Joe Biden’s endorsement of right to repair goes beyond farm equipment to include electronics — which is a ”huge fucking deal,” says Cory. And it’s part of a larger antimonopoly agenda.
The potential [antimonopoly] coalition is massive, but it needs a name. It’s not enough to be antimonopoly. It has to stand for something.…
That something can’t be “competition.” Competition on its own is perfectly capable of being terrible. Think of ad-tech companies who say privacy measures are “anticompetitive.” We don’t want competition for the most efficient human rights abuses.
https://doctorow.medium.com/illegitimate-greatness-674353e7cdf9
A far better goal is “self-determination” – the right for individuals and communities to make up their own minds about how they work and live, based on democratic principles rather than corporate fiat.
Cory Doctorow: Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability
That would be a fine position indeed for the Democratic Party to stake out. As Teachout writes, “[Democrats once] stood for workers and the people who produced things, and against the middlemen who sought to steal value and control industry. They understood that anti-monopoly laws were partly about keeping prices down—but also about preserving equality and dignity, and making sure that everyone who contributed to the production of goods and services got a fair cut.”
mitchwagner.blog 