Why Farmers and Filmmakers Both Face Monopoly

Monopoly power has penetrated nearly every sector of commerce.

Welcome to the podcast Organized Money. You can listen to today’s episode on Apple on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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While David is out on vacation, Matt is joined by Organized Money alum Alvaro Bedoya as co-host this week. He’s a former FTC commissioner and host of the new podcast The Fair Fight with Alvaro & Max.The idea for today’s show came to us when Lance Lillibridge, an Iowa farmer and past president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, wrote on Facebook:

“As a farmer, watching the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. merger debate sounds awfully familiar. A handful of dominant firms get bigger, independent businesses lose leverage, and the people actually creating the product get squeezed harder and harder. Farmers have lived this story for decades through consolidation in inputs and retail. Now more industries are starting to see the same thing happen to them.”

Today on the show, we discuss the surprising commonalities between two different antitrust stories we’ve been following: the Paramount/Warner Bros. merger, and the decades-long squeeze of farmers in middle America. Representing farmers, we have Lance to expand on his thoughts, and representing filmmakers, we’re joined by Kirby Dick, a Peabody-winning documentary filmmaker, to discuss how a concentrated economy affects their economic lives, and how to forge solidarity across industries and outlooks.

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We also provide transcripts and video for every episode. Here is last week’s episode.

Thank you so much for listening. If there’s a monopoly you’d like us to explore this year, or if you have anything else to tell us, please let us know by leaving a comment or by responding directly to this email.