Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: Lina Khan (and Zohran Mamdani) on Why Billionaires Never Learn — and the Apolitical Absurdity of $6,000 World Cup Tickets

Release Date: September 19, 2025
Host: Pablo Torre
Guests: Lina Khan (former FTC chair, Columbia Law professor), Zohran Mamdani (Democratic nominee for NYC mayor, NY Assemblymember)

Episode Overview

In this rich, idea-packed episode, Pablo Torre takes listeners on a deep dive into the interconnected worlds of billionaire behavior, competition law, sports economics, and the creeping pervasiveness of dynamic/surveillance pricing. He convenes Lina Khan, celebrated antitrust reformer and former FTC chair, and Zohran Mamdani, rising New York politician and activist running for NYC Mayor, to unpack how U.S. laws, sports rules, and market dynamics are routinely gamed by powerful elites—how that’s often normalized—and how rules and capitalism could be reimagined for greater fairness. The discussion anchors on familiar sports figures (like Steve Ballmer and Mark Cuban), eye-watering World Cup ticket pricing, and the broader political and economic systems that enable such inequalities.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Lina Khan on Antitrust, Corporate Power, and Billionaire Impunity

• Email Exchanges with Mark Cuban
  Khan shares her experience interacting with Mark Cuban, detailing how he frequently emailed her during her tenure as FTC chair, mostly regarding drug pricing and pharmacy benefit manager investigations.

  • “He is a very active emailer… a lot of his incoming was about PBMs and drug pricing more generally.” — Lina Khan (05:00)

• FTC Crackdown and Elite Pushback
  Khan describes the culture of impunity among corporate elites, which thrived after decades of lax enforcement. Her FTC sought to overhaul that culture by enforcing antitrust laws more vigorously, facing both support and backlash.

  • “Having the government enforce the law, I think didn’t go so well with… some people.” — Lina Khan (06:20)
  • “There was just a lot of pushback, a lot of surprise… ‘If you punish success, what’s that going to mean for our ability to compete with China?’” — Lina Khan (07:00)

• U.S. v. Microsoft and Its Legacy
  Lina Khan provides a succinct, illuminating breakdown of the famous Microsoft case:

  • Microsoft tried to maintain its OS monopoly and kneecap rivals (like Netscape), prompting a major antitrust case.
  • The legal process “chastened” Microsoft, showing even tech titans could be made to follow rules—a lesson later ignored by new giants like Google or Facebook.
  • “There were really colorful quotes… about wanting to cut off the oxygen of these other firms… [Microsoft execs later said] this action really chastened them. It made them focus much more on complying with the law.” — Lina Khan (09:49)

2. Billionaires Gaming the System: Sports, Taxes, and Accountability

• Steve Ballmer’s Clippers and Tax Law Loopholes
  Pablo references ProPublica’s exposé on how Clippers owner Steve Ballmer reported massive paper losses on his NBA team to avoid taxes—exhorting the audience to recognize this is the norm, not an isolated case.

  • “Not only does Ballmer not have to pay tax on any real-world Clippers profits, he can use the tax write-off to offset his other income.” — Pablo Torre quoting ProPublica (20:03)

• Khan Explains How the Tax Code Is “Rigged”
  The ultra-wealthy, especially sports owners, leverage loopholes to dramatically lower their effective tax rates—often being better off by “losing” money in selective parts of their empires.

  • “The American tax code is notoriously rigged… to allow very, very, very wealthy people to pay less than oftentimes working people.” — Lina Khan (21:21)
  • “If you do the math in the aggregate, you could be making money even if in one little place, you’re losing money.” — Lina Khan (22:57)

• Broader Political Rot and Oligarchic Capture
  Khan charts a decades-long arc: Deregulation, financialization, lack of accountability—even after 2008—have supercharged inequality and created impunity for elites.

  • “Their power over our democracy and economy only grew… Rules don’t matter. If you’re an elite, you can basically pay off the cops.” — Lina Khan (15:22)

3. Dynamic (Surveillance) Pricing: From Tickets to Everyday Life

• World Cup 2026 and the Pricing Out of Regular People
  Zohran Mamdani explains how FIFA’s U.S. ticketing for the 2026 World Cup will use “dynamic pricing” for the first time—resulting in sky-high, un-capped resale prices, with so few set aside for locals or working-class fans.

  • “The tickets can be resold… with no price cap. That means you could buy a ticket for $60 and sell it for $6,000. And unlike the last three World Cups, there’s nothing set aside for residents… Let’s call this price gouging what it is.” — Mamdani (29:14)

• Lina Khan Unpacks Surveillance/Dynamic Pricing
  Khan delivers a historical and contemporary analysis:

  • Dream of corporations: “charge every single person the maximum they’re willing to pay.”
  • Modern data collection enables individual targeting — where pricing can become exploitative and discriminatory, mimicking and amplifying real-world inequalities.
  • “We’re now in an economy where… companies... try to approximate how much you are maximally willing to pay… price just below that, but up to that… It can be used as cover for actually charging… what they think [is] the maximum amount you will pay.” — Lina Khan (30:04)

• Opaque Pricing and Discriminatory Effects

  • Studies show staples.com and ISPs charged higher prices in poorer or less competitive neighborhoods, flipping the supposed logic that price discrimination will advantage the poor.
  • “Rather than this pricing having a progressive effect, it actually had a regressive effect… People living in wealthier neighborhoods were paying less than people in poorer neighborhoods.” — Lina Khan (33:50)

• Junk Fees, Resale Bots, and the Limits of Regulation
  Khan mentions FTC efforts to ban misleading ticket pricing and describes the bot-fueled resale market as ripe for abuse—especially at FIFA’s scale.

  • “We see these bot armies that will just swarm ticketing platforms and oftentimes gobble up a lot of what’s available. So the fact that you have a resale platform for FIFA that has no cap really worries me…” — Lina Khan (42:32)

4. Inequality, Billionaires, Fairness, and What Sports Can Teach

• Should Billionaires Exist?
  Mamdani, an advocate for radical inequality reform, makes the case against billionaires in the context of local realities (NYC poverty, hunger) and looming global examples (Elon Musk as a potential trillionaire).

  • “We are in a conversation… where we are actively discussing the potential of a trillionaire in Elon Musk. And all of this while one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty… It is wealth at a time of starvation.” — Zohran Mamdani (45:55)

• It's Not Inevitable—It’s a Results of Policy
  Khan underlines that the present inequalities are the outcome of choices, not givens.

  • “This extreme grotesque inequality is not an inevitability. It’s actually directly the result of our laws and policies… That just creates an economy that’s not stable.” — Lina Khan (47:28)

• Sports as a Metaphor—Radical Hope and Rules
  Both guests reflect on how sports rules (salary caps, fair competition) are designed to ensure some parity and hope. Mamdani, an Arsenal and Mets fan, sees sports fandom as training for enduring hope in the face of odds—a metaphor that politics (and equity advocates) can adopt.

  • “Sports fans… are well attuned to continuing to have hope even amidst the most despairing times… That’s how many New Yorkers feel… None of what we see as our reality today diminishes our hope… It just strengthens our resolve.” — Zohran Mamdani (49:07)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Lina Khan on Billionaires and Accountability:
  • “If laws are just suggestions, what do we have if billionaires believe they can just rewrite them?” — (19:42)
• Pablo Torre on Tax Write-Offs:
  • “The whole premise of losing money can be good. In fact, it can help make you money elsewhere.” — (22:34)
• Zoran Mamdani on $6,000 World Cup Tickets:
  • “It’s absurd… we’ve just normalized this… A ticket to the final cost less than $200 [in today’s dollars] last time the World Cup was here… now at face value, selling tickets for more than $6,000. It is absurd.” — (43:36)
• Pablo’s Sports-Politics Pep Talk:
  • “I think you just gave us a locker room speech. They’re up 3:1. But the series ain’t over yet. That’s where we are in the plot of American history.” — (25:33)
• Lina Khan on Rules, Games, and Society:
  • “We’re discovering a lot of parallels between sports and… the rules we’re supposed to have for our economy.” — (25:42)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Lina Khan’s Intro & Mark Cuban Stories — 03:49–05:41
• What Antitrust Means & Microsoft Example — 07:00–11:35
• How U.S. Politics Became Captured by Wealth — 14:59–17:14
• Sports Ownership and Steve Ballmer’s Tax Looping — 18:10–23:17
• Dynamic Pricing and FIFA’s World Cup Scheme — 29:14–31:47
• Surveillance Pricing, Data, and Discrimination — 32:03–35:42
• Junk Ticket Fees, Bots, and Regulation — 42:04–42:59
• Should Billionaires Exist? — 45:55–47:04
• Hope in Sports and Politics — 49:07–50:31

Episode Tone and Delivery

• Wry, incisive, sometimes exasperated but always clear, witty, and urgent.
• The hosts/guests speak with a blend of academic insight, journalist narrative, and the animated hopefulness (and coping skills) of lifelong sports fans and reformers.
• Frequent interplay between real-world stakes (“starvation and wealth”) and playful references to sports fan suffering and motivational cliches.

Closing Thoughts

This episode is a spirited, clear-eyed assessment of how billionaires exploit both legal loopholes and market design—especially in sports—for their benefit, and why that’s no accident. Lina Khan and Zohran Mamdani bring both intellectual gravity and lived passion to issues of competition, fairness, and hope, making a powerful case for why the rules of the game—economic or athletic—should be continually reimagined to foster genuine opportunity, not entrenched oligarchy. Listeners walk away equipped with sharp metaphors, real-world examples, and a politically energizing dose of sports-inspired optimism about the possibility of change.