The “Monopoly” leaks from the FTC and DOJ are robbing companies of what is valuable

Warren Buffett famously said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.” Buffett’s words of wisdom deserve a prominent mention given the disturbing pattern of corporate abuse by the Biden administration.

U.S. Senators, including Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell, recently wrote a letter to the Inspectors General of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) citing leaks by both companies against companies deemed too large, monopolistic or both apply. The letter was about how

“In at least 12 cases since 2023, Bloomberg News has reported that the Justice Department or the FTC were “preparing” or “ready” to take legal action before a lawsuit was filed. In fact, the same journalist reported on eleven of these cases. This pattern strongly suggests that certain DOJ and FTC officials are intentionally making public statements days or weeks before filing legal action.”

As for the leaks, it must be emphasized immediately that there is no “monopoly” in the private sector, given the dynamism that constitutes private companies and the historical certainty in all sectors of the economy that the team of top corporations is constantly changing. This is just one indication that the idea of ​​“monopoly,” no matter how fanciful compared to the real world, is a good thing.

“Monopoly” signals the discovery of a new way of serving customers that either never existed before or was previously discovered only to be dismissed as an unrealistic challenger to the existing trading order. Translated for those who need it, the impossibility that “monopoly” represents, or the reality that short-term corporate dominance represents, can reveal itself in both cases only to the extent that the “monopoly” or dominant corporation is what previously dominant (or thought to be monopolistic) has been overturned from its proverbial standpoint. Yes, “monopoly” or corporate dominance signals progress.

At the same time, the undeniable truth about the impossibility of “monopoly” or corporate dominance has not yet matched the pejoratives associated with both. Changing one’s mind is also a lengthy, years-long process, meaning that simply claiming a “monopoly” or a company that is “too big” can damage the reputation of the company accused of being either or both.

This is important because extremely successful and large companies like Google, Live Nation and Visa are unexpectedly under attack by the DOJ and FTC. Apparently both federal agencies are getting through to the corporate media, which is understandably eager to spread stories about the future, only for years and decades of work by America’s best companies to be erased in minutes. Think about what that means.

While it’s easy to show that corporate dominance is a brilliant effect of companies inventing a whole new and much better way to meet and meet leading the needs of customers, because so far the previous truth has not been accepted monolithically. And since that’s not the case, the DOJ and FTC leak amounts to governments with realistically unlimited resources using those same resources to tarnish companies’ reputations without warning and before they can mount a public relations response .

It should be noted that even if companies could If you plan a response to the government’s allegations, the damage has already been done. See Buffett. Nevertheless, they would at least have the chance to present their arguments early. Instead, the best companies in the world, having made this journey by seeing what their competition did not, had to use their rather limited resources to preserve their good name or, better yet, their most valuable and hard-won asset, which they had through hard work, defending and innovating over a very long period of time.