Bella DeVaan: Swift superfans may have struck blow against monopoly

Taylor Swift’s fans paid for the singer’s mansion — the white Colonial Revival structure at the top of the hill —- in the Watch Hill section of Westerly, R.I. The house, called High Watch, was formerly named Holiday House and also called the Harkness House (after a family enriched by Standard Oil who lived there for a time) by locals, is an 11,000-square-foot edifice on five acres that she bought for $17.75 million in 2013. The house was built in 1929-1930.

— Photo by JJBers - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jjbers/33980495256/

Via OtherWords.org

As the cost of food, travel, and gifts complicate holiday plans across the country, millions of Americans have been awakened to the sinister power of monopolies.

But now there are exciting new possibilities to rein them in.

This November, legions of new anti-monopolists were born. They’re Taylor Swift’s superfans — and they just might be the reason the government breaks up Ticketmaster.

Hoping to get pre-sale tickets to their favorite pop star’s upcoming tour, millions of “Swifties” waited in endless electronic queues, only to be hit with sky-high prices and exorbitant fees — if they were able to snag a ticket at all.

“Ticket prices may fluctuate, upon demand, at any time,” read an ominous warning on the Ticketmaster website.

And they did: Under Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” system, fans reported ticket prices running up to thousands of dollars — not including hefty fees. Prices spiked even higher on the secondary resale market. On StubHub, ticket listings reached upwards of $95,000.

Finally, Ticketmaster threw in the towel and canceled subsequent presale windows. Their site crashed thousands of times. It was mayhem — and thanks to an unchecked monopoly, fans had no other option.

But the Swifties struck back. Hours after Taylor Swift released a statement apologizing to fans and chastising Ticketmaster, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an investigation of Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster.

While their investigation wasn’t prompted by Swift, reported the New York Times, Swifties’ wave of discontent was overwhelming enough to warrant the department’s public disclosure. Immediately after, the company that had been bragging about a record-smashing 2022 saw its stock plummet.

How did we get here? When it comes to antitrust issues, the U.S. government has essentially been asleep at the wheel, allowing Ticketmaster’s monopoly to crush its competition for over a decade.

In 2010, Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged into Live Nation Entertainment. The merger was subject to a relatively weak consent decree, which asked the merged companies not to abuse their live venue dominance. But it’s been easy for Live Nation Entertainment to intimidate their naysayers and flout guidelines.

“Ticketmaster bullies venues into not working with their competitors,” explains Chokepoint Capitalism author Cory Doctorow. “They bully smaller artists by denying them management. They bully big artists by controlling their ticket prices and letting their fans down. And they bully their customers into paying exorbitant prices for tickets.”

Well before the Swift fiasco, a coalition of research organizations and live event workers launched the Break Up Ticketmaster campaign asking the Department of Justice to “investigate and unwind” the live events monopoly. The campaign quickly gained ground, generating tens of thousands of signatures on an advocacy letter.

Policy makers are now echoing that call.

“Consumers deserve better than this anti-hero behavior,” tweeted Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), punning off a song from Swift’s latest album, Midnights. 

And on MSNBC, Senate Antitrust Committee chair Amy Klobuchar (D.-Minn.) promised a Senate hearing. She’s also co-authored bills with Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to facilitate antitrust enforcement with new filing, funding, and state empowerment rules.

The attorney general of Tennessee — home to the “angriest Swifties” — opened an investigation into Ticketmaster’s misconduct, too.

President Biden recently directed his administration to “reduce or eliminate” junk fees like Ticketmasters’ infamous extra charges, which sometimes total up to 78 percent of the cost of a ticket. He’s also appointed a passel of antitrust enforcers and signed a robust, competition-oriented executive order in his first months in the Oval Office.

Monopolies aren’t just fleecing concert-goers. All of us experience the villainy of monopolies — in the high price of a tight seat on a plane, in the destruction of local journalism, in skyrocketing monthly rent and food prices, or in the marginalization of small online businesses.

So, present day monopolists, steel yourselves and remember: When you provoke a superfan, they’ll come for you.Bella DeVaan

Bella DeVaan is a program associate at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor of Inequality.org.

Is Watch Hill in Rhode Island?

Watch Hill Harbor

A colleague in a business ZOOM meeting I was in last Friday suggested that Rhode Island Gov. and former venture capitalist Gina Raimondo will not return to Rhode Island after she serves as Joe Biden’s commerce secretary. — that she’ll join the swells and move to some fancy out-of-state place.

No, I suggested, only half-jokingly, she’ll move to hyper-rich Watch Hill. Then another colleague quipped: “Is that in Rhode Island?” I had had a sleepless night and so too quickly and stupidly answered what everyone in the meeting well knew: “Watch Hill is in Rhode Island; it’s part of Westerly.’’

But in a psycho-sociological way, it’s not in Rhode Island. Like some other fancy places in New England — say Nantucket, Mass., and Northeast Harbor, Maine, it transcends its state; above all, it’s part of the Federated Principalities of the Plutocracy.

— Robert Whitcomb

Yachts in Nantucket

In Northeast Harbor. See mansions on the hillside.

— Photo by Billy Hathorn

Using eminent domain to drive folks from flood zones

Watch Hill Harbor, on the coast of southern Rhode Island, which is very vulnerable to flooding, especially in hurricanes

— Photo by Stephg82988

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is commendably letting the Army Corps of Engineers tell localities to use the threat of eminent domain to get people to move away from increasingly flood-prone areas or else lose federal flood-mitigation money.

This is part of a shift toward  the Corps paying local governments to buy and demolish homes at clear risk of flooding. 

The Corps, with the agreement of the administration, realizes that building sea walls, levees and other protections, such as ordering that houses be put on stilts– for which the Corps pays two-thirds of the cost and localities and states the rest – is very expensive and often have to be repeated. Better for safety, and the taxpayers, that people be forced from these places, which are increasingly inappropriate for buildings because of global warming’s effects. But people naturally love being along the water, so such threats get much pushback.

The barrier beaches of South County would be  places where we could expect the Corps to get tough like this. Whatever Trump’s manmade-global-warming denials, it’s heartening that his administration is taking this unpopular but needed approach.

But what will they do about such urban flood-prone places as Boston’s Seaport District?

To read The Times’s story, please hit this link. 

Always pick the richest parents you can find

Too small for the Sussexes? The great hall in The Breakers, the old Vanderbilt mansion in Newport

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Of course, things are always rigged for the rich and well-connected –why complain that rocks are hard! -- but since the Second Gilded Age started back in the ‘80s we set new levels of goodies for the privileged. Consider Hunter Biden’s stretch of getting paid $50,000 a month for sitting on the board of a Ukrainian gas company although he knew little about that industry. Then we have Chelsea Clinton, the only child of Bill and Hillary, pulling in $9 million in salary and stock since 2011 for sitting on the board of the Internet investment company IAC/InterActive Corp., which happens to be controlled by mogul Barry Diller, a pal of the Clintons.

Still, that’s bush league compared to the Trump Family’s profiteering off Daddy’s occupation of the Oval Office and steering vast sums of foreign and U.S. government money to Trump resorts and hotels. The Constitution’s Emoluments Clause? What’s that?!

And now the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have decided they want to make a killing, er be “financially independent,’’ and withdraw from many of their tedious public duties as Royals. Are Sussex sweatshirts coming up? Too tacky! Think luggage. There’s a push on to get them to move to Rhode Island. Maybe a shingle-style mansion near Taylor Swift’s pile on Watch Hill?