A Request from Organized Money

Organized Money has done 30 episodes. From baby formula to supermarkets and guests like Lina Khan and Cory Doctorow, we're having the conversation America needs. Join us.

When we started Organized Money in October, our goal was to talk to business leaders about how monopolies really work, the kind of stuff you won’t find on CNBC or in most media outlets. And after 30 episodes, I think we’ve figured out how to do that.

Whether it’s leaders trying to address baby formula monopolies, not-so-accidental drug shortages, corruption in corporate procurement, the business of big law, the revolt of the pharmacists, ‘cheater sizes’ and supermarkets, tariffs and toy making, or search engines and enshittification, it’s clear we’re having an important and unique conversation about business in America . We’re also bringing on policymakers, from ex-FTC Chair Lina Khan to ex-Antitrust Division chiefs Jonathan Kanter and Doha Mekki to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes to Congressmen Jake Auchincloss and Maggie Goodlander.

We’ve heard from a lot of you, and we love getting your emails.

Now we’re asking for you to invest in this project. Organized Money takes time, effort, and money to make. Every week, Dave and I find a great guest, spend a bunch of time preparing for an interview, and then make sure that the episode sounds good. Our producers, Rock Creek Production, are wonderful, and they are professionals who edit it so you can listen without any hiccups or problems.

But talking about and exposing powerful corporations isn’t always easy, and it’s certainly not free. For the past six months, we’ve been doing this project on our own dime. Now that we have a track record, we think it’s worth it to invite you to support this podcast with a subscription. The podcast is going to remain free, there are a lot of students who listen to it, and we believe in public education as a guiding aspect of anti-monopoly work. But if you can afford it, please do subscribe. It’ll help us pay for and expand Organized Money.

We have a lot of cool plans, because we think this conversation needs to get a lot bigger. To subscribe, click here.

If you’re a student or can’t afford anything or are just coming on board, then please, just keep listening. We are honored that you spend your time with us. But if you can afford it and really want to troll monopolies, please subscribe.

Now I want to go into why this work matters, and why putting it together can be a little scary.

A few weeks ago, Dave and I got an antagonistic if boring email from a guy named Geoffrey Rush. This Geoffrey Rush was unfortunately not the Australian actor in the acclaimed film The King’s Speech; he’s the President of the Society of Utility and Regulatory Financial Analysts (SURFA), which is the trade association focused on calculating how much money electrical and gas utilities should make. Rush had heard our Organized Money episode the Pocket Picking Machine, in which utility expert Mark Ellis described in detail how these calculations end up raising the profits and costs of utilities unnecessarily.

In this email, Rush criticized our ‘erroneous’ commentary and accused Ellis of “spreading misinformation.” He invited Ellis, and cc’d me and Dave, to their financial forum, as well as to their webinars, to learn more about their wonderful work, and correct our impressions of how utility finances operate. Rush’s claims are, of course, silly. Until the 1970s, power prices went down in America; after SURFA’s founding and new methodologies to calculate returns, they started going up. And despite all the extra capital, the electric grid is far more vulnerable than it has been in years.

This image is from the article “What Went Wrong with Rate of Return Regulations?”

Yet, believe it or not, Rush’s letter actually works on most podcasters and reporters. It is unlikely you will see on CNBC the argument that Ellis put forward, because it’s just not in the interest of Wall Street investors to have the truth about market power out there. And a lot of reporters, especially corporate-friendly reporters, just don’t think it’s worth it to risk being sued by powerful interest groups, or lose advertising revenues or find out what other coercive levers monopolists have to enact their vision.

It doesn’t work on us. And the reason is that we have you. At Organized Money, we’re doing what Americans have always done when faced with monopolists and tyrants, which is to educate each other on how our society really works. So please, if you want to encourage and fortify our resolve to troll monopolists, join us with a paid subscription.

Thank you.

Matt and Dave