![]() The FTC is now planning to exercise that long dormant authority in a game-changing way - to kick the photocopier really, really well. While that provision has gone unnoticed for too long, it’s not surprising it was written that way.” Which brings me to today’s news: the FTC has carefully reviewed the powers it has under its existing Energy Labeling Rule (you know, the rule that produces those Energystar stickers on appliances) and concluded that it can also force companies to publish repair manuals under this rule:Īs USPIRG’s Nathan Proctor told Motherboard’s Matthew Gault, “When Congress passed energy conservation policies decades ago, it included the ability to require Right to Repair access. The Biden antitrust strategy is powerful because it recognizes that every administrative agency has powers that can be brought to bear to slow down the anticompetitive flywheel that has allowed giant corporations to extract monopoly profits and then launder them into pro-monopoly policies. The EO built on the evidence compiled through the FTC’s “Nixing the Fix” report:īut it also identified that the FTC already had the power to do Right to Repair, in its existing Congressional authorization: The same month that the White House dropped is massive antitrust executive order, it also published an executive order on Right to Repair, including electronics repair: Right to Repair is a case study for the proposition that “ordinary citizens… get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.”Įnter the photocopier kickers, wearing boots. How broadly? Well, both times that the question has been on the Massachusetts ballot, there was massive participation and the measures passed with ~80% majorities:īut despite this, state-level attempts to pass R2R bills have been almost entirely crushed by a coalition of monopolists, led by Apple, including John Deere, GM, Wahl Shavers, Microsoft, Google, and many other giant corporations who want the power to tell you your property is beyond repair and must be condemned to an e-waste dump: ![]() Americans broadly and strongly support the right to fix their own stuff, or to take their stuff to the repair depot of their choice. The Right to Repair fight is a glaring example of democratic dysfunction. Here’s the FTC’s latest expert kick at the photocopier: action on Right to Repair that exercises existing authority: Her tenure has included lots of soaring rhetoric to buoy the spirits of people like me:īut it’s also included lots of extremely skillful ju-jitsu against the system, using long-neglected leverage points to Get Shit Done, rather than just grandstanding or demanding that Congress take action. Khan is a model of administrative competence and ideological coherence. There’s Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ and Lina Khan at the FTC. But Wu isn’t alone: he’s part of a trio of appointees who are all expert photocopier kickers. He’s the brilliant, driven law professor who’s gone to work as Biden’s tech antitrust czar. The White House action has Tim Wu’s fingerprints all over it. They knew where to kick the photocopier and boy did they kick it - hard. The memo opened with the kind of soaring rhetoric that I absolutely dote on, a declaration of the end of Reagonomics and its embrace of monopoly:īut the memo didn’t just offer red meat to tube-feeding activist cranks like me: it also set out 72 specific, technical activities that would make profound, material changes in the economy and improvements to the lives of every person in America, and then the administration executed every one of those actions: Ry Co v US (1958), the Bank Merger Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, and the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921: ![]() This memo was full of deep cuts, like the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, Northern Pac. Last July, the Biden admin published an Executive Order enumerating 72 actions that administrative agencies could take without any further action from Congress - dormant powers that the administration already had, but wasn’t using: The trustbusters in the Biden administration know precisely where to kick the photocopier, and they’re kicking the shit out of it. Photocopier technician: “No, it’s $5 to kick the photocopier and $70 to know where to kick it.” Office manager: “$75 just to kick the photocopier?” ![]()
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