amazon Archives - Public Seminar

Corporations

The High Cost of Cheap Corporate Utilities

Discounted energy is a backdoor subsidy

March 30, 2023 • by Pat Garofalo

Make any utility discounts for “economic development” transparent and debatable before public bodies, if they have to be allowed at all...

The High Cost of Cheap Corporate Utilities

Corporations

The Future of DC’s Antitrust Fight With Amazon

State attorneys general can challenge the damaging practices of the largest corporations in America

May 27, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Last year, Karl Racine, the attorney general for Washington, D.C., sued Amazon under the District’s antitrust laws. And his case was a novel one. While Amazon in the American zeitgeist is associated with low prices, Racine alleged that Amazon was actually using restrictive and unfair agreements with its third-party sellers ...

The Future of DC’s Antitrust Fight With Amazon

Economy

Piercing Amazon’s Veil of Secrecy

A community took on a secret Amazon deal — and won

February 22, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Usually I write about a lot of doom and gloom here, but today, it’s time for a happy story: A community in Frederick County, Maryland, caught wind of a secret agreement that was being negotiated between local leadership and Amazon to build some Amazon Web Services data centers, and made ...

Capitalism

Welcome to the Chip Wars

Intel wants another HQ2 contest, this time for chip manufacturers.

September 15, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

_____ The Amazon “HQ2” contest—in which hundreds of cities threw everything including the kitchen sink at Amazon in the hopes of landing a new facility—was a national embarrassment showing just how tight corporate America’s grip on economic development policy is (at least until New York said no way). In a recent interview with ...

Capitalism

Can We Trust Monopolies to Play Fair?

Current debates on Big Tech and antitrust law lack a clear definition of “competition”

October 19, 2020 • by Sandeep Vaheesan

----- For the anti-monopoly movement, the past three months have been exciting but sobering. In late July, the House Antitrust Subcommittee held a landmark hearing at which members of Congress forced the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to admit to business practices they would rather have stayed private. Amazon ...