That wasn't always true. The Robinson-Patman Act made it illegal to give preferential treatment to large retailers specifically in order to prevent what we're seeing with walmart and amazon today. The US just stopped enforcing the law (and also anti-trust laws that would have protected local/small businesses) so here we are. At any point the US could decide that enough is enough and fix the situation but we'd probably have to make it actually illegal for corporations to bribe government officials before it stands a chance of happening.
Money exchanged to alter the conduct of a person in position of power... That sounds familiar. I wonder if there's a name for that?
"Bribe: money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust"
..../s (you know, because what's serious these days is hard to tell)
Y'all in the US are so, so cactus haha.
We all know bribes happen, but for the law to recognize a bribe as a bribe basically requires the two parties to have a signed and notorized legal document statating that they are knowingly entering into a quid pro quo, and that both parties are aware it's illegal to do so. Anything less than this, and it will never be prosecuted.
If you are a bureaucrat, the way to maximise your next paycheck is often to be especially tough on companies (and on the margin push for more complicated rules that you can be an expert in). Simplified, the logic is "See how tough I am, you better give me a good paycheck to make sure I'm playing on your team."
The beauty is: the bureaucrats at the regulator don't even need to consciously think this way. They can be tough out of the ideological and conscientious conviction at the bottom of their heart, and the mechanism that gives them comparatively higher pay afterwards still works. Being tough also raises your profile, when you are but a junior or middling drone.
The logic you are describing might work, but only for the most senior appointees who already have a high profile.
Tiger's in the house, y'all. And the roof is on fire. And the water is unavailable because it all got sold to nestle [4].
0 - https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/11/11/24397...
1 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/in-trump-era-lobbyi...
2 - https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/its-common-for-lobbyists-to...
3 - https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-pas...
4 - https://kitoconnell.com/2016/09/27/nestle-spent-11m-lobbying...
"Legality" has never stopped big companies from doing these things. Google, Apple, Meta, etc has been receiving fines all day long and they still continue what they do.
Fines becomes a business calculation. Not a deterrent, not if it matters to the big corporation. Which at some scale, it will become cost-effective.
I suppose it scales upward infinitely.
There's the problem. Australia doesn't scale... not the fines.
In Australia, there are a lot of rules, a lot of fines but not much to gain.
An irredeemable company/ownership will ultimately lose control over time.
Price collusion is illegal too, but happens all the time. There being a law for it just makes the rare fine a cost of doing business.
Noticed it a while locally, and national data agrees. If you want to shop for cigarettes, shop in low income, minority areas. [1] Cigarette companies specifically target stores with regular, habitual, high-income smokers for high prices and lack of discounts, while offering significant bargains in stores less than a mile away. [2]
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6689253/
[2] https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/tobacco-indus...
Seriously, though: I cannot believe how high and how far these utterly dogshit arguments flew without pushback and the amount of damage that consolidation has done to the American Experiment. The best time to get a Lina Khan in the FTC was 40 years ago but the second best time was 4 years ago. I just hope the next president picks up the project... though I'm sure the (by then) trillionaires will do everything in their power to stop that from happening.
Companies like Kroger are so big they dictate the purchase prices from farms. The farmers were better off in the past with multiple competitors creating a bidding war. Same with consumers, products had to be priced right to win their business.
A company I work for had to give free engineering labor in millions of dollars to get access to one of the largest retailers in the USA. Too big not-to-do-business-with harms everyone except the retailer.