Big Food vs. the People

Posted by jruohonen 3 days ago

Comments

Comment by arthurjj 3 days ago

I'm about as hippie with my food as you can get, but this "article" is badly written propaganda that conceals more than it reveals. Half way down the article you learn that ~80% (193 out of 239) of the lawsuits are in Mexico and

> many of them were against the country’s labelling regulation. Quinto Elemento Lab reveals the companies’ arguments: that the laws were a violation of their constitutional rights

But the article doesn't say what those rights are, which makes me think the lawsuits were just

Comment by thegrim33 3 days ago

People have to learn to recognize the patterns.

In this case, lighthouse reports is an international NGO which receives on the order of ~1MM in income per year (an extremely common pattern for these NGOs), which was directly given to them by (unspecified) government grants and (unnamed) private donors (can see all this in their openly published annual reports). In exchange for the funding (80.38% of which they paid out to themselves as wages/compensation), they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.

Comment by shermantanktop 3 days ago

I think you are saying "an NGO probably has an agenda." Ok, sure, they are not robots with no opinions, and if you read even the first few sentences of that report you can see the opinion.

But if you are suggesting that this NGO is carrying water for some unspecified shadowy group that is pulling the strings, you'll need to provide some backing for that. Who has a nefarious motivation to oppose junk food?

Trial lawyers? Misguided do-gooders? Big Celery?

Comment by Cpoll 3 days ago

> motivation to oppose junk food.

On social media, making dubious claims about food science or food ingredients, then following up by selling some "clean, unprocessed, organic" product is big business. (I make no claims about this specific NGO).

Comment by munk-a 2 days ago

Yes - the obvious state of dysfunction in food regulation and lack of enforcement in that area has led to an abundance of scam supplement hawkers[1] but I don't think the right conclusion to draw from that is that all criticisms of food regulation are in bad faith - I think it's very fair to say "We should have a serious discussion about our food quality and also we need to crack down on these BS supplements". I think we're all[2] pretty well aligned on the fact that the BS supplements need the crack down but we also should introspect on why so many people are motivated to seek things like that out.

1. I personally enjoy a can of hogwater every day and am happy to give you a referral code.

2. Except those who financially benefit from hawking snake oil, of course.

Comment by dylan604 2 days ago

astroturfing works, and is only getting better/worse depending on your point of view. it used to require people to read forums and make posts manually. now, you can automate that with a bot and in multiple languages.

Comment by DrewADesign 2 days ago

It’s only bad if you value the pittance of social trust people occasionally still afford each other. That’s definitely not as cool as another vacation home and a shiny new gofast boat for some of the few thousand people in this country that actually benefit from this sort of large-scale manipulation.

Comment by mmooss 2 days ago

What are you calling astroturfing? If anything, it would be the comment upthread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49127343

Comment by dylan604 2 days ago

"On social media, making dubious claims about food science or food ingredients, then following up by selling some "

Comment by verisimi 2 days ago

> astroturfing works, and is only getting better/worse

Perhaps one would say 'increasing' or 'decreasing'?

Comment by shimman 3 days ago

So you're upset about something that hasn't happened yet?

Comment by QuantumFunnel 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by verisimi 2 days ago

If you think any human endeavour, especially those that relate to handling of money, is without an agenda, I think you'd be wrong. If you also throw in the fact that this money is not taxed, you increase nefarious incentives. And that money can be given without needing to show the names publicly, this doesn't increase comfort.

Finally, even if robots were to run these operations, someone would have to code them and own them, right?

Comment by Forgeties79 2 days ago

Unfortunately in the current political climate “NGO” is just a hop and a step away from saying “the deep state” for some people. They vaguely gesture to it and talk about it as if it’s a bogeyman.

Not saying they are specifically doing that, but I can’t confidently say they aren’t either

Comment by overtone1000 2 days ago

Up vote for Big Celery.

Comment by throwawayffffas 2 days ago

It's not they are not robots with no opinions. The agenda is the reason the organisation exists. NGOs exist to push agendas. If you are on the other side of an agenda it's always "outrageous" the government is funding them of course.

I do not know who is pushing but if you think there is not an entire industry of "healthy" alternatives for the companies in the article, you are very much mistaken.

Hell it might be the artificial sweetener industry, in the UK it's now practically impossible to buy a soda that is not full of artificial sweeteners, excluding regular coca cola, and regular red bull.

Comment by mcmcmc 2 days ago

Not all NGOs. Some are actually mission focused and spend their money and effort on direct action instead of policy or advocacy. Do you really think the purpose of Doctors Without Borders is to push an agenda? No. They provide care to those who would otherwise receive none, who would suffer and die from poverty as much as illness.

Comment by AlotOfReading 2 days ago

Unfortunately, there are actually people who believe that DWB's purpose is political. Here's an example from the Times of Israel [0].

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/doctors-without-borders-and-th...

Comment by Pay08 2 days ago

The article doesn't back up your comment.

Comment by AlotOfReading 2 days ago

I'm not sure how you can read the article and think it isn't arguing MSF/DWB is political. A few quotes:

    Hamas operatives in Gaza hospitals, failure to screen out terrorists, and politicized leadership erode the Nobel Prize-winning aid group’s claim to neutrality

    While continuing to invoke the language of medical neutrality, its rhetoric has become overtly politicized, most notably in its discourse on Israel.

    From medical neutrality to political advocacy

    This ideological position has also been reinforced at the highest level of MSF’s international leadership.

    That silence leaves the international community to ask whether MSF is advocating for Palestinians or functioning as a humanitarian façade through which terror is laundered by the moral authority of humanitarian medicine.

Comment by Pay08 1 day ago

Yes, they're saying that some members of MSF aren't neutral, which risks the perception of the whole organisation. That's a mile away from saying the organisation is political.

Comment by AlotOfReading 20 hours ago

I get what you're saying, but my opinion is that an argument that encompasses everything from local operations up the highest levels of international leadership is an argument about the entire organization.

Comment by mcmcmc 1 day ago

You can’t bomb hospitals. Period. DWB aren’t hospital admins or responsible for deciding who deserves treatment and who deserves to die. Netanyahu is a war criminal who will go down in history as a monster and a tyrant.

Comment by AlotOfReading 20 hours ago

I don't know why you're telling me this. It's not like I agree with the article. I'm offering it as an example of people who think DWB is political.

Comment by Pay08 1 day ago

You explicitly can. Like come on, the law specifically says as much.

Comment by mcmcmc 1 day ago

Literally no: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule28

The laws of war (outside jus ad bello) aren’t that complicated. Don’t shoot the medic is one every combatant benefits from.

Comment by Pay08 1 day ago

1. Medics aren't hospitals. Nor are they any other building for that matter.

2. There's literally an exception right there in the singular sentence you linked to.

Comment by mcmcmc 21 hours ago

1. Distinction without a difference. Medical facilities and personnel marked with the Red Cross are afforded the same protections.

2. Fair enough. It’s still morally wrong to do so if it’s not solely being used as a military facility.

Comment by tbugrara 2 days ago

Considering we have 0 visibility into how their decisions are made and by whom, I think it's naive to claim that an organization's publicly stated "mission" is the only incentive that organization acts on. I don't know anything about DWB, but what determines if an organization has an agenda is the leadership, not their marketing.

Comment by mcmcmc 2 days ago

This is just inaccurate. There is absolutely transparency and accountability. They generally have public tax filings and a lot of effort goes into to vetting non-profit finances and spending. Leadership are bound by non-profit tax filing requirements and their charters. They set strategy and execution, as do executives at every organization. But they don’t have free rein to do whatever they feel like.

See here for transparency, Charity Navigator is a great resource: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/133433452#beacon-report

Comment by autoexec 2 days ago

It's weird that you're skeptical about this website's motivations while seemingly less interested in the motivations behind companies spending a ton of time and money going to court to keep people from being able to know what ingredients are in their food. The efforts spent against labeling/ingredient transparency seems unjustifiable

Comment by N_Lens 2 days ago

Sir this is HN where you will find paranoid rich people more aligned with Musk & for defunding USAID

Comment by gruez 3 days ago

I don't get it, whats up with all the scare quotes when what you're describing is basically what a think tank or advocacy group does?

Comment by arjie 2 days ago

People have loved this kind of content-slop for a while now. It’s a genre of entertainment writing that has replaced celebrity gossip but is no more meaningful. I suspect it’s because there are demographics where the word ‘study’ or ‘paper’ has some cachet.

It’s true that think-tanks and advocacy groups have used the fact that a certain style of writing signals legitimacy for their own ends for quite some time now. Perhaps the realization here should be that Marlboro-paid scientists also did so and that these kinds of science cuckoo articles are common even in science.

Comment by throwway120385 2 days ago

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Comment by dfxm12 3 days ago

1MM in any currency doesn't sound like a lot, especially relative to who they're up against...

Comment by mikem170 3 days ago

Sounds like enough to pay some people for some months or a year or two - a combination of experts, part-time specialists, cotractors, etc. - to do things like gather some data via their contacts, hack together a meta-study, put out a glossy report andsome press releases, etc.

Comment by munk-a 2 days ago

I think the bigger point is that there's an overwhelming amount of money going to push the opposite narrative. A quick search revealed that Tyson alone spends well over a million annually on lobbying and I am sure the industry at large spends significantly more on this issue alone.

Comment by mikem170 2 days ago

Ah, I was more focused on the effectiveness as opposed to the quantity, i.e. if you have a million dollars, that could be decent way to spend it, given the world we live in.

I see what you are saying - that it's not enough compared to what the other side spends.

Money seems to decide too many of these things...

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by aliasxneo 2 days ago

I feel like it ends up being heavily emotion/perception driven. NGOS are "good" and "scientific reports" always tell you the truth. Combine the two and you have a recipe for serving information with reduced backlash. Compare that to "big bad corporations" and its not even a fair battle. People figured this out a long time ago and have been using it for awhile now. I feel like now more than ever a healthy dose of pessimism goes a long way towards understanding reality.

Note: I am not suggesting these labels are universally true. I'm simply commenting on what I think is the most common perception of these two groups.

Comment by ElProlactin 2 days ago

> People have to learn to recognize the patterns.

Indeed, including the pattern of your ridiculous comment.

> In this case, lighthouse reports is an international NGO which receives on the order of ~1MM in income per year (an extremely common pattern for these NGOs), which was directly given to them by (unspecified) government grants and (unnamed) private donors (can see all this in their openly published annual reports). In exchange for the funding (80.38% of which they paid out to themselves as wages/compensation), they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.

The 2025 report is here:

https://www.lighthousereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06...

Grant income was €2,499,181.

Compensation for the core team was €1,342,778. There are ~32 people listed as core team, so that works out to about €42,000/person. Salaries & wages (ostensibly for the management) was €291,661. It looks like 3 people and if that's correct, it works out to ~€97,000/person.

An additional €208,726 was paid to freelancers on projects, and it looks like they had over 10 different "projects" during the year.

Anyone with an iota of common sense can see: nobody is getting rich from this. The vast majority of people doing this type of work don't do it unless they have a non-monetary motivation/interest.

> ...they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.

Yes, "studies" like https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/syrias-stole..., which revealed that a major European NGO running children's orphanages was apparently knowingly taking in children who had been kidnapped by Bashar al-Assad in an effort to coerce their parents to cooperate with his regime.

But I'm sure you think there's a nefarious intent behind this type of reporting?

Comment by mmooss 3 days ago

Just look at their About page, which conflicts with much of the parent comment:

> international NGO

What does 'international' mean here and why do you mention it? About page: "nonprofit organisation registered in the Netherlands with ANBI (Public Benefit Organisation) status"

> ~1MM in income per year

They have a staff of over 30. They must spend much more than $1 million/year.

> In exchange for the funding (80.38% of which they paid out to themselves as wages/compensation)

They list their top salaries on the About page, which ain't much: "The salaries of our five highest paid employees range from €69,000 to €108,000 per year." Fifth highest paid employee makes €69,000.

> directly given to them by (unspecified) government grants and (unnamed) private donors

The About page lists funders by name, as well as "Media partners".

> In exchange for the funding ... they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.

Could you provide a source for that? Here's what the About page says:

"Editorial Independence is essential to all aspects of the work we do. We work with donors who do not impose conditions that restrict our journalism."

And from another page:

"We offer a collaborative space where hyper-local outlets and freelance journalists can work alongside staff from globally-recognised media. We exist to foster experiments with new formats and we pay particular attention to fresh ways of framing complex issues that will capture public attention and challenge misconceptions."

https://www.lighthousereports.com/what-we-stand-for/

EDIT: How can people on HN care that much about the source, Lighthouse? Right now three users, not including the parent commenter, are motivated enough to promote the disinformation about Lighthouse that they downvoted a mostly factual, informative comment. (I don't care about the votes; they are just evidence.) Maybe there is something I don't know about Lighthouse?

Comment by gwerbin 2 days ago

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Comment by randysalami 2 days ago

In Europe though that can be a lot, or South America. And NGO people I know are mostly idealistic college kids who want to do good. Lots of creepy guys too

Comment by mmooss 2 days ago

69,000 EUR is a lot in the Netherlands? It's a very rich country. It's hardly extravagant.

> And NGO people I know are mostly idealistic college kids who want to do good. Lots of creepy guys too

This is just gossip about anecdotes.

Comment by samueljohnson77 2 days ago

yes learning pattern is the best

Comment by titanomachy 3 days ago

I don’t know that the lack of information should lead you to assume that the Mexico lawsuits are justified. From what I’ve read, they’re contesting (among other things) the mandated black octagon on the front of packaging that says “exceso calorías” or “exceso azucáres” (excessive calories and sugar) and also bans on advertising to children. The cases that have already been decided have overwhelmingly been in favor of the government.

I realize “just” is very subjective, but I think that mandatory “excessive sugar” markers is a proportional response to the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Ultimately society has to bear the externalities of this stuff. And I think advertising any products to kids is a bit of a moral hazard.

Comment by MichaelDickens 2 days ago

> I don’t know that the lack of information should lead you to assume that the Mexico lawsuits are justified.

Gricean implicature.[1] The article wants to make the food companies look like the bad guys. If the lawsuits were clearly unjustified, the article could've made the food companies look worse by explaining the details. Since it didn't explain them, that means the lawsuits were probably justified.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicature/

Comment by arthurjj 2 days ago

Thanks for explaining what the lawsuits were about. I'm not sure how I feel about the actual case or even how effective I think black octagons will be. Apparently they were first done in Chile and had little to no long term effect [1]

My assumption that the suits were just was because the article obviously wants you to come away with a very specific conclusion, for example there is a sibling comment that seems to think these cases are about US companies. When reading clearly biased but polished, sources my default is to assume any facts they prominently leave out they did so on purpose.

[1] https://archive.is/UPdWg#selection-1493.0-1498.0

Comment by scythe 2 days ago

>nother popular argument is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know how effective Chile’s reforms were because there was no good comparison group. There’s no comparable data from a neighboring country, such as Argentina, and it may be that Chile’s children would have gained weight faster if the reforms hadn’t passed.

>It’s a valid concern, but the data show that Chile’s obesity rates weren’t rising in the years before the reform.

This last sentence is a real 'wat' moment. Practically every country has rising obesity rates. So I went looking for some data and found that over the whole population, obesity rates in Chile were rising rapidly prior to 2016. And also after 2016. If there has been any effect it's pretty small.

https://statbase.org/data/chl-prevalence-of-obesity-among-ad...

If you add in Argentina you see a bigger effect from the Argentine economic crisis at the turn of the century than you do from anything else.

Comment by Taronar 2 days ago

I have nothing of substance to add, but that term moral hazard is not being used as intended. it's a term used to describe when you spend someone else's money it actually doesnt have to do with morals.

Comment by 59percentmore 2 days ago

It's used correctly here. Advertising to children is a moral hazard because the money used to buy the advertised product comes from the parents, not the children (mostly). The point of advertising is to inform and influence a consumer, but in this case, you're manipulating someone who likely doesn't understand the costs involved, who in turn is meant to influence the actual consumer/purchaser, who are themselves cut out of the loop and potentially buying something they don't understand.

Comment by dec0dedab0de 2 days ago

That is only within the context of economics. Outside of that it is fine to use the common literal meaning. Professions don't get to dictate that their jargon is used by the rest of us, even if they coin the phrase.

Comment by tptacek 2 days ago

I don't think that's the case; "moral hazard" doesn't have a conventional colloquial meaning. If you use the term outside it's technical meaning you're just going to confuse people.

Comment by arjie 2 days ago

This particular phrase has long gone the way of “begs the question” as far as online conversations are concerned.

Comment by etdznots 2 days ago

It does the same way that “green house” has a conventional colloquial meaning, i.e. a house that’s green. If underwater basket weavers start calling their thimbles “green houses” i will continue to put those two words and quite frankly any words i want in any order that conveys meaning to others without concern for what niches might stamp their feet about it

Comment by titanomachy 2 days ago

Thanks, I’ll make sure to use the phrase correctly in the future.

Comment by throwawayffffas 2 days ago

If they didn't sue they wouldn't be doing their jobs. Coca Cola for example has had 39grams of sugar per 12ounces since the 50s. Now almost 80 years later it's suddenly excessive?

Comment by kelvinjps10 2 days ago

They used to be advertising for cigarettes, cocaine used to be sold as medicine for headaches, etc. things change and there are things that are not healthy for a society that the society itself decided

Comment by throwway120385 2 days ago

In the 50's you'd buy it in an 8-oz can. The sizes we're getting out of vending machines are pretty absurdly large for something that basically started out as a dessert you'd buy to top off your small sandwich and cup of water for lunch.

Comment by throwawayffffas 2 days ago

8-oz was glass bottles I think. 12-oz cans were a thing in the 50s, we still have 12-oz cans, there are 8-oz cans out there and the vending machines typically carry 12-oz cans or at most 16-oz bottles where I live.

Everything bigger is clearly meant to be consumed over multiple sittings or by multiple people.

I will grant you that fast food restaurants especially and restaurants in general do offer ludicrous amounts of soda for a very low price.

But the retail packaging has not really gotten larger, in a very long time.

Comment by swiftcoder 2 days ago

> Everything bigger is clearly meant to be consumed over multiple sittings or by multiple people.

The same thing happened with crisps (potato chips). The small bags that were standard when I was a kid in the 90s can now only be found in the big multipacks, while the standard size is now the old "grab bag", which is 2+ servings. Of course, since you can't buy the old size as separates anymore, everyone eats the whole grab bag these days.

I don't think the whole "multiple sittings or multiple people" thing holds up in reality.

Comment by erikerikson 2 days ago

Right at the top of the article, after the first picture:

> 239 lawsuits were filed between 2010 and 2025 across Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the US, the UK, and India against public health policies targeting food and beverages such as front of pack labelling, regulating advertising junk food to children, soda taxes, and taxes on ultra processed foods.

So the rights would be not to put health labeling on the front of their products, advertise unhealthy food to children, and be untaxed for the health externalities their products create.

Maybe the rest of the article when I read it will give me the same experience but starting to read it after reading your comment, this stuck out like a sore thumb.

[edit: nope, it's a straightforward report on cross border behaviors of food companies]

Comment by arthurjj 2 days ago

To be clear my issue is with the reporting, not the policies

Starting your article with "We expose Big Food’s 239 lawsuits against life-saving policies" especially when a quick google shows it doesn't appear to work [1], isn't good reporting

Similarly "such as" in the quoted sentence implies that they're leaving out a public policy, I have to assume it's in one of 1/5 cases the government hasn't won. But they don't talk about that

[1] https://archive.is/UPdWg#selection-1493.0-1498.0

Comment by erikerikson 2 days ago

> doesn't appear to work

I'd be sceptical of that claim. Public health interventions often have long time frames. For example the fairly successful campaign against tobacco.

> implies that they're leaving out

Maybe. Or they are just summarizing.

You seem to be working hard to find nefarious efforts in this public health messaging.

Comment by carefulfungi 2 days ago

Adversarial advocacy is core to most (western?) societies. Weird to call out the NGO here while ignoring the opposing industry groups on the other side. It's exhausting that _everything_ is litigated. But I still prefer it to authoritarianism.

Comment by arthurjj 2 days ago

> Adversarial advocacy is core to most (western?) societies... It's exhausting that _everything_ is litigated. But I still prefer it to authoritarianism.

This is definitely an great way to think about it. Us fighting about it (I hope) leads to a better outcome, even if it's frustrating at the time

Me calling out the NGO is this I hold them to a different standard industry groups. For context I give a few percentage points of my income to charity each year, including some fairly controversial ones (Sea Shepherd, Make Sunsets, Sue the Suburbs). If you're an NGO that reports things and your report is wildly biased, you're a political group that's just abusing the tax code for personal gain. Occasionally that happens but we should still call it out

Comment by MathMonkeyMan 3 days ago

Mexico is serious about junk food.

The cereal boxes in the stores don't have cute cartoon characters on them, and I tried to send somebody a box of chocolates and it got seized by customs.

Candy is labeled like cigarettes.

Comment by worik 2 days ago

Good on them. More civilised than their northern neighbors

Comment by scythe 2 days ago

>But the article doesn't say what those rights are, which makes me think the lawsuits were just

That they lost about 80% of their lawsuits throws doubt on that.

Comment by onedognight 2 days ago

When the Mexican government signed up for NSO’s spyware, who did they target? A woman who was working to pass a sugar sweetened beverage tax. And her children.

Comment by tptacek 2 days ago

Wait, this is getting pretty twisty-turny here. The premise of the story is that the food conglomerates are adversaries of the Mexican government. That's why they're suing them!

Comment by danw1979 2 days ago

Maybe Mexico got it’s shit together and started doing something about the obesity crisis and the food industry is desperately trying to keep the status quo ?

Or maybe, to paraphrase the famous tweet, this is actually a plucky band of Mexican fizzy drinks manufacturers who are determined to expose the lies of 97% of the worlds health scientists.

Comment by bazoom42 2 days ago

Doesn’t sound very hippie to assume by default, without knowing anything about the issue, that the big corporations are in the right.

Comment by diydsp 2 days ago

Sorry but are you saying the article is somehow inadequate bc it's largely about Mexico? Is Big Food expected to be an a USA-only enemy?

I urge you to re-read. there are many more important ideas there.

it's an international story. one of the main points are how much resources are wasted by international governments managing the diseases caused by bad foods and fighting these hundreds of lawsuits.

Comment by _HMCB_ 2 days ago

So the lobbying is ok in your eyes because maybe, just maybe there’s something in it (although minuscule compared to the billions upon billions made by the other side) for side B? Gotcha.

Comment by 6177c40f 2 days ago

This comment strikes me as being in bad faith: "Oh so you don't like A? You must be on the side of ¬A!"

I ask, humbly, that people please not do this. Nothing good has ever come of it.

Comment by irthomasthomas 3 days ago

"Senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist has of waiting for evidence." - 1977

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFQc2kxm9c

FYI

obesity 1977 ~14% 2026 40%+

T2 Diabetes 1977 ~3% 2026 ~12%

Comment by codemac 3 days ago

McGovern is not someone to hold up, but that's not the quote.

It was: "I would only argue that senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist does awaiting until every last shred of evidence is in"

Comment by yndoendo 3 days ago

I would say the idea aged poorly in the USA. Older generation of politicians were more welcoming to experts in their fields.

Now they reject the experts. Either to a please their voter base or for personal profit. Big grocery has more money for political donations / legal bribery.

USA Supreme Court conservative judges have ruled that expertise has no value in a ruling against protecting the environment from toxic chemicals.

Comment by arjie 2 days ago

It’s an adaptive system. Once you know that politicians can be influenced by an appropriately placed expert you can wield political power through the expert. At that point the logical incentive is for the politician to cut out the middleman and be directly influenced by you.

After all, the expert can manufacture a snail-darter on demand. Why wait for that manufactured science when you can simply deliver the outcome yourself?

To try to go back to the past is like thinking that the UK would rule the seas once more if only they returned to building sail ships of wood to do battle with.

Comment by perpetuallunch 2 days ago

Are you talking about the June 2024 decision that scraps the Chevron defence?

Comment by downrightmike 3 days ago

US had a whole agency that worked with politicians to understand technology until the 90's and Newt got rid of it.

Comment by nickff 3 days ago

The measures related to lawsuits are misleading and terrible, because of the way class-action lawsuits have incentivized lawyers to pursue dubious cases against large companies.

Comment by analog31 3 days ago

I'm not in love with the system, but it does seem like a last resort for imposing discipline on corporations. The dilemma is whether the tort system is preferable to an approach involving more regulation and enforcement.

Comment by vjvjvjvjghv 3 days ago

The tort system is too expensive and favors parties with deep pockets. Regulations and laws are more efficient. Imagine there were no laws about theft so everybody who gets something stolen from them would have to go to court.

Comment by nickff 3 days ago

I’m not saying that the lawsuits are necessarily wrong or bad (though there do seem to be many of dubious merit), just that they don’t accurately reflect the mix of safety and other problems between large and small producers.

Comment by mmooss 3 days ago

> incentivized lawyers to pursue dubious cases

I don't see it:

Class-action suits require the law firm owners (partners) to pay teams of attorneys, as well as experts, and others for years. I saw one firm rent an office and hire dozens of attorneys just to review the tens of millions of pages of documents, looking for evidence. The firm earns nothing unless and until a positive resolution. Some firms require financing to cover the cost.

Who is going to put all that on the line - not to mention their career and reputation - for a dubious case?

When the resolution comes - usually a settlement - they might not profit or not much for their years of investment and effort. If they pursue a 'dubious' case, they could lose everything - courts can even sanction them.

Targets of class action suits don't like them, of course, and try to denigrate the attorneys. What else will deter and get justice for some of the brazen fraud? The SEC? FTC? They don't have the resources or, depending on the administration, the mandate to enforce things across the entire country. Will you sue a corporation for even $10K? Try it.

Comment by worik 2 days ago

This report is about something completely different

Comment by throwawayffffas 2 days ago

Ahem this is about the companies suing the government to stop what the author thinks are regulations that would "save lives".

Comment by wombat-man 3 days ago

Don't they still need to win to get paid?

Comment by strictnein 3 days ago

They're purchasing lottery tickets that are mostly paid for by tax payers who fund the court systems.

Comment by Guvante 3 days ago

There should be publicly available data about how expensive class action lawsuits are to the court.

I would personally categorize it as as subsidized not paid for since the lawyers get nothing if they fail which is a meaningful cost.

None of this is to say I support the current system. Class action lawsuits are now designed to get settlements that save the company targeted millions or more compared to the actual damage agreed to.

And giving the lawyers millions when each litigant is lucky to get $20 is not reasonable.

Comment by BigTTYGothGF 3 days ago

The only direct costs to the taxpayers in these kinds of lawsuits are the judge's time (also the bailiff's, stenographer's, and a couple more), a slight extra load on the computer system to handle the filings, and miscellaneous wear and tear on the courtroom.

Comment by strictnein 2 days ago

That would make sense if we had infinite courts and judges, but we don't. You waiting longer for your trial date is a significant cost (justice delayed is justice denied, and all that). A jury's time is a cost. A system that enriches a select few while the rest of us get $20 off our next purchase of XYZ product is a cost. The only people receiving a major benefit aren't even the people affected by the wrongdoing.

Comment by jt2190 3 days ago

- “Purchasing”: The attorneys that are taking these cases for $0 in the hopes that they’ll get n% of $SETTLEMENT

- “paid for by tax payers who fund the court systems”. The alternative would mean taking away the right of private citizens to sue.

Comment by strictnein 3 days ago

I mean, I think you understand what I'm saying. They're externalizing the costs and internalizing the benefits. The same thing we complain about with numerous other industries.

The alternative would not be to take away the right of private citizens to sue. There is, surprisingly enough, quite a chasm between identifying that some parties are taking advantage of a system and completely shutting that system down.

Comment by jt2190 3 days ago

It sounds like you’re proposing that individuals should have to pay court costs, in full so that the “taxpayer” doesn’t have to pay the bill

Comment by strictnein 2 days ago

As a wise man once said:

> "There is, surprisingly enough, quite a chasm between identifying that some parties are taking advantage of a system and completely shutting that system down."

Comment by jt2190 2 days ago

You repeating vague claims over and over is not clarifying your point at all.

Comment by strictnein 19 hours ago

You stated "The alternative would mean taking away the right of private citizens to sue".

I stated that there is a large range of possibilities between the existing system and taking away a right to sue.

You then repeated your earlier statement, in a slightly different form, so I just repeated mine.

You keep going on about "individuals" when I'm clearly talking about trial lawyers looking to get rich, while we get $5 off our next meal at Taco Bell.

Comment by mmooss 3 days ago

How do they externalize the cost? Who is paying them? The plaintiff class-action firm pays their own costs and hopes get reimbursed when the case is resolved.

Comment by strictnein 2 days ago

Courts aren't free. Juries involve real humans.

Comment by mmooss 2 days ago

Those costs are relatively minimal, courts do charge fees (though I don't know how well that covers the court's expenses), and few class action suits go to trial - they are settled or dismissed beforehand.

Comment by strictnein 19 hours ago

Personally, I had to spend almost a week sitting in a jury pool at the courthouse. I lost about $1k in pay which was rather significant for me at the time. The lawyers did end up settling out of court though, and made $xx millions. So I guess it was all worth it in the end...

Comment by tsimionescu 3 days ago

Tax payers strictly pay for the judges' and other court personnel's salaries. The vast, vast, vast majority of the cost of any civil suit is paid for by the parties to the suit.

Comment by m463 3 days ago

aren't the court systems pretty self-funding?

Comment by dfxm12 3 days ago

No. The case can be settled out of court. This doesn't necessarily mean lawsuits are misleading or terrible as measures.

Comment by bluGill 3 days ago

Winning one and losing five is in their favor.

Comment by StilesCrisis 3 days ago

"But behind closed doors, they have taken governments to court" -- uh, I guess courtrooms technically have doors??

Comment by techterrier 2 days ago

yes, closed ones.

Comment by StilesCrisis 2 days ago

Technically correct! The best kind of correct.

Comment by Xorakios 18 hours ago

I'm okay with complaining and proposing solutions, but saying "blue" and "red" in colors for product designs is manipulating children is odd.

Comment by wxw 3 days ago

Link to the list of court cases: https://search.openaleph.org/entities/52243ef9aea6719ce8a69e...

Comment by latentframe 2 days ago

595 cumulative year of litigation is probably most important statistic here => even when governments eventually win the process itself can be delay policy for years

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by bix6 3 days ago

Support your local farmers and get a weekly CSA (community supported agriculture) box, delicious!

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by EGreg 3 days ago

Very relevant: https://magarshak.com/blog/government-and-industry-distract-...

Comment by thatmf 3 days ago

Fantastic infographics!

Comment by mathgeek 3 days ago

Came here to see if anyone was discussing the infographics, but oddly enough because I found them incredibly distracting and in that zone of "pretty to look at but taking too long to comprehend well, if at all". To each their own!

Comment by thatmf 2 days ago

Fair point! Some of them are certainly more legible than others. I thought the vending machine one was brilliant. But for instance the one with the slices of pizza... does get a little lost in its own sauce, yes :P

I just rarely see someone commit to the bit so deeply, and I think that's fun.

Comment by jruohonen 3 days ago

Ref.:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124738

Comment by throwawayffffas 2 days ago

Can you blame them? Would you sue if the government suddenly decided your industry has to pay extra taxes, or they tried to restrict your advertising?

Honestly coca cola should probably thank the UK government for the sugar tax. They are the only ones that had the courage to keep the sugar and pay the tax, making their original soda the only potable soda in the UK.

Comment by throwway120385 2 days ago

> Can you blame them? Would you sue if the government suddenly decided your industry has to pay extra taxes, or they tried to restrict your advertising?

No. I'd probably try to understand the purpose of the tax and what it was being used to fund, but a lawsuit wouldn't be my first stop. There are plenty of industries that get new taxes all the time and don't cry about it. Frankly the behavior on display here is right out of the Phillip Morris playbook on "how to keep profiting from a product you know is terrible for the people you're selling it to."

Comment by matchbok3 2 days ago

Comparing soda to cigarettes is ridiculous. People like soda, and in moderation, it is completely fine. There is no reason to single out sugary sodas to try to "solve" obesity. It is a consumer problem, not a product problem.

Comment by DangitBobby 2 days ago

We all know individual consumer action could technically make the difference between an obesity epidemic and a healthy country. We all also know that individual consumers will literally never take that action, be it health or any of the other myriad ways that corporations are fucking us over. It's time to stop suggesting it. The point of governments and other central organizations is to coordinate, because large groups of people can't coordinate, and without coordination collective action just doesn't happen.

Comment by matchbok3 2 days ago

Sorry, I don't need collective action to tell me what soda to buy, or what beverage to consume. What a silly notion. I take action myself to moderate my soda intake all the time. Your assertion that this is not possible is simply absurd.

The aspect you are missing, as always in these discussions about government regulation, is the role of parenting and family in the job of nurturing healthy lifestyles.

And no, corporations are not "fucking" anyone over. They are making something people want. The problem lies elsewhere.

Comment by tom2026hn 1 day ago

“I take action myself to moderate my soda intake all the time.” Strong personal self-control doesn’t mean public policy isn’t necessary--if most people could exercise self-control, obesity rates wouldn’t be a public health crisis.

“The aspect you’re missing...is the role of parenting and family in fostering healthy lifestyles.” Parents can’t compete with the billions of dollars corporations spend each year on advertising aimed at children.

“Corporations aren’t ‘fucking’ anyone over. They’re making something people want.” Why would they spend massive amounts on advertising to “persuade”--or even mislead--consumers if they were merely meeting existing demand?

“The problem lies elsewhere.” Regardless of where the problem lies, corporations have a responsibility not to exacerbate it through harmful marketing.

Comment by tom2026hn 1 day ago

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Comment by hamper653 2 days ago

> potable soda

There is no such thing.

> potable in the UK

Now you’re getting silly.

Comment by citizenpaul 3 days ago

Is it REALLY that hard for so many people to just stop drinking sugar water? I just don't get it. I can drink a soda or whatever once a year and thats more than enough for me, I usually don't even finish it. Is there something wrong with me or everyone else?

Comment by stronglikedan 3 days ago

Yes, it's really hard for people that already regularly drink sugar water to quit the sugar water, but it's not very hard for those that don't drink it regularly to abstain indefinitely. The reason is the gut microbome, which drives your cravings. If you regularly drink it, you have more of the types of gut bacteria that consume it, and they tell your brain to give them more. If you don't regularly drink it, you don't have enough of those types of bacteria to make a dent in your cravings. In other words, you really are what you eat (or more precisely you are what eats what you eat).

Comment by rcbdev 2 days ago

What a load of bullshit. Don't reduce human willpower and autonomy down to "hurr, durr, muh gut microbiome made me consume the slop". Of course you can refuse to give in to cravings.

Comment by flerchin 3 days ago

There's a large subsection of people that choose various vices. Gambling, drugs, alcohol (I repeat), soda and junk food. To folks that do not partake in these things, it's bizarre behavior. Literally none of those appeal to me, but there's clearly profit to be made supplying them.

Comment by program_whiz 3 days ago

Are you asking why people can't seem to stop? Or why you seem to possess that ability? Both are biologically mechanistic like all behavior. Probably similar to why some people will kill for heroine while many don't. Or maybe the same reason your gut bacteria can process certain foods others would die from (peanuts), it's environment plus biology in a complex set of local minima that cause repeated behaviors. Is it surprising a biological system optimized to gorge sugary food as late as 200 years ago struggles to stop now? You may have well starved if you ate just one helping while food was available, discipline around food would be a fools pursuit (like intentionally drinking less water than your fill at an oasis).

Comment by cogman10 3 days ago

Sugar water and junk food taste good and people like myself crave that sweet flavor.

If I'm not careful, I can easily and comfortably guzzle liters of soda in a day.

It's less a hard thing and more a "I'm on autopilot right now, I'm thirsty, and there's a can of soda in the fridge" thing. A similar thing happens with junk food. If I'm hungry, on autopilot, and it's available. I'll probably grab junk food because it's fast, convenient, and tastes good.

You are abnormal for not being able to finish 1 can of soda in a year. Nothing is wrong with you for being like that, you are simply an outlier. There's a reason why Coke is one of the most wealthy businesses in the world.

Comment by aaron695 3 days ago

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Comment by Sverigevader 3 days ago

Disclaimer: I'm highly biased.

I think sugar is an addictive substance just like coffee, and tobacco/alcohol. Sugar and coffee are easier to shake than tobacco or alcohol. If you manage to stay off of it for a few days, you're back to normal. But it's socially acceptable to have a sweet tooth so most people, like with coffee, just keep "using". Some people don't get addicted to things as easily as others. Perhaps you're just one of them?

Most of my information comes from this doctor, Robert Lustig. Here's the latest podcast he was on if you're interested: https://youtu.be/BhEsYJ6gEHY. At around the hour-mark, he starts talking about the addiction side of sugar. There are talks with him that go way back. Around 17 years IIRC.

He's a bit peculiar I suppose, and seems to be on some sort of a crusade against "big food" and "big sugar", but I really sympathize with the guy.

Comment by mathgeek 3 days ago

It is, indeed, for some people. It's a core part of why GLP-1 drugs work wonders for some people. Shutting up the "little fat person constantly telling your brain it needs food" is liberating if you have those urges.

Comment by kelvinjps10 2 days ago

The target to these tactics the companies make is children and still adults these companies don’t properly label their products, and I believe we need to make something about it

Comment by mmooss 3 days ago

Is it really that hard for people to stop doom scrolling or to stop inhaling or drinking dangerous chemicals?

They aren't selling these foods and coincidentally they are addictive. They have chosen the most addictive foods to sell - that's what makes them the most money. It turns out prune juice doesn't sell as well as soda, so that guy got fired.

Comment by 317070 3 days ago

Different people have different susceptibilities to getting addicted. And once addicted different people have different amount of brainspace left in their life to quit addictions, also depending on how hard the rest of society makes it to quit.

So, there is neither something wrong with you, nor with everyone else.

Comment by bix6 3 days ago

Free clean water isn’t available many places so would you rather spend your money on water or a sugar hit? I’m with you on water though it’s so delicious.

Comment by deely3 3 days ago

Good for you. Can you please convince anyone to do the same?

Comment by tom2026hn 2 days ago

If someone wants to cut out sugar or addictive foods, they can try making those foods harder to get—sometimes it’s just a matter of eating out of habit, and you don’t necessarily need to have them that often. As for Coke, I drink about 6 to 12 cans a year, all during the hottest part of the year; the rest of the time, I hardly ever think about it.

Comment by connor11528 3 days ago

america has a monopoly problem

Comment by rootusrootus 3 days ago

Indeed if we could solve one thing with our gov't, I'd want it to be antitrust enforcement. For an ostensibly free market society we seem awfully willing to accept it being anything but.

Comment by m463 3 days ago

I'd like corporations (bodies) to be prosecuted like human bodies, where bad behavior was noted, you got a record, and punishment increased through fines, restrictions all the way to forms of incarceration, and even the death penalty.

Comment by sellmesoap 3 days ago

Alright, this week it's the marketing departments turn in jail, see you guys back here next week when it's HRs turn!

Comment by triceratops 3 days ago

On the bright side, an ironclad excuse to skip the team offsite /s

Comment by perpetuallunch 2 days ago

Maybe they could incascerate the plant and equipment.

This week half the photocopiers are in foster care (prison).

Next week, half the backup generators.

Comment by fragmede 2 days ago

It's funny but a corporate death penalty, where executives had a lifetime ban of ever being an executive in a company ever again would go a long way.

Comment by perpetuallunch 1 day ago

That sounds entirely reasonable.

Comment by kibwen 3 days ago

Free markets tend to produce monopolies. You know how economies of scale are a thing? That's another way of saying that small companies lose to large companies at scale. "Disruption" or "agility" is the only thing that small companies have going for them, but once the monopolist gets large enough they can just buy up any upstarts and keep the market all to themselves forever. This is why you require governments to periodically shake the snowglobe and restore markets to competitiveness... until the monopolist gets big enough that they just buy the government, anyway.

Comment by Straw 3 days ago

No, governments tend to produce monopolies.

Can you find true monopolies in the free market, in the last 100 years, that have lasted for at least 20 years, without some kind of government backing/suppression of competitors? I only know of one.

Things only count as monopolies if they have monopoly pricing power; Google is not a monopoly, they cannot even charge 1 cent per search.

In practice, despite economies of scale, large companies age and become bloated, inflexible, etc. So there's typically plenty of room for new companies to compete.

If a monopolist buys all upstarts, then that creates an even stronger incentive to make competing businesses! You don't even have to succeed in the market, you just have to get bought up! The more they buy out, there stronger incentive there will be to enter the market. No one can do this indefinitely- except with some kind of government support- say a regulation that makes it difficult to enter the market.

Comment by cogman10 3 days ago

> Can you find true monopolies in the free market

Your definition of monopoly isn't what people are commonly talking about when they say "monopoly".

Granted, you have the correct definition, just not the colloquial one.

What people say "monopoly" what they are really talking about is industries captured by few big players. For example, grocery stores. There's not a true monopoly there but there is damage done by the fact that there's very little competition in that space. Both to consumers and product manufacturers. These big grocery chains use their leverage to get prices smaller chains can't compete with. Further, they have been trying to consolidate (see Kroger Albertsons merger) to further exert anti-trust behaviors.

A clear example of the damage done by this sort of hyper consolidation is what's happened to the memory market. Multiple times the 3 big players have been hit with anti-trust lawsuits because of the price fixing they've engaged in. It's true they are not true monopolies, but they exert exactly the problematic behavior of a true monopoly. It's very unlikely that the free market would ever fix this.

Comment by Straw 2 days ago

Groceries are an excellent example of competition. Profit margins on groceries are razor thin. The large chain leverage results in lower consumer prices. Large grocery chains don't have anomalously high profits, ROI, or really anything that would indicate harm to consumers. Groceries are cheaper than ever compared to median wages.

The memory market is international, its not clear what anti trust even means here. Even so, look at the price of memory over time, say the last 20-30 years. Adjust for inflation and its even more extreme. Sure, it is up recently with AI demand, but the general trend is drastically reducing cost and increasing quality. Memory technologies are evolving quickly and it's a capital-intensive business, so its not surprising that there are a few leaders. There's no guarantee of instant competition in free markets.

Cartels rarely last long without enforcement. There's such a strong incentive to defect and secretly sell more under the table. Even OPEC could not maintain one. Memory right now is expensive simply because demand outstrips supply and there is significant capital investment and lead time to increasing supply.

Comment by cogman10 2 days ago

> Large grocery chains don't have anomalously high profits

Define "anomalously" What do you mean by this? You'd admit that large grocery chains do have high profits right? Even with "razor thin" margins.

Large grocery outlets do love to claim that their margins are razor thin yet somehow each of them are some of the wealthiest in the nation. How can that be if they are so good for the customers?

> its not clear what anti trust even means here.

Price fixing [1]

> There's such a strong incentive to defect and secretly sell more under the table. Even OPEC could not maintain one.

OPEC is the exception, not the rule. And enforcement is a lot easier when there are fewer players. The reason OPEC has a hard time enforcing it's prices is because there are are too many players. Were they standard oil, they'd almost certainly be able to maintain their prices and discipline.

Cartels very rarely dissolve on their own. The free market naturally tends towards consolidation and cartels forming.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing

Comment by Straw 2 days ago

Grocery store profits aren't larger than any other industry. Nor are they larger than in the past. Large grocery store chains do not have high profit margins. Sure, the total profit may be large if you run 1000 grocery stores.

What do you mean by they are the wealthiest in the nation? None of the richest people in the world built their fortunes on groceries?

Price fixing is a phenomenon. Anti trust is a policy agenda. What entity would carry out the proposed agenda, when the parties supposedly fixing are in different countries?

How long did the fixing agreement last successfuly? DRAM has famously gone through booms and busts where supply outstripped demand and led to very cheap prices and no profits.

OPEC worked about as well as any cartel. Could you give an example of a cartel maintaining their position without heavy government help? Even the drug cartels in mexico, with extreme willingness to coerce, cannot maintain a monopoly and have competed drug prices in the US down heavily! If you consider memory a cartel, then it has only remained so by... drastically improving the quality and reducing the cost of its product? Hardly a problem.

Comment by cogman10 2 days ago

> None of the richest people in the world built their fortunes on groceries?

The Waltons (Walmart) aren't some of the richest people in the world?

> What entity would carry out the proposed agenda, when the parties supposedly fixing are in different countries?

Few can, to be fair. The US and the EU are some of the few that can due to the size of the markets underneath them. A company getting excluded from their markets is enough for them not to want to risk anti-trust enforcement.

China can to some extent as well, which is why you see the likes of Hollywood bending over backwards to meet Chinese standards in media. It's a large enough market that they don't want to miss out.

> How long did the fixing agreement last successfuly?

I see no reason they wouldn't have gone on indefinitely. The only thing that ultimately ended them and caused the busts was antitrust enforcement.

> Could you give an example of a cartel maintaining their position without heavy government help?

Modern examples are few and far between, and that's because the historic examples failed to use their money to buy off enough government officials to cement their positions.

Standard Oil would be an example of this. They did spend money to avoid being regulated, but they didn't ultimately use that to push policies and laws to cement their position in the market. They simply bought out competitors as they rose up.

Bell Labs/AT&T is another example that didn't use their influence to cement their position. They got their monopoly fairly naturally. The closest you could argue is they got utilities access laws passed by the government.

An even older example would be the East India Company. They became so big that they actually took over land and established themselves as a government. Basically the only reason they fell was because of an armed rebellion.

Comment by avazhi 2 days ago

> You'd admit that large grocery chains do have high profits right? Even with "razor thin" margins. Large grocery outlets do love to claim that their margins are razor thin yet somehow each of them are some of the wealthiest in the nation. How can that be if they are so good for the customers?

No, grocery chains don't have high profits.

https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/20/dont-blame-sup...

"First, consider margins. These are often wafer-thin. American supermarkets like Kroger and Albertsons collected just 1% of their sales in operating profits last year. Even Walmart, with its 4% margin, hardly looks like it is milking customers. It is a similar story in Britain and France, with margins only a little fatter in Australia and Canada. The real cream has traditionally been elsewhere in the supply chain, such as with the big food manufacturers. Over the past decade the average operating margin across General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez and PepsiCo has been 13%."

Do you know what an operating margin is? If you don't you can easily find out. Your comment is wrong in its entirety and you could have very easily discovered this before subjecting others to it.

"yet somehow each of them are some of the wealthiest in the nation."

Who even knows what on earth you meant by this. Some of the wealthiest what, businesses? That's something certain large grocers and some other businesses get with scale - it doesn't mean a business necessarily has 'high profits,' which was your entire thesis.

Looking at your comment history, you have a tendency to state things with a high degree of confidence when you often know very little about them. You should strive to do better - perhaps research and read more and type less.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by vjvjvjvjghv 3 days ago

What you are describing sounds great in theory, but the real world doesn’t work like that.

In more and more areas the obstacle to enter a market is not regulations but money.

Comment by Straw 2 days ago

I'd say exactly the same about antitrust. Can you give an example of a lasting monopoly not backed by some government policy? At any point in the last 150 years?

Comment by vjvjvjvjghv 2 days ago

Can you give examples of these government policies?

Comment by Straw 2 days ago

Sure. The most straightforward example would be utilities in much of the US. Companies like PG&E are literally granted a monopoly in a region.

Another example would be epipens. There is a competitor, but unlike most drugs, if the doctor prescribes you an epipen, the pharmacy can't give you a generic substitute, it must be name brand.

Tesla is being heavily protected from Chinese competitors by US auto tariffs.

Credit Ratings agencies (in large part responsible for 2008 crash) have direct government granted status.

Taxi medallions, Jones act, sugar tariffs.

These are the ones that come to mind right away, but there's a whole slew of stuff- any regulation that's easier for a big business to comply with than a small competitor, for example. Even worse if the big business manages to influence the regulation to enhance this effect. Personally I'd guess Boeing is an example of this; yes, aviation does have high capital costs but I suspect that FAA regulation + Boeing cozy relationship makes it much harder for new entrants. Of course, this isn't to say the FAA regulation isn't helpful or doesn't improve air safety, just that it also has this effect.

Comment by pphysch 3 days ago

Exactly. If you ask anyone on the street, "is it easier for a fast food worker or a business-owning millionaire to make their next million dollars?", common sense will prevail.

Money begets money (and power). It doesn't require an economics degree to understand this positive feedback loop.

Comment by fragmede 2 days ago

Wouldn't that be more of a negative feedback loop? My signals and systems class was a long time ago, but a system that throttles to extremes is negative, not positive feedback.

Comment by pphysch 1 day ago

Nope, negative feedback is dampening and stabilizing. Antitrust enforcement represents a healthy negative feedback for the natural runaway concentration of wealth and power.

Comment by Straw 3 days ago

If you wanted to do the most to improve competitiveness possible, by far the most effective strategy would be free trade. Trade barriers prevent competition from overseas, making monopolies much easier to maintain.

Comment by mathgeek 3 days ago

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends on the barriers to entry as an example. An effective anti-monopoly strategy needs different tools at different times.

Comment by worik 2 days ago

> Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

An economist....

Comment by cogman10 3 days ago

Free trade has little impact on monopolies. The biggest corporations in the US are international and the massive amount of free trade we've had from Reagan to Trump's second term has only resulted in these companies becoming even more consolidated.

What free trade enables is for monopolistic corporations to take control of foreign resources to circumvent and undermine US labor laws. They'll buy the rights to the same crops growing in Mexico or Candida for cheaper than the US to undercut US farmers. None of that changes the price they are selling goods in the US and in fact ultimately results in prices going up in both Mexico and Candida.

Comment by Straw 2 days ago

You claim that a law that prevents or hinders you from making transactions with certain parties, while privileging other parties by exempting them from these restrictions, doesn't make it easier for the privileged parties to form a monopoly?

Comment by cogman10 2 days ago

No, I claim that we spend 3 decades of free trade and we didn't see corporations get smaller. Republicans and Democrats had a free trade policy since Carter really.

If it were true that free trade results in more competition, then you'd expect that there would be more companies competing, not fewer. We see fewer companies.

Your theory has been tested in reality and it fails.

Comment by throwway120385 2 days ago

Free trade isn't the issue, the issue is monopolies. When there were 60 or 80 companies all in the same industry but in different states or counties, the economy was much healthier because those 80 companies had to have their own independent staff for functions like accounting. And they also had to compete with each other at the edges of their jurisdictions. None of them could become powerful enough to set policy across the nation and if a corporate policy was beneficial to the consumer, one of their competitors could enact it to compete. Now that there are only 2 or 3 nationwide providers of most things, those companies can just set their own policies whether hostile or not and the only control we have is regulation.

If you want to eliminate regulation and promote free trade then the best thing you can do is oppose the formation of monopolies and encourage enforcement of anti-trust everywhere.

Comment by Straw 2 days ago

There are many other factors affecting the size of corporations. For example, a significant increase in the amount of regulation in other sectors of the economy.

More importantly, the raw number of corporations isn't how you measure a monopoly. Profit margins are the key sign of monopoly pricing- but in practice, corporate profit margins have been relatively stable in percentage terms over time. Prices for virtually all consumer goods are way down in real terms over the last 30 years.

In particular, trade might get you more competition with fewer corporations, but via competition with overseas producers. These might show up as a few importing corporations, representing a whole slew of competitors abroad.

Comment by stronglikedan 3 days ago

> For an ostensibly free market society we seem awfully willing to accept it being anything but.

We were, but it has devolved into crony capitalism. I don't think it's too late to revert, but I do doubt we'll ever get our shit together and fix it.

Comment by arthurjj 3 days ago

The article says 80% of the lawsuits were in Mexico and ~3% were in America.

Comment by artisinal 3 days ago

In many European countries, the largest restaurant chain is American. Not great.

Comment by bluGill 3 days ago

You seem to be assuming chains are good. I prefer the one location restaurant myself, but by definition they will never be the largest chain.

Comment by cbg0 3 days ago

McDonald's might be the largest restaurant chain in Italy but that doesn't really mean much given how many small restaurants the country has with high quality food.

Comment by artisinal 3 days ago

Also due to food standards a random McDonalds in a random village in Italy will have significantly better food than most restaurants in the US. The Italian McDonalds will use locally sourced fresh produce straight from the farm, cooked by high-end chefs to create a very good tasting meal that is super healthy and good for you.

There is a reason those Italians live so long. Their McDonalds is better than others. It is literally illegal to sell McDonalds foods the way Americans make it.

Comment by rootusrootus 3 days ago

> It is literally illegal to sell McDonalds foods the way Americans make it.

You should see what they do in the UK. Looks tasty, but healthy it certainly is not.

Comment by vjvjvjvjghv 3 days ago

“ cooked by high-end chefs”

They aren’t high end chefs. They are normal workers that aren’t squeezed by their company to produce food in the cheapest way

Comment by artisinal 2 days ago

All chefs at McDonalds Italy are highly trained skilled professionals with a passion to provide everyone in their country with healthy meals.

Comment by xXSLAYERXx 3 days ago

I believe this is the second best time to start a business in America. The first was colonial times.

Comment by IncreasePosts 3 days ago

I think chess and scrabble are more popular here

Comment by stronglikedan 3 days ago

it's an extension of our crony capitalism problem, where the free market is just an illusion

Comment by dhosek 3 days ago

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Comment by black_13 3 days ago

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Comment by dabbz 3 days ago

True, we have way too many thematic versions of Monopoly. I'm still missing so many copies.