he did with On The Media on "Enshittification." Musically, KMFDM backs Doctorow with its tune "Attak"; and I close the show with Julie & Rolf & The Campfire Gang doing "Over the Rainbow".

You can find links to that material over at the show notes page at AttackAdsPodcast.Blogspot.com.

PS. Did you know the little cartoon guy with the monocle and striped pants and walrus mustache in the game Monopoly is not named Rich Uncle Money Bags? He's actually Rich Uncle Pennybags! Which is something I didn't know until I finished this episode. Oops-a-daisy!