Lina Khan finds herself, at 32, not only on the board of the Federal Trade Commission, but its chair, and intent on reforming what New York Magazine describes as “a set of priorities that went disastrously astray some 40 years ago.”
Long before that, I’d argue, but let’s hear more.
Concentrated corporate power is to Khan’s mind a threat not just to economic freedoms, but to personal ones. Workers lack power and autonomy to make choices because corporate power has become so overwhelming:
It’s a throwback to the 1920s Progressive-era notion that a free people need fair markets. When we spoke in mid-October for a tightly scheduled 29 minutes and 37 seconds, Khan was at her most animated discussing those moments when Americans “lack choice and lack power” in nearly any act of commerce. “The chicken farmer that is subject to the whims of the massive chicken processor is going to face analogous contract terms to the author that is subject to a major bookseller,” she said. “The worker at the whims of his boss, and who is bound by a noncompete agreement so he can’t quit and go next door; or the small-business franchisee that’s at the whims of the big franchiser; or even the consumer that wants to switch internet providers, but there’s no other service in their neighborhood” — to Khan, these are all symptoms of markets that have been conquered by oligarchs.
Khan’s central argument is that none of this is inevitable; rather, it’s the product of legal and policy choices made since the Reagan era. By seeking to rewind those choices, she has made enemies out of all the companies that have gained the most from the present system — which is to say, the most formidable corporations in America, including Facebook, Alphabet, and Amazon. “This is a David-and-Goliath story,” says Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute, who hired Khan for her first job in the field. “And she’s the perfect David.”
In her third year at Yale’s law sachool, Khan published a published a lengthy journal article contesting an influential article Robert Bork wrote while a Yale Law professor in 1978. Khan asked, Nancy Scola writes, “How could they be harming consumers when they were known for driving costs down, if not providing services for free?” Then Khan counted the ways.
After a stint on Capitol Hill, and with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren among her admirers, the president asked her to run the FTC.
Tapping her as chair was a surprising shift for Biden, and he admitted as much in July as he signed an executive order on competition with Khan over his right shoulder. “I’m a proud capitalist. I spent most of my career representing the corporate state of Delaware,” Biden said. “I know America can’t succeed unless American business succeeds. But let me be very clear: Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.”
Covid and remote work for many on staff has made managing the FTC’s 1,100 employees and $384 million budget a challenge. But despite critics, she has, one staffer suggests, “driven the radicals out of the temple.” Still, she has to pick her fights and work within her agency’s budget constraints. She won’t get everything she wants. (That’s going around in D.C.)
Those around Khan say she’s more important than any one case. To them, she’s a vehicle for the courage to stand up to the corporations that have been bullying Americans ever since regulators abdicated their power, and they hope others follow her lead. “It’s going to take a lot more than Lina,” says Matt Stoller, the author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy(and a former colleague of Khan’s at Open Markets). “This is not a one-person job. It’s not a one-agency job. We are trying to undo 40 years of pro-concentration policy across the entire government. What I’m hoping happens with Lina is the FTC becomes a kind of intellectual and policy center for the government and spreads this movement across the other parts of the government and into the states.” He adds with a laugh, “And of course I’d like her to break up Facebook.”
I’ll spare you another parable about the modern corporation as a Frankenstein-ish creation that, once animated, grew beyond its creators’ ability to control. With luck, persistence and skill, perhaps Khan can rope and tie them critters and confine them to their pens.