'We Have to Reduce Corporate Power': An interview with professor and activist Zephyr Teachout.

• Author: Whitney, Jake

Zephyr Teachout is a law professor at Fordham University, as well as an author, activist, and three-time political candidate. In 2014, as a virtual political unknown, she mounted a surprisingly strong primary challenge to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, grabbing 34 percent of the vote. In that campaign, Teachout made anti-corruption a key issue, which resonated among voters at a time when Cuomo had abruptly shut down the Moreland Commission, established to investigate political graft in Albany. Cuomo, accused of sexual harassment, resigned in disgrace in August 2021. Teachout also ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2016 and New York State attorney general in 2018.

An expert on corruption and antitrust law, in 2020 Teachout published Break em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money, which Publishers Weekly called "a passionate and persuasive case for a revitalized antitrust movement." Teachout, who will turn fifty on October 24, spoke with me by phone on a recent Friday evening from the Harlem home she shares with her husband and young son.

Fiery, loquacious, and as amiable as ever, Teachout had much to say about her area of expertise: organizing against corporate power.

Q: Explain why it's important to keep corporate power in check.

Zephyr Teachout: With the rise of corporate consolidation over the last forty years, we've seen increased abuse of workers and suppliers, because once industries achieve market dominance, they no longer have to respect either. Whether it's Amazon with online retail or Eli Lilly with insulin or Tyson with chicken farming, they can set the terms. That means if you're Eli Lilly sitting atop the market, you can charge twenty times what it costs to make insulin--a drug people need to live.

For workers, this has meant thousands of dollars a year in lost wages and degraded working conditions. Research has shown that the rationale for consolidation, which was reduced prices, has not worked.

Concentrated corporate power is a threat to freedom--especially in the wake of [the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in] Citizens United, which allowed companies to spend political money without restrictions. There are obvious ways they threaten freedom, like spending millions on lobbying. But fear is another threat. Take a company like Amazon. People are scared of Amazon and won't speak up about their practices if they're in Amazon's orbit. They're afraid that these behemoths will retaliate. So there's a democratic cost along with wage stagnation and quality of life...