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Larry Ellison is using his bags to purchase lies and silence. No economy can be in true equilibrium when the consumers send profits to be spent in unforeseen a

by gmd63 9mo ago

Larry Ellison is using his bags to purchase lies and silence. No economy can be in true equilibrium when the consumers send profits to be spent in unforeseen and unrelated ways like this. Every purchase carries potentially immense future costs that are almost completely opaque. Free market maximalists need to confront this fact before praying at the altar of complete deregulation, and every consumer should pay more attention to who they are buying from.

jaredklewis 9mo ago
Sorry what regulation in particular are you thinking about here? There’s no logical anti-trust angle I can think of. I mean of course I think the outcome here is bad, but I’m struggling to think of a kind of regulation that could have prevented it that isn’t completely insane. Edit: Listen everyone, it sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem. Adding more regulations is not going to suddenly make the FTC act right; we have thousands of regulations already on the books and if they wanted to do something, they could.
- tantalor 9mo ago
  In July 2025, the Ellisons bought CBS (Paramount) through Skydance. This was approved by Trump's FTC. The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. They aren't doing their job.
  - vunderba 9mo ago
    Agreed. Let's also not forget that a large part of the reason that the Skydance/Paramount merger likely went through in the first place was because Paramount paid off Trump to the tune of 16 million USD by settling a lawsuit in which he alleged deliberate deception during his Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5290171/trump-lawsuit-paramount-cbs-60-minutes-kamala-harris https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5290171/trump-lawsuit-p...
  - jaredklewis 9mo ago
    What existing regulation are you accusing the FTC of not enforcing? Is it illegal for a rich person to buy a company? It's not like he's cornering TV news or something. He's a minority player by any measurement (revenue, viewers, etc..). Not a fan of Trump, Ellison, or obviously this expose being buried, but I am just trying to understand what the FTC did wrong. > The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US. But whatever, it just seems like what you want is not more regulation (Trump is adding lots of regulation on solar and wind, that's good right?), but different regulators. It sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then makes them governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem.
    - tantalor 9mo ago
      > I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US. Okay well I basically copy/pasted from ftc.gov: The FTC’s Bureau of Competition enforces the nation's antitrust laws, which form the foundation of our free market economy. The antitrust laws promote the interests of consumers; they support unfettered markets and result in lower prices and more choices. https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competition https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi... The Bureau of Competition is committed to preventing mergers and acquisitions that are likely to reduce competition and lead to higher prices, lower quality goods or services, or less innovation https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review
  - burningChrome 9mo ago
    Were you saying the same thing in 2014 and 2015 too? According to data from Thomson Reuters, 2015 is set to be the biggest year ever (once the planned deals close) in worldwide dealmaking, with $4.7 trillion in announced mergers and acquisitions—up 42 percent from 2014, and beating the previous record of $4.4 trillion in 2007. The year stands out, not just for the total value of the deals but for the number of so-called mega-deals, which refers to any deal that exceeds $5 billion. Just in the last three months, notable mega-deals include AB Inbev’s acquisition of SABMiller, creating a $104 billion beverage company; Pfizer and Allergan’s announced a $160 billion merger; and the chemical companies DuPont and Dow Chemical Company’s plans to unite as a $130 billion company. Thomson Reuters counted 137 mega-deals last year, which accounted for 52 percent of the year’s overall M&A value.
    - tantalor 9mo ago
      whataboutism
  - htek 9mo ago
    The FTC has not done its job since after the Microsoft consent decree and economists have claimed that up is down and somehow preventing market monopolies is bad for the economy.
- Psillisp 9mo ago
  [flagged]
- maxerickson 9mo ago
  The whole point of granting limited liability is that it enables things that benefit society. So if something doesn't benefit society, don't extend that grant to it.
- ajross 9mo ago
  Your prior seems to be that the Trump administration is operating in good faith and that they would naturally be predisposed to allow the merger, being free market republicans and all. That's not the accusation at hand. The contention is that the Trump administration is threatening to block the merger (corruptly, in opposition to their republican proclivities) unless the news arm of the merged company is operated in a partisan way. And the evidence for that is that Ellison walked in, threw out CBS News's pre-existing leadership, and brought in a reasonably-well-known-but-still-not-celebrity-enough-to-be-independent partisan republican voice to run it. And now that she's there, she's clearly operating the news room in a partisan way. Seems like a pretty convincing theory to me.
- UltraSane 9mo ago
  No one should have a net worth greater than $1 billion
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
api 9mo ago
What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to enrich yourself with contracts using taxpayer funds? There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market. The Trump administration is absolutely not pro free market. They're putting fingers on the scale all over the place, taking Federal positions in private companies, taking literal bribes for regulatory favors, influencing the selection of executives and board members, and using the power of the state to attack privately owned companies for platforming speech they don't like (like this 60 Minutes segment, made by a private company). Trump/MAGA looks a lot more like the CCP than anything else. Of course if you pay attention to the discourse, MAGA and national conservatism are an explicit repudiation of Reagan/Clinton "neoliberalism" and "libertarian conservatism." They explicitly support a large administrative state that centrally plans the economy and culture, just one they run and use to push right wing and nationalist agendas. I remember saying back during the Bush years: if the right is forced to choose between liberty and cultural conservatism, they will throw out liberty. The right only supports the freedom to do what they think people should be doing. (Yes, there are similar attitudes in some parts of the left too. There are not many principled defenders of individual liberty.) Edit: I'm really just arguing that we should call things what they are. Calling MAGA's CCP-like state capitalism a free market is like calling Bernie Sanders or Mamdani communism (they're socialists, not communists, these are not the same) or calling old school conservative republicans fascists. Words mean things.
- the_gastropod 9mo ago
  I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will.
  - api 9mo ago
    I don't entirely disagree, but also note that the extreme wealth of both these guys is at least partly a result of state spending not pure private market forces. Oracle has always had a huge presence in government. Large companies too, but Federal use has really helped keep them afloat as open source and competing products that are far cheaper have eaten their lunch. For Musk the case is even more extreme. Tesla's early growth was bankrolled by EV credits and carbon offsets, which were state programs, and SpaceX is a result of both Federal funding and direct R&D transfer from NASA to SpaceX. The latter was mostly uncompensated. NASA just handed over decades of publicly funded R&D. These two would probably be rich without the state, but would they be this rich? The same was true back in the original Gilded Age. The "robber barons" were built by railroad and other infrastructure subsidies. However I do agree that private wealth beyond a certain point begins to pose a risk to democracy and the rule of law. It's a major weakness in libertarian schemes that call for a "separation of economy and state." That's a much, much harder wall to maintain than separation of church and state. Enough money can buy politicians and elections.
dredmorbius 9mo ago
"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes said, is power." -- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776 More significantly, one of the first discussions within the text of precisely what wealth is (on which Smith has several, and occasionally inconsistent, answers, and which he seems to think of as more a flow than a stock.) One of Smith's principle complaints in his text was what we now call "market failures" and "regulatory capture". <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_5 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...> <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/>

by gmd63 9mo ago

jaredklewis 9mo ago

Sorry what regulation in particular are you thinking about here? There’s no logical anti-trust angle I can think of. I mean of course I think the outcome here is bad, but I’m struggling to think of a kind of regulation that could have prevented it that isn’t completely insane. Edit: Listen everyone, it sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem. Adding more regulations is not going to suddenly make the FTC act right; we have thousands of regulations already on the books and if they wanted to do something, they could.

tantalor 9mo ago
In July 2025, the Ellisons bought CBS (Paramount) through Skydance. This was approved by Trump's FTC. The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. They aren't doing their job.
- vunderba 9mo ago
  Agreed. Let's also not forget that a large part of the reason that the Skydance/Paramount merger likely went through in the first place was because Paramount paid off Trump to the tune of 16 million USD by settling a lawsuit in which he alleged deliberate deception during his Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5290171/trump-lawsuit-paramount-cbs-60-minutes-kamala-harris https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5290171/trump-lawsuit-p...
- jaredklewis 9mo ago
  What existing regulation are you accusing the FTC of not enforcing? Is it illegal for a rich person to buy a company? It's not like he's cornering TV news or something. He's a minority player by any measurement (revenue, viewers, etc..). Not a fan of Trump, Ellison, or obviously this expose being buried, but I am just trying to understand what the FTC did wrong. > The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US. But whatever, it just seems like what you want is not more regulation (Trump is adding lots of regulation on solar and wind, that's good right?), but different regulators. It sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then makes them governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem.
  - tantalor 9mo ago
    > I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US. Okay well I basically copy/pasted from ftc.gov: The FTC’s Bureau of Competition enforces the nation's antitrust laws, which form the foundation of our free market economy. The antitrust laws promote the interests of consumers; they support unfettered markets and result in lower prices and more choices. https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competition https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi... The Bureau of Competition is committed to preventing mergers and acquisitions that are likely to reduce competition and lead to higher prices, lower quality goods or services, or less innovation https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review
- burningChrome 9mo ago
  Were you saying the same thing in 2014 and 2015 too? According to data from Thomson Reuters, 2015 is set to be the biggest year ever (once the planned deals close) in worldwide dealmaking, with $4.7 trillion in announced mergers and acquisitions—up 42 percent from 2014, and beating the previous record of $4.4 trillion in 2007. The year stands out, not just for the total value of the deals but for the number of so-called mega-deals, which refers to any deal that exceeds $5 billion. Just in the last three months, notable mega-deals include AB Inbev’s acquisition of SABMiller, creating a $104 billion beverage company; Pfizer and Allergan’s announced a $160 billion merger; and the chemical companies DuPont and Dow Chemical Company’s plans to unite as a $130 billion company. Thomson Reuters counted 137 mega-deals last year, which accounted for 52 percent of the year’s overall M&A value.
  - tantalor 9mo ago
    whataboutism
- htek 9mo ago
  The FTC has not done its job since after the Microsoft consent decree and economists have claimed that up is down and somehow preventing market monopolies is bad for the economy.
Psillisp 9mo ago
[flagged]
maxerickson 9mo ago
The whole point of granting limited liability is that it enables things that benefit society. So if something doesn't benefit society, don't extend that grant to it.
ajross 9mo ago
Your prior seems to be that the Trump administration is operating in good faith and that they would naturally be predisposed to allow the merger, being free market republicans and all. That's not the accusation at hand. The contention is that the Trump administration is threatening to block the merger (corruptly, in opposition to their republican proclivities) unless the news arm of the merged company is operated in a partisan way. And the evidence for that is that Ellison walked in, threw out CBS News's pre-existing leadership, and brought in a reasonably-well-known-but-still-not-celebrity-enough-to-be-independent partisan republican voice to run it. And now that she's there, she's clearly operating the news room in a partisan way. Seems like a pretty convincing theory to me.
UltraSane 9mo ago
No one should have a net worth greater than $1 billion
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

api 9mo ago

What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to enrich yourself with contracts using taxpayer funds? There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market. The Trump administration is absolutely not pro free market. They're putting fingers on the scale all over the place, taking Federal positions in private companies, taking literal bribes for regulatory favors, influencing the selection of executives and board members, and using the power of the state to attack privately owned companies for platforming speech they don't like (like this 60 Minutes segment, made by a private company). Trump/MAGA looks a lot more like the CCP than anything else. Of course if you pay attention to the discourse, MAGA and national conservatism are an explicit repudiation of Reagan/Clinton "neoliberalism" and "libertarian conservatism." They explicitly support a large administrative state that centrally plans the economy and culture, just one they run and use to push right wing and nationalist agendas. I remember saying back during the Bush years: if the right is forced to choose between liberty and cultural conservatism, they will throw out liberty. The right only supports the freedom to do what they think people should be doing. (Yes, there are similar attitudes in some parts of the left too. There are not many principled defenders of individual liberty.) Edit: I'm really just arguing that we should call things what they are. Calling MAGA's CCP-like state capitalism a free market is like calling Bernie Sanders or Mamdani communism (they're socialists, not communists, these are not the same) or calling old school conservative republicans fascists. Words mean things.

the_gastropod 9mo ago
I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will.
- api 9mo ago
  I don't entirely disagree, but also note that the extreme wealth of both these guys is at least partly a result of state spending not pure private market forces. Oracle has always had a huge presence in government. Large companies too, but Federal use has really helped keep them afloat as open source and competing products that are far cheaper have eaten their lunch. For Musk the case is even more extreme. Tesla's early growth was bankrolled by EV credits and carbon offsets, which were state programs, and SpaceX is a result of both Federal funding and direct R&D transfer from NASA to SpaceX. The latter was mostly uncompensated. NASA just handed over decades of publicly funded R&D. These two would probably be rich without the state, but would they be this rich? The same was true back in the original Gilded Age. The "robber barons" were built by railroad and other infrastructure subsidies. However I do agree that private wealth beyond a certain point begins to pose a risk to democracy and the rule of law. It's a major weakness in libertarian schemes that call for a "separation of economy and state." That's a much, much harder wall to maintain than separation of church and state. Enough money can buy politicians and elections.

dredmorbius 9mo ago

"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes said, is power." -- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776 More significantly, one of the first discussions within the text of precisely what wealth is (on which Smith has several, and occasionally inconsistent, answers, and which he seems to think of as more a flow than a stock.) One of Smith's principle complaints in his text was what we now call "market failures" and "regulatory capture". <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_5 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...> <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/>