Break 'em Up Quotes

“Nothing better illustrates the limits of the consumer model of change in the face of monopolized markets than the extraordinary success of the local, slow-food, organic agriculture movement and its simultaneous failure to make a meaningful dent in the way food is created. About 75% of all Americans try to eat local, organic food, and one survey showed that nearly 90% of people want locally grown food at the grocery store and would consider that as part of their shopping decision. As Stacy Mitchell, who runs the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, points out: 'The local food movement has gone farther than any other [consumer] movement in terms of widespread adoption...' Despite the health food movement's unmitigated success, and the fact that food is where people have the peak amount of leverage - they can buy or not buy, or 'vote with their pocketbook,' three times a day - only 5% of all farms are organic, and only 0.3% of total farm sales are direct-to-consumer sales. Monsanto may be widely reviled, yet Monsanto's power keeps rising. Consumer choice simply cannot get us a to a world where most farmers and farmworkers are treated better.”
― Zephyr Teachout, Break 'em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money

“Predation isn't merely a pricing and wage practice; it is also a political practice: one of its most powerful tools is local or state subsidies. In 2018, when Amazon was offered $3 billion in state subsidies to locate a new facility in New York City, the owner of the Strand, the legendary Union Square bookstore, wasn't having it. She told the New York Times, 'The richest man in America, who is a direct competitor, has just been handed $3 billion in subsidies.' The basic insight in her complaint is essential: any subsidy that goes to a particular firm necessarily hurts its competitors.”
― Zephyr Teachout, Break 'em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money