Showing archive for: “Labor & Monopsony”
Cartels With Benefits: The Trouble With Extending Labor’s Antitrust Exemption
Antitrust law’s usual instruction to competitors who agree on price is admirably brief: Don’t. Labor law makes a deliberate exception for employees who bargain collectively. Advocates now want that exception to cover at least some independent contractors, including rideshare drivers, truck owner-operators, consultants, and other small-business owners. The proposal may sound like a tidy way ... Cartels With Benefits: The Trouble With Extending Labor’s Antitrust Exemption
Killer Theories and Acqui-Hire Alibis
Antitrust agencies have a habit of giving new labels to old anxieties. In artificial intelligence, the latest worry is that partnerships between large technology firms and startups are not partnerships at all, but mergers in clever disguises. In the first article in this series, we examined how Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) has ... Killer Theories and Acqui-Hire Alibis
Brazil Catches the Acqui-Hire Wave
The global antitrust wave over Big Tech’s artificial intelligence deals has reached Brazil. The question is whether Brazil’s competition authority is paddling into a real breaker—or mistaking regulatory chop for a swell. Last month, Brazil’s antitrust authority, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), entered that debate. It issued part of its long-awaited decisions on ... Brazil Catches the Acqui-Hire Wave
Gotta Catch ’Em All? Antitrust and the AI Talent Wars
The AI talent wars have produced a steady stream of stories that seem tailor-made to confirm everyone’s worst suspicions about Big Tech: nine-figure pay packages for star researchers, entire startup teams absorbed without a formal acquisition, and—most strikingly—reports of elite AI scientists paid handsomely to do nothing for a year under “garden leave” arrangements rather ... Gotta Catch ’Em All? Antitrust and the AI Talent Wars
Paramount’s Mission: Impossible Antitrust Case
Hollywood loves a sequel, and the antitrust fight over Paramount Skydance’s proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is becoming one. First came the familiar streaming-monopoly scare. Now comes the more personal version: the writers, drivers, and actors who make the movies fear that a combined studio will need far fewer of them—and ... Paramount’s Mission: Impossible Antitrust Case
The AI Jobs Panic Comes to Sacramento
California has seen the future of work, and Sacramento’s first instinct is to convene 14 task forces about it. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-6-26 today, setting California’s workforce agencies in motion on directives involving research reviews, revisions to the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, studies of new safety-net programs, a ... The AI Jobs Panic Comes to Sacramento
Why Humans Are (Probably) Not Headed for the Glue Factory
There’s a popular argument that AI will do to human workers what tractors did to horses. Tractors could do what horses did. Horses became obsolete. AI can do what humans do. Therefore… Plenty of major AI figures seem to agree. Elon Musk says AI will “replace all jobs.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei regularly warns about ... Why Humans Are (Probably) Not Headed for the Glue Factory
Reverse Patent Pools and Other TTBER Tall Tales
In standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing, every procedural tweak is also a skirmish over bargaining power. That is what makes licensing negotiation groups (LNGs) more than an obscure acronym in the European Commission’s 2026 Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (TTBER) and accompanying Guidelines (TTGs). LNGs would allow technology implementers to bargain collectively with rights holders. Depending ... Reverse Patent Pools and Other TTBER Tall Tales
AI’s Scientific Ethos and the Moat That Wouldn’t Hold
Google may have built the foundation of the modern AI economy—and then published the instructions. In 2017, eight researchers across Google’s Brain and Research divisions released a paper titled “Attention Is All You Need.” What followed is now familiar: a technological inflection point, rapid diffusion, and an explosion of competitors building on the same core ... AI’s Scientific Ethos and the Moat That Wouldn’t Hold
Acquihires and Antitrust: When Buying the Team Isn’t Buying the Company
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has trained its sights on one of Silicon Valley’s most familiar deal structures: the “acquihire.” In a Bloomberg podcast interview, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said the agency plans to scrutinize how acquihires are structured—looking for features that could bring them within merger law and trigger Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (HSR) reporting thresholds. ... Acquihires and Antitrust: When Buying the Team Isn’t Buying the Company
The Hype Cycle Meets Malpractice Law: Why the Jobs Persist
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently declared that “50% of all entry-level lawyers, consultants, and finance professionals will be completely wiped out within the next 1–5 years.” That’s a remarkable claim—and probably wrong in a way that reveals something important about the gap between what AI can do and what the economy will actually do ... The Hype Cycle Meets Malpractice Law: Why the Jobs Persist
Guardrails, Not Roadblocks: Improving the AI Framework
Washington has a choice: let AI policy fragment into 50 competing regimes, or set a clear federal baseline that keeps innovation moving. The Trump administration’s new artificial intelligence (AI) legislative framework stakes out the latter path—but leaves important gaps. The framework sketches broad principles to guide federal policymaking on a technology at risk of a ... Guardrails, Not Roadblocks: Improving the AI Framework
