Judge Blocks Penguin Random House-Simon and Schuster Merger (nbcnews.com) 58
A federal judge has blocked Penguin Random House's proposed purchase of Simon & Schuster, agreeing with the Justice Department that the joining of two of the world's biggest publishers could "lessen competition" for "top-selling books." From a report: The ruling reinforced the Biden administration's tougher approach to proposed mergers, a break from decades of precedent under Democratic and Republican presidents. U.S. District Court Judge Florence Y. Pan announced the decision in a brief statement Monday, adding that much of her ruling remained under seal at the moment because of "confidential information" and "highly confidential information." She asked the two sides to meet with her Friday and suggest redactions. Penguin Random House quickly condemned the ruling, which it called "an unfortunate setback for readers and authors." In its statement Monday, the publisher said it would immediately seek an expedited appeal.
dang liberal judges (Score:4, Funny)
capitalism demands that every company be consolidated into one mega corporation. That's the natural order of things, the big fish eat all the little fish.
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Thus spoke Supply Side Jesus.
Though in this case, I think Supply Side Jesus wants every book but the Bible and Rushdoony's essays burned, right after they hang the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.
Re:dang liberal judges [fussing about monopolies] (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're going for Funny, and if I ever had a mod point I'd try to help you. Is this dearth of bestowable mod points Slashdot's way of encouraging me to comment instead?
But my reaction is "How about if we tax the big fish that reduce freedom?" Details available upon polite request demonstrating sincere interest, but the short form is that the path to higher retained earnings could, at least in theory, lead towards more competition and innovation and (dare I say) more freedom rather than less.
Obviously not as long as the biggest corporate cancers get to continue calling all of the shots. From that perspective, the only problem with this merger deal is that they forgot to grease the right palms first. And I think the blame flows back to Bork, who managed to redefine and limit monopoly law as a trick with sales prices. I think he was too clever not to understand that the price is a boondoggle with no clear value for "harm". (But I admit that I never actually heard Bork admit he hated freedom, though it was abundantly clear he LOVED authority.)
Meanwhile, if you love freedom then I encourage you to vote next week. But if you think elections are fake, then why are you bothering?
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I don't think voting is fake overall in America. I do, however, wish they would list corporate sponsors rather than candidates on the ballot. Let's be real. That's what we're really voting for.
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That would be good, but it's not like you can't go to opensecrets and just look up who the big donors are.
I'm mildly surprised that nobody has yet created a website which automatically scrapes that and then generates pictures of politicians as racing drivers, with appropriate liveries on their cars and outfits.
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Nobody wants to build the website because we'd much rather have the politicians just start wearing their sponsors on their suits. If the site exists, it removes the incentive for the real thing.
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If the site exists, it removes the incentive for the real thing.
I see it as advertising for the real thing. One step at a time...
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I approve. It's been said before, but pols should have patches all over their jackets like NASCAR. Though they'd have to start wearing trenchcoats to fit all the sponsorships.
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The "grand (and imaginary) solution" approach I would favor for that problem would involve another dimension of divided powers. I say let's just give the Senate to the money, specifically to the people who actually pay the tax money to the federal government. (Right now the money (or property) dimension exists, but it's hidden and also divided among all parts of the government.)
How about if each Senator actually represented 1% of the federal tax revenue? It would be divided up based on federal taxes paid so
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Don't have anything significant to add, but I just want to say I've never heard of a proposal like this one and I really like the concept. Stop lobbying, make taxes the bribe / ownership agreement. Magnificent.
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Thanks for the kind word.
And about that typo:
s/specific responsibility was responsible/specific Senator was responsible/
Might have been obvious from the context?
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Regulating the markets is the job of a responsible government. Trimming some of the commercial gains and reinvesting it into social programs and infrastructure is Welfare Capitalism. Instead of letting the rich maximize their richness, we can have a society organized to continually improve itself, the rich still benefit but they also don't have to watch food riots and other social ills. In this system the worker pool is full of viable candidates because they can read and write and sit quietly at a desk for
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Basically concurrence.
Governments should not be confused with businesses, though the American government has mostly been converted into a money machine to make a few rich people richer.
Government should be more like a neutral referee. Not part of a bribe-driven game.
If it makes you feel better (Score:3)
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oatmilk, rice milk, and soy milk are all reasonable alternatives to dairy or almond milk. of course none of those are as tasty as good quality (homemade) almond milk.
For the most part the world's population will start to level off and we're not going to starve. Assuming we retain roughly the same amount of usable farmland. If we destroy it through neglect or climate change then of course we're going to be living on soylent red or whatever.
Re: dang liberal judges (Score:1)
Big corporations have lots of overhead, if the market were truly free and not captured by regulatory government, big companies would collapse under their own weight as startups come and replace them. We saw that in the 80s and early 90s with Internet and computer companies. Nowadays government just keeps propping up bad businesses with bad fiscal policy and then bail them out and regulate them on the other end when things go wrong.
Ignoring the real problem here (Score:2)
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How many books are published by Amazon vs PRH and S&S?
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You don't know shit, I say, surrounded by paper books.
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Amazon is a negligibly small publisher.
Ebook "publishing" is not the same industry at all, it shouldn't be called publishing at all, it's merely a store selling books. It costs nothing to publish your own ebook, so the publishing part of the equation isn't of any significance, only the reselling of those electronic copies which is equivalent to the role of a brick and mortar bookstore rather than a brick and mortar publisher.
Amazon does do some paper book publishing, but they're not a significant player.
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These two publishers don't account for shit compared to the juggernaut that is Amazon.
My pile of books, some 80+ years old, disagree with your obtuse point.
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Whats a book? (Score:1)
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It's a start (Score:4, Insightful)
Next should be ISPs, banks, airlines, hotels, grocery stores, oil companies, drug companies and of course, "social" media companies.
Break them up and get real competition which will lead to lower prices for people.
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So how about a progressive profits tax linked to market share? Encourage them to break themselves up as the true path to higher retained earnings? (Per earlier comments.)
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Too easy to manipulate. Companies would be manipulating numbers and setting up shell companies to appear to reduce their own market share if doing so cut their taxes.
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Can't hide the big money, but there are many ways to break the games. In particular, I think (1) wannabe customers who can't find options from other companies, and (2) wannabe competitors who want to offer options to customers should be part of the enforcement mechanism. If the focus is on choice and freedom, then the problem becomes obvious when there is no (or insufficient) choice and the regulators would just be searching for the cheater.
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How would you actually police this?
Android has a massive market share, but while Google controls Android, most of the Android market is based on non-Google devices from which they receive a relatively small license fee.
So Google ends up with market control, but their actual profits linked to market share would be relatively small in comparison to Apple...
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How's about taxing corporate incomes instead of profits? They still get to write off raw materials, so they're not paying taxes on they money they spent there. We have too many tax dodge schemes in this country which are based on this distinction.
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I think you should focus on measuring freedom based on the choices available to the customers in each market segment. One choice (or only two or three choices) indicates that something is wrong, so you start by looking at what choices the customers have. At each decision point, the magic number is around 7. More choices are not terrible, but too many choices can actually lead to problems. The Paradox of Choice mostly talks about declining satisfaction, but there's also the problem of excessive choices bec
Re: It's a start (Score:3)
CEO makes $20mil/year and average employee is $14/hr, high tax rate.
CEO makes $1mil/year and average employee is at $30/hr, low rate.
There would be tiers based on company size. I feel this would encourage more investment in to the people who keep the business running and less investment in golden parachutes.
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I like this. I wonder what loopholes high-powered bean counters and bottom feeders would find?
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The game is never going to end, but this approach is intended as a solution to some of the current problems. However, if you can keep your principles clear, then it becomes easier to spot the cheaters. My basic principle is that human freedom is a good thing, even if it's hard to define or prove. (And even if some people hate to be bothered to be free.)
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CEO makes $20mil/year and average employee is $14/hr, high tax rate.
Are you then going to give the money to the underpaid employees who can't survive on $14/hr, let alone the ones making less than that since it's an average? Why not just mandate that people get paid something they can live on? Why allow anyone to pay such chickenshit wages in the first place?
Re: It's a start (Score:2)
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The hope is that large companies would increase base pay instead of paying more taxes.
Are you new?
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So how about a progressive profits tax linked to market share?
Define: "market". Because so far as I can tell, what you've suggested is nearly impossible to enforce for myriad reasons in any sort of uniform way.
For starters, products exist in multiple markets, so there isn't always one you can point to.
Take the iPhone, for instance. I'm largely pulling these numbers from memory so they may be off, but depending on who you're talking to and what their agenda is you can find arguments that the iPhone has literally 100% of the market (of devices that run iOS), 15% of the
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You are trying to construct a straw man to suit your purposes. Sounds like trivial sophistry, too. Easy to be critical when you have no better idea, isn't it?
Maybe you should start with your principles first? My idea is that the current tax system is anti-freedom and pro-greed. The result is corporate cancers that dominate markets and eliminate consumer choice and freedom. With a few ultra-rich lottery winners "effectively" running the whole mess. My proposal is for a different approach based on different p
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Unfortunate setback (Score:2)
For readers and authors, you say?
Only if they are also stockholders or executives waiting for their golden parachute to deploy.
Maybe if publishing wasn't stuck in its antiquated ways, Brandon Sanderson wouldn't need to nab $40M on a Kickstarter.
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Gig Publishing (Score:2)
I know a guy who used to be with a major house and with his latest book he hired freelance editors, an artist, a layout guy, and he describes the experience as every way superior to using a publisher.
He "self-published" on Amazon and actually charted rather well.
A merger might be the only way to stay alive in a few years.
ramifications for app stores? (Score:2)
From what I understand, the ruling was based NOT on the impact on consumers, but rather on the impact on authors. This could set a significant precedent for the lawsuits against Apple, Google, etc from the perspective of App Developer complaints. Now this might well not survive an appeal on the basis "the court found no impact on consumers, but that's the only basis for opposing a merger." (IANAL, so I might be completely wrong.)