The FTC's Renewed Fight Against Corporate Power (with Elizabeth Wilkins)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Episode: The FTC's Renewed Fight Against Corporate Power (with Elizabeth Wilkins)
Date: June 11, 2024
Host: Civic Ventures
Guest: Elizabeth Wilkins, Senior Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, former FTC Chief of Staff

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Overview

This episode explores the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) revitalized role in fighting concentrated corporate power and promoting competition, contrasting the regulatory stagnation of the last 40 years with the bold new direction under the Biden administration, Chair Lina Khan, and leaders like Elizabeth Wilkins. Through insightful commentary and Wilkins’ first-hand experience, the conversation unpacks antitrust history, the damage wrought by neoliberal “market efficiency” orthodoxy, and the paradigm shift now underway towards more robust enforcement and corporate accountability.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Importance of Economic Power and Regulation

• Nick Hanauer and Goldie open by critiquing neoliberal ideology for ignoring power dynamics in economics, which led to regulatory agencies shrinking and inequality growing:
  • “An economic theory that doesn’t include power would be like a physics that doesn’t include gravity.” – Nick Hanauer [01:33]
  • Regulation’s purpose is to counteract power imbalances for the public good, from worker rights to pollution controls. [02:14]

2. FTC’s Dual Mission & Marginalization of Antitrust Laws

• Elizabeth Wilkins explains the FTC’s origins and mission:
  • Created in 1914 “to prevent unfair methods of competition and unfair and deceptive acts and practices in the marketplace… to ensure that American consumers and workers and small businesses get a fair shake in the economy.” [05:39]
• The FTC is a “small but mighty agency” with only about 1,400 staff overseeing the entire US economy. [07:33]
• The agency’s effectiveness was diminished in the ‘80s by the “law and economics” movement, which prioritized “efficiency” over fairness and competition, ignoring decades of precedent and Congressional intent. [08:16]

3. Historical Context: From Robust Antitrust to Neoliberal Retreat

• Wilkins: Antitrust laws initially protected “freedom from coercion in the marketplace”—a key value for American liberty, not just consumer prices. [08:16]
• The 1980s marked a reduction of antitrust to consumer price/output metrics, leading to today’s “super concentrated marketplaces” across tech, medicine, and groceries. [10:34]
• The framework of “just make markets more efficient” became dominant, sidelining legal texts and Congressional values. [12:39]

4. Paradigm Shift and Internal Reform at the FTC

• Wilkins discusses her approach: She read laws and Supreme Court cases, not just economic theories, to “get up to speed.”
  • She found it strange and troubling that “people told me, ‘Don’t worry about the law, just read these economic analyses’…theories which don’t actually map into realities.” [13:10]
• The new approach, championed by Lina Khan and team, means reviving the original congressional intent—prioritizing fairness, competition, and worker/consumer rights over efficiency dogma. [14:54-15:43]
• Changing such deeply ingrained mindsets is ongoing: “This is just the beginning, I think.” [16:05]

5. Major Recent FTC Actions: Banning Non-Compete Clauses

• The FTC’s most important current move is the promulgation of a rule banning non-compete clauses in labor contracts—which restrict one-fifth of US workers. [18:17]
  • Wilkins: “These clauses are stifling competition…bad for basically everybody.” [18:17]
  • Estimated impact: Over ten years, the rule could increase worker wages by $400 billion, decrease healthcare spending by up to $150 billion, and boost innovation (patents). [20:09]
• The decision required cultural change within FTC, collaborative internal policymaking, and was validated by overwhelming public support.
  • Memorable Story: “You made me feel proud of my agency again.” – FTC staff after public praise for the anti–non-compete rule [25:00]

6. Looking Forward: Health Care Antitrust and Merger Guidelines

• The FTC and DOJ are focusing on healthcare consolidation, with lawsuits against private equity rollups in specialties like anesthesiology. [26:41]
• New, stronger Merger Guidelines now require companies to provide more information and face stricter analysis, aiming to prevent future concentration.
  • “What we’re going to start seeing is more merger challenges...the gradual change in the legal framework...” [29:20]

7. The Anti-Monopoly Toolkit: Beyond Just Antitrust

• Wilkins (If “benevolent dictator”): Broaden policy away from a single-minded antitrust focus to include regulation, public options, and industry-specific interventions—always guided by values like “liberty and autonomy, some control over your life...free from domination.” [30:01]
  • “Our economic policy should be aimed at...a world in which people have true governance over the meaningful choices in their lives.” [32:12]

8. Personal Motivation

• Wilkins: Cites her upbringing with civil rights–oriented parents and a sense of responsibility to use her luck and skills “to make the world a little bit of a better place.” [32:41]

9. Broader Economic Rationale: Fairness = Prosperity

• Hanauer closes, emphasizing that fairer, more competitive markets don’t just serve justice—they create “more value and more wealth faster.”
  • “When you reduce monopoly power and promote competition, you get higher rates of innovation, broader consumer choice, higher wages for workers, and lower costs for consumers.” – Nick Hanauer [35:17]
• Regulations are inherently “pro-market” because competition is the root of market progress; unchecked, markets concentrate wealth and stifle innovation. [35:53]
• The Biden FTC’s collaborative, respectful approach with career civil servants is contrasted with attempts at autocratic governance. [38:06]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

| Time | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|----------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:33 | Nick Hanauer | “An economic theory that doesn’t include power would be like a physics that doesn’t include gravity.” | | 05:39 | Elizabeth Wilkins | “The FTC...is supposed to ensure that American consumers...and small businesses get a fair shake in the economy.” | | 08:16 | Elizabeth Wilkins | “True freedom meant also freedom from coercion in the marketplace...the antitrust laws came out of...ensuring that kind of fairness.”| | 13:10 | Elizabeth Wilkins | “Read a bunch of economic models that are not true...theories which don’t actually map into realities.” | | 18:17 | Elizabeth Wilkins | “Non-compete clauses...are stifling competition in the labor market...bad for basically everybody.” | | 20:09 | Elizabeth Wilkins | “Over the next 10 years, this rule could increase worker wages by over $400 billion...decrease health care spending by $150 billion.”| | 25:00 | Elizabeth Wilkins | “You made me feel proud of my agency again.” – FTC staff on the non-compete rule | | 35:17 | Nick Hanauer | “When you...promote competition, you get higher rates of innovation, broader consumer choice, higher wages for workers, and lower costs for consumers.”| | 32:12 | Elizabeth Wilkins | “Our economic policy should be aimed at...a world in which people have true governance over the meaningful choices in their lives.” | | 38:06 | Goldie | “Regulation is good for the economy. And that’s something we’ve lost over the past 40 years.” |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & critique of neoliberalism: 00:50–03:13
• FTC’s mission, size, and history: 05:39–08:16
• Antitrust history & Reaganomics: 08:16–11:17
• Wilkins on learning antitrust law: 11:17–14:54
• Current FTC move: non-compete bans: 18:17–21:07
• Collaborative policymaking at FTC: 21:07–25:00
• Future of antitrust: healthcare, mergers: 26:41–29:20
• Vision for anti-monopoly policy: 30:01–32:12
• Wilkins’ motivation: 32:41–34:22
• Economic case for regulation & markets: 34:44–38:06

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Tone & Takeaways

The discussion is frank, historically rich, and energized by a new sense of mission at the FTC. Wilkins brings both legal clarity and personal motivation, while Hanauer and Goldie keep the tone accessible, biting, and policy-driven. The episode advocates a return to regulatory activism as not just legally correct, but essential for prosperity and real freedom in a democratic society.

Transcript

[Nick Hanauer]

The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.

[Goldie]

It's time to build our economy from the bottom up and from the middle out. Not the top down.

[Nick Hanauer]

Middle out economics is the answer because.

[Goldie]

Wall street didn't build this country. Great middle class built this country.

[Nick Hanauer]

The more the middle class thrives, the better the economy is for, for everyone. Even rich people like me.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

This is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, a podcast about how to build the economy from the middle out. Welcome to the show.

[Goldie]

One of the most reprehensible things about neoliberalism, Nick, and really orthodox neoclassical economics in general, is the way that economic theory just wishes away the notion of power in the economy. The idea that, oh, markets are perfectly efficient and so nobody can have outsized power because the market will even everything out in the end.

[Nick Hanauer]

Couldn't be more true.

[Goldie]

Well, it couldn't be more false.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, no, no, no, that's true.

[Goldie]

I know what you meant there.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Goldie]

But let's be absolute clear.

[Nick Hanauer]

Absolutely.

[Goldie]

Yeah. Power is everywhere.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah. And, you know, an economic theory that doesn't include power would be like a physics that doesn't include gravity. You know, it's so obviously a really important thing that it's just shocking how it went away. And, you know, I think one of the worst things that happened to the economy over the last 50 years, you know, was very centered in this idea that power doesn't exist. Because if power doesn't exist, then none of the regulatory agencies that used to maintain reasonable balances of power in markets effectively were left to shrivel up and die. Right.

[Goldie]

And let's be clear, that is the whole purpose of regulation is to address these power imbalances. Whether it's a power imbalance that allows a corporation to just dump waste into the air or the water or on land, because what can you do? They own that land, whatever they can. That is a regulation that is using power to serve the public good, or whether it's a minimum wage that says, no, you can't pay somebody $2 an hour. You have to pay them something that more approaches a living wage. Whether it's a regulation that prevents discrimination and in the workplace, or that require some level of food safety, all of this. If there was no power in the economy, if the economy always worked to serve the public good through the invisible hand, then you wouldn't need any regulations.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, but obviously that's not true. And powerful people want more power and more money. And regulation has always played a really important role but over the last 50 years, a lot of that willingness to, to confront power shriveled up and died effectively. And I think there's no more consequential case of this than what happened to the Federal Trade Commission over decades, which used to, in a very muscular way, make sure that industries didn't get too concentrated and big companies couldn't take advantage of consumers or smaller companies in ways that were, that were unfair and harmed competition and consumer choice and so on and so forth. And you know, really until the Biden administration, no one had seriously addressed any of these issues really in decades. And you know, today with us is Elizabeth Wilkins, who is today a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project. Before that was the chief of staff at the Federal Trade Commission and senior advisor to Ron Klain, who was President Biden's first chief of staff. But it's such an important area of economic policy that was so ignored for so long and frankly, it's going to take in the best of cases decades to get out from under the many, many years of bad policy and get the economy back on track.

[Goldie]

But with that policy. Bad theory.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah. Bad law. Yeah, yeah. In any case, I think we should talk to Elizabeth and hear about what's going on at the ftc.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

My name is Elizabeth Wilkins. I was formerly the Chief of staff at the Federal Trade Commission and also the Director of policy. And I do not have anything to plug right now except for self care that taking a break. And I highly recommend it to all you social justice warriors out there.

[Nick Hanauer]

That's great. So Elizabeth, you spent a ton of time at the ftc. Could you just generally tell us about your work there and the role the FTC plays in preventing monopolies from abusing market power and promoting competition and the rest of it.

[Goldie]

Let's just start by saying that's the Federal Trade Commission.

[Nick Hanauer]

Oh, yeah.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Yes. For those who don't know the Washington Alphabet soup, ftc, otherwise known as the Federal Trade Commission, is sort of a progressive era administrative agency, which, honestly, when I first thought about working there, I didn't know what it did either. It enforces our country's antitrust and consumer protection laws. And I will tell you, when I first thought about going there, and even when I had my first interview with Chair Lina Khan, I had to say, look, I didn't even take antitrust in law school. I don't know anything about this. Are you sure that you want me to come work with you guys? But the reason that I, as I looked into it, was really fascinated by this Small but mighty agency is. It's got this incredible dual mission. The FTC act, which created the agency in 1914, says it is supposed to prevent unfair methods of competition and unfair and deceptive acts and practices in the marketplace. And what that really means is that across basically the whole economy, this small little agency is supposed to ensure that American consumers and workers and small businesses get a fair shake in the economy. It's really kind of. Maybe this is a little bit of a cliche thing to say, but this weird sounding agency is kind of as American as apple pie in the sense that it's supposed to make real this promise that if you work hard, if you want to apply your trade and apply your skills and talents to the marketplace, that you ought to be able to have an open lane to see how you can do that isn't blocked by a bully or a cheat or otherwise somebody else in the marketplace using unfair and underhanded tactics to prevent you from doing that.

[Nick Hanauer]

And by a small agency. How big is it?

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

I think it's around 1400 people. You know, to give you a sense, like the Department of Education is considered a small agency. And I'm going to get this wrong, but it's something like 8,000 people. Right. You know, so it really, really is quite small compared to the enormity of the markets that it oversees.

[Goldie]

Wow. So considering the. The influence of the law and economics movement, it's probably a good thing you didn't take antitrust in law school.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

That's what I told myself, yes.

[Goldie]

Because the FTC hadn't been doing its job for the past 40 or so years.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

That's totally right. I mean, you know, buckle up if you want the whole history lesson here. But I think it's really fascinating and also pretty important to understand what the goals of the antitrust laws were actually supposed to be. So, you know, if you go all the way back to the founding, obviously the founders were concerned about concentrated government power. They didn't want a king anymore, and they thought about separation of powers. But there was also a real concern that about concentrated economic power in the marketplace and how that could be just as coercive and problematic to the project of creating liberty for the American people. And so that's sort of the tradition that the antitrust laws came out of in the late 1800s and early 1900s was this sense that true freedom meant also freedom from coercion in the marketplace. And Congress wrote laws that they intended to be broad and that they intended to ensure that kind of fairness. And we saw a really robust and interesting antitrust enforcement right up until about the 1980s. Just at the same time that you see the rise of Reaganomics, trickle down economics, and the kind of rise of the idea that unfettered markets were the best way to deliver goods to people. You also saw kind of the shackling of antitrust enforcement, that instead of these robust ideas about constraining corporate power, antitrust was reduced to the idea that the enforcement of these laws were just supposed to make markets more efficient, that they needed to bring down consumer prices and increase consumer output. And that was really the alpha and the omega of antitrust enforcement. And, and you actually saw the enforcement agencies themselves, not just the Federal Trade Commission, but also the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, kind of limit their own readings of their own statutes to confine themselves to this really impoverished idea of what antitrust was supposed to deliver to the American people. And we kind of are living with the results of that kind of antitrust enforcement and that kind of economic policy writ large. We now have an economy with super concentrated marketplaces where big tech controls our access to information, where big medicine controls an enormous amount of the money flow that's supposed to be going to delivering high quality care, where big grocery means that they can raise prices, shrink packages, and squeeze consumers for higher profits. So that's kind of the stage that was set when the Biden administration came in and when Chair Khan took the helm at the Federal Trade Commission, was sort of, how can we revive those original understandings of the antitrust laws and the promise that they made to the American people to make markets more fair?

[Nick Hanauer]

How long did it take you to get up to speed on all these issues?

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

That's a great question. You're going to get nerd Elizabeth here. I probably had some of my most favorite professional moments in my first six months at the Federal Trade Commission. Just reading. I read a whole bunch of Supreme Court cases. I read a whole bunch of law review articles. And the interesting thing about this project is, you know, in any, I'm a lawyer. In any other area of law, when you're supposed to get up to speed, what do you do? Well, you read the statutes, you read the cases. The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. So you specifically read the Supreme Court cases, and then you read the other cases, and then you read some, maybe you read some analysis to sort of flesh out your understanding, but those are your primary sources. It was real weird. I got to the. I got to the Federal Trade Commission and people were like, oh, no, no, don't you don't need to read the law. You just read this economic analysis, read this law review article, read this understanding of how markets work, et cetera, and then how we should apply the law. And I kept saying, no, no, I'm really pretty sure that I understand how law works, and I'm pretty sure I should start with the statutes and then the Supreme Court cases. So that first six months was really getting up to speed on the legal frameworks.

[Nick Hanauer]

Elizabeth, can you explain why there was this tension between what they thought you should learn and what you thought you thought you should learn? That's really interesting.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

It was super interesting. So, you know, this idea, like I said, starting in the 1980s, that the antitrust laws should really just serve to make markets more efficient. It meant that people really ignored decades and decades of legal precedent and honestly kind of ignored the words in the statutes. And what they did instead was kind of read a bunch of economic analysis about how they, how people thought markets should work and what kind of, by.

[Nick Hanauer]

The way, bullshit economic analysis. Yeah.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Yes.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Yes. Well, that's totally right. I mean, we could get into this as well. It's not just that I was being told, don't worry about the law, just read these economic analyses. It was also read a bunch of economic models that are not true. The theories. Right, the theories which don't actually map into realities. Right, exactly. Which were just false. Right. And. And there's a whole bunch of things that we can think about. I mean, some of them are like, we are now in a digital age. None of these analyses had anything to say about the idea that we are now in a data economy where products are free, but actually we are paying with a totally different thing, which is our privacy. None of these analyses had to do with all kinds of ways that markets actually work these days. And then, not to mention, like I said, the analogy that I always used was, imagine you are enforcing the civil rights laws, anti discrimination laws. Would you ever say as your first question, well, is enforcing this law economically efficient? No. What you would say is Congress passed a law that was backed by a certain set of values about who we are and who we are not as a people, what we think is permissible and what we don't think is permissible, and those are the laws that shape our markets. Right. It doesn't matter if you have lower prices, if you discriminate against black people. We've decided that you can't do that and that the antitrust laws shouldn't be any different. Right. That you have to start with the values that Congress used when they passed these laws. And Congress was trying to shape markets, to make markets work for the American people. And that's where we need to start, not somebody else's idea about outdated economic models.

[Goldie]

I'm not sure the conservative majority on the Supreme Court would agree with you on your Voting Rights act analogy.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Fair. Maybe it's an analogy that's true to myself and my values, but the same. But the point still stands. And conservatives do say that they care about textualism and originalism. Right. Which is what this is about. This is small C conservative. This is, we're doing what Congress told us to do, not we're running away and making our own rules.

[Goldie]

It's fascinating you say that because you hear people criticizing Chair Khan as being radical, too radical for the position, and yet really, she's conservative because she's actually adhering to the letter of the law, to the intent, the statute.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

You've got that exactly right. I think you've got that exactly right.

[Nick Hanauer]

And so, Elizabeth, again, I hate to pull on the string too much, but when you got to the FTC and people told you what to look at, it wasn't Lina Khan who told you ignore the statutes. It was the conventional wisdom at the FTC that was trying to lead you to these economic analyses. Correct.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Inside and outside the ftc. That's right. I mean, you know, this antitrust had become this very closed, insular community of lawyers and economists for the last 40 years. And so it really, it's taking some work to inject some air and light into this. And I do, Nick, I really want to be really clear about this. I actually have a tremendous amount of respect for the civil servants who work at the ftc. These are all people who could have gone and worked at big law firms and made a ton more money because they wanted to have big corporations as their clients. These are all people who wanted to go into public service, who care about the public interest, and who I think are genuinely excited about more robust enforcement. But there's so much work to change the ways everybody has been trained to think about these laws and to think about these markets. So this is just the beginning, I think.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah. No, no, no. And, you know, I mean, the great trick of neoliberalism and trickle down economics were these fundamental ideas about market efficiency that, you know, that the least regulated market was going to be the one that created the most value for everybody. That's a good idea if you can get people to believe that as their sort of baseline, first order, sort of Framing idea. Well, then everything is derivative of that. Right. And it's very hard to regulate in a world where regulation by definition is value destroying. Right.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Yes. I think that this is exactly the power of paradigms. Right. Is that even folks who really wanted to do good for working people, for consumers, they were swimming in a water where it was like they were swimming in a fish tank. There's only so many things that were possible because the landscape was constrained. And one of the things about paradigm shifting is we're not in the fish tank, we're in the ocean. There's like a lot more things that are possible, especially things that are tied to our fundamental values.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah. So interesting. And so tell us for a minute about what the most exciting things you think the agency is doing right now.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

So I might be biased, but I think one of the absolute most important and exciting things that the agency is doing right now is it is just promulgated a final rule to ban non compete clauses in labor contracts. And what that is, a non compete clause in an employment contract basically says, you, worker, are not allowed to leave my employee and go work for a competing business or start a competing business. These were contracts that people thought sort of started in the boardrooms. People who had specialized knowledge, insider knowledge, trade secrets, etc. You know, needed to be barred from taking those somewhere else. And what we've actually found is they cover one fifth of the American workforce and they are stifling competition in the labor market. They are stifling the free flow of information between businesses, which hurts innovation and business formation, consumer prices. It's bad for basically everybody. And this is a rule that would do incredible things for workers, for small businesses, for productivity in the economy. And it's a really bold pronouncement that antitrust enforcement isn't just about case by case, weighing and balancing in a way that keeps it sort of shackled and constrained, but can also be about clear rules of the road for businesses. Such and such a practice like shackling your workers to your employee with no out are just unlawful. You just can't do that. It's clear, it's easy. This is the way we are going to structure the labor market to increase, increase fairness so that both substantively for workers and for what it means for antitrust enforcement and how we shape markets, I think is one of the most exciting things we're seeing from the administration writ large, not just the ftc.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, absolutely. What is the number, the economic impact of that?

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Oh, this is incredible. I think their, their most recent estimate in the final rule is that over the next 10 years, this rule could increase worker wages by over $400 billion, that it could decrease health care spending by somewhere between 74 and $150 billion. And those are just the consumer and worker numbers. There's also numbers for increasing patents, which is kind of a way of measuring innovation. So huge is the answer.

[Goldie]

I don't know if I've read my econ 101 correctly. I'm pretty sure this is just going to hurt the, the people we're trying to help.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Yep. Those favorite Econ models that we like. Exactly. That's exactly right.

[Nick Hanauer]

As you prosecuted that case within the agency, I mean, without telling tales like, was there resistance within the agency for moving in this direction? I'm so interested in the turning the ship element of this work.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

So I gotta tell you, this is actually maybe my favorite story to tell internally and externally for. I think it's a really good tale for how it's like almost how government got its mojo back or something like that. So the conversation about going after non compete clauses has been going on for a good long while. Well before Biden, well before Chair Khan, there were petitions to the agency saying, you guys have the power to do this and here's why you should do it. There's this burgeoning economic literature. The FTC had actually had some convenings to talk about this. So the groundwork was laid. I think people were concerned about it, but they were worried about whether, whether we could really do it. We wanted to use an authority that the agency hadn't used in a while. And the agency had had a history back in the 1970s of going big on using its regulatory powers. And it really got slapped down. It had some real political backlash and it got some funding taken away from Congress. And people have long memories. So there was real, I think, institutional concern that being too bold and going too far might have seriously negative repercussions on the, on the agency. So again, it wasn't that people didn't think that these clauses were really concerning or didn't want to do something about them, but there was a cramped kind of imagination about what the agency was capable of and, and about what was prudent. And I was part of, I was the head of the policy team and my team was leading the effort to, to write this rule. And I thought it was really important not to kind of sit in a room by ourselves and not talk to anybody and just write it, but actually to write it really in collaboration with people across the agency. So that a lot of staff around the agency, career staff who cared about this stuff, who had been working on relevant things, got to see the process, got to see how serious we were taking the issue, that this was not a flippant exercise, that the staff work was thoughtful, that they were included in it, including folks who had objections, that they were heard, that we did the process in a way that demonstrated respect for the internal expertise that people had, at the same time that we were pushing people to broaden their imaginations and to be willing to think boldly. The other thing I think that, and you know, that was an interesting push and pull. You know, sometimes doing work in a way that's collaborative takes a little bit more time, but I think the product is much better. And I also think that's how you bring people along. Because when they can see themselves in the final product, even if they weren't so psyched about it to begin with, they may not be 100% on board, but they feel as if they were heard and they were a part of something. And then I have to say, once we put out the proposal, which was a really broad proposal, right, it was to ban all non competes across the economy for all income and level of worker, that outpouring of positive support from the public for this was, was like invigorating for the agency. As I said, these are people at this agency who gave up bigger salaries to go work for, for, for big law. They are people who care about protecting the public and they might disagree about what's prudent, what we might get backlash for, but they want to do good. And so for them to see their agency front page of the news as the hero who was protecting the little guy from something that was a huge constraint in their lives. And to see frankly, some of our folks out on TV talking about the very human impacts, potential impacts of the rule. I remember I did a couple of TV hits and the number of career staff who came up to me afterwards who said, you made me feel proud of my agency again, was really touching. And I think that that's like a compact that we have with the people inside the agency and also with people outside the agency that we, we talk a lot about the risk of overreach, but I think we don't talk nearly enough about the risk of underreach, that if we are too constrained in our ambitions, we give up the opportunity to demonstrate to the American people that we're fighting for them and we give up the opportunity to build the muscle internally in our career staff. And in our government agencies that we can do big things. I just saw a convening by the Vanderbilt Policy accelerator, which is a great organization led by Ganesh Sidaraman, where he had a whole bunch of New Deal historians come and talk nitty gritty about all the new New Deal agencies and what they did and how they regulated so that we can just remember the feeling of government doing big things again. So that we can broaden our imagination so we can get excited and have joy about the work we can do. Because we will do so much more together if we can do that. So I do, just to bring it back. I think that the process internally and externally of writing the non compete rule was a great example of respecting the expertise of career staff, of collaborative policy making so that people feel respected and heard and of demonstrating both inside and outside of government how big our ambitions can be and how capable we are of protecting the public when we meet those ambitions.

[Nick Hanauer]

We know you've left the agency, but you know what's next there to the extent that you can tell us.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Sure. Well, I think you're seeing a couple of things. One which I'm really excited about, and this is across the FTC and the Department of Justice is a real focus on the healthcare industry. I think the Department of Justice just announced a task force. The FTC in the fall announced a really great and interesting lawsuit against a private equity firm that's playing in the healthcare space that is rolling up anesthesiology practices in Texas which is raising prices for patients. I think there's just a real recognition that the healthcare space in particular is one which is highly concentrated, which is rife with anti competitive practices and which has really devastating effects for patients, for workers, et cetera. So I think we're going to see more there and I'm very excited about that.

[Nick Hanauer]

That would be, that would be amazing.

[Goldie]

Yeah, tell your colleagues to look at veterinary medicine because that's happening throughout that industry. You used to have a bunch of local vets and now they're all being rolled up into. I don't know if they're hedge funds or what, but people are just buying up veterinary practices and prices are going.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Through the roof 100%. And that's like, you know, I actually remember something about the pet crematory services right around when my in laws dog died. And it was like such an awful experience to watch the pain that they suffered at that moment and then to see how much they had to pay after they suffered that trauma. And that is, that is totally a product of private equity consolidation. So, yes, 100% agree. So that's one substantive area where I think antitrust enforcement can go. And we'll see it going in a way that really is intuitively understood by ordinary people. Another thing that's a little bit more wonky but very important is, you know, the FTC and the DOJ just in the last few months, put out a revised set of merger guidelines. So one of the things that these agencies do is they review when two companies say they want to combine, they review the proposed transaction. And the legal standard is a merger is illegal if it may substantially lessen competition in any line of business. So they do that review and they just put out these merger guidelines to really put much more teeth into that review. And very wonkily, they also are proposing a rule to require much more information from companies so that they can analyze all the dimensions of competition that a merger might affect. And I think what we're going to start seeing is more merger challenges based on those new merger guidelines, and more and more of the law starting to be changed around how that merger analysis is supposed to look. That's really the first line of defense against increasing concentration in the economy across all industries. And so what I'm really looking forward to is again, more merger challenges based on those new guidelines and the gradual change in the legal framework that will help really deter that kind of concentration before it even happens.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, that's fantastic. So, couple more questions. So if you were a benevolent dictator and in charge of all of this, no political constraints. Yeah. What Would you do?

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Oh, boy. Well, first I'd dance a jig because that would be a very fun position to be in. You know, I will just. I guess I'll step back for a second. We've been talking specifically about antitrust enforcement, but when we think really broadly about kind of competition policy or the anti monopoly movement writ large, that is the movement to constrain corporate power, concentrated corporate power. Antitrust enforcement isn't the only tool. So what I would really like to do is step way back and think, what are all of the rules that we need in all of our various markets to make them work for the actual core values that we think Americans deserve? And to me, those core values include a measure of liberty and autonomy that is some control over your life, some ability to build a life by yourself or with a family or within a community that has meaning to you and that's free from domination. Right. That's really what our economic policy should be aimed at. Some of what we need to get there is antitrust enforcement. Some of it is different kinds of corporate regulation. Right. So we see a different whole set of tools in constant, in kind of quote unquote, naturally constant, concentrated industries like utilities or railroads. I think of that as anti monopoly policy too. Right. We already have concentrated corporate power for various reasons. What's the set of rules and regulations that we need in those industries to curb their power, make sure it doesn't leak into the political sphere and again maintain this sphere of economic freedom for people. And then you also see a whole sphere of kind of public options. Public options can be the only option, like healthcare in the UK practically. But they can also be a competing option to discipline the market. Where are there places where we should have some public options to discipline the market? Again, with the same, with the same goal in mind. So if I were king of the world for a day or a week, it would be kind of to again reorient our whole framework of economic policy around those core values and then to zoom out to say which of our tools work in which industry. Where should we have greater antitrust enforcement? Where should we have kind of a utility style regulatory policy? Where should we inject public options into the market to enforce competitive discipline, all in the service of those core values?

[Nick Hanauer]

Interesting.

[Goldie]

Well, I'd vote for you for dictator.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Well, thank you. I'm not sure my kids would agree with you, but I appreciate it.

[Nick Hanauer]

And one final question. Why do you do this work?

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Oh man, I love that question. Thank you for asking. You know, I, I was very lucky growing up. I consider myself someone who grew up with a lot of privilege. I'm African American. I was. But as the daughter of two professors, one of whom was a sort of a civil rights leader for his, my father for his whole career. And I just grew up with this sense of responsibility, right, that, that I had been born into a set of privileges. I'd won the lottery basically, and I didn't do anything to deserve it. I was just lucky. And I didn't have to feel guilty about that. I just had to make sure that I was using that to make sure that the world looked more like that for other people. My dad, every day when I went to school, he'd give me a hug and he would say, use this day well. And I think that's what he meant every single day. How can I use this day to make the world a little bit of a better place in whatever sphere? If I'm five years old, that means that I hold some kid's hand when they're crying when I'm 40 years old, then here we are. So I think that's been kind of my guiding principle for my whole career. I have learned an enormous amount working in all kinds of places. Like, I started my career off at SEIU organizing workers. I've always believed in creating more power for people, creating a world in which people have true governance over the meaningful choices in their lives. I have found my skills and talents to be best applied in the government sphere as a regulator. And so that's how I found myself in most of the places that I've been in. And humbly, I hope I've made a difference.

[Nick Hanauer]

I love it. So, Elizabeth, thank you so much for being with us. It's really interesting work.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Goldie]

Yeah, and thank you for the work you do. It's great to have people like you in government.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys for what you do.

[Nick Hanauer]

So, Goldie, that was an amazing conversation, and Elizabeth's clarity on that stuff is really awesome. But I think that what we should spend just a moment talking about is the actual economics. Right. Because if you put aside the issues of fairness and power, I think it's really important to understand and emphasize that a fairer economy is also one that creates more value and more wealth faster.

[Goldie]

Right, right.

[Nick Hanauer]

We're not just doing this, you know, because we feel bad for the weak and are angry at the strong. The truth is that when you regulate markets in this way, when you reduce monopoly power and promote competition, you get higher rates of innovation, broader consumer choice, higher wages for workers, and lower costs for consumers.

[Goldie]

You know that you get more. You get more players in the economy, so you have a more resilient and innovative economy.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yes.

[Goldie]

And, and, and the interesting thing here is that regulation is always described by the right as being anti business. Right. Democrats are anti business. This is anti market. No, no, no. These statutes, when they were written, the way they were written, were really pro market because they understood that the basis of the market's ability to improve our lives, to grow the economy, to innovate, is competition. They're pro competitive. And these statues were created in an era where you saw this incredible concentration of market power. You saw Standard Oil, the Rockefellers, just buying up the entire industry and controlling these markets. And when you do that, you get not just higher prices and more profit taking, you get rent seeking, you get less innovation. And so the framers of these statutes, the policymakers, the lawmakers, when they wrote this, they understood that it was a necessary and absolutely necessary role of government to regulate these markets in a way to maintain competition. Because as we've talked about, Nick, many times on the podcast, the inevitable outcome of market processes is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah. But again, I just think that the really important thing to recognize is that by constraining markets in these pro social ways, we're not going to have less prosperity or slower economic growth. We're going to have more prosperity and faster economic growth and.

[Goldie]

Absolutely.

[Nick Hanauer]

And, you know, bonus, people will have better lives and more agency and more choice and more fun. Right.

[Goldie]

Regulation is good for the economy.

[Elizabeth Wilkins]

Yeah.

[Goldie]

And that's something we've lost over the past 40 years. I think there's one other thing here, Nick, that I. I'd like to comment on, and that was I was really fascinated by her description of the process. And, you know, when you asked about, you know, resistance from within the agency, and she described the reason that they were successful in moving the FTC on these issues was because they demonstrated respect for the expertise of the career staff, that they took a collaborative approach. And what that reminded me of was Trump constantly railing against the deep state. They're describing the same things here. What Trump was railing against was his inability to take a dictatorial control of the federal bureaucracy, of the career staff who are not political appointees, who are generally can be hired and fired at will by a new president. These are career bureaucrats. And he was frustrated by that because he and his people were unwilling to do the type of collaborative and respectful work that Elizabeth and the other leaders at the FTC have done over the past few years. And that's why one of the things that Trump is campaigning on is, oh, he's just gonna fire all the career staff and replace them with his cronies. Yeah, that's what he calls the deep state.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah.

[Goldie]

And it's a. It's a very different approach to governance and something which, you know, I think the Biden administration should be very proud of, that they've been able to have this type of success by working with people instead of working against them.

[Nick Hanauer]

I agree. Well, very interesting stuff and lots of progress being made. It's really cool.

[Podcast Producer]

Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at Civic Action and Nick Hanauer. Follow our writing on Medium at Civic Skunkworks and peek behind the podcast scenes on Instagram at Pitchfork Economics. As always, from our team at Civic Ventures. Thanks for listening. See you next week.