Ed (Prof G / Scott Galloway?)

I like that one.

These are my favorite jokes.

It's the terrible dad jokes.

Those are my favorites.

The dad jokes?

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When I look at these interdependencies, there's a sense in which this is actually beneficial and that this is the way that markets should be headed.

How do we draw these lines as to what is actually good competitive behavior?

What is...

level of monopolization and the intention to monopolize and to accumulate power, at what point does it become a problem where it actually causes an issue for markets?

It's sort of a general question, but how do we draw that line between you are competing in a good way, you're trying to buy up your competitors, you're trying to compete versus you are causing issues in the markets?

That's the future I see.

So you left the antitrust division after the end of Biden's term.

I doubt that'll happen.

If you were back at the DOJ and you were regulating what's happening in AI, what would you go after?

What would you focus on?

How would you solve for these issues?

I think you'll be doing very well.

I'll be coming over and caring for you.

Well, I don't see why we can't just make it, call it a stock and say, put it on the stock market and say, you know, retail investors can invest in these private stocks or just create a market.

Have daughter's head.

I don't see why we need the tokenization and the chain and the AI.

Yeah, actually, my grandma recently made that point.

Why can't we just use the internet and call it a stock?

But anyway, I would like to get your reaction generally.

I was visiting her and she has this friend and she was saying, I just, I feel like she needs someone to take care of her.

And the trouble is she doesn't have a daughter.

I just want to get your reactions to any other important antitrust lawsuits or areas of antitrust that are happening right now.

I mean, just some cases we could bring up, like the Google ad tech case or the Live Nation case or the Apple case.

I mean, so many other antitrust lawsuits going on.

Anything that you think is particularly important right now or deserves more attention?

Could you briefly just like explain the Ticketmaster situation just for anyone who might have forgotten?

I was just going to bring up the CapEx that we talked about at the beginning of the show.

It's like, yes, we're investing or the big tech companies are technically reinvesting into the economy by spending and creating the demand for themselves by investing in each other and spending all of that money on the data centers.

But I hadn't thought of the other downstream of that, which is, yes, that's going to create

more demand on the energy side.

I mean, infinitely more demand when we look at the amount that these data centers are going to use up, which is going to drive prices up for the rest of us.

And again, it was demand that was kind of created out of thin air because of the size of the balance sheets of these companies and their ability to partner with one another.

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I'm impressed that you decided to do that.

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Just going back to the Ticketmaster situation, you mentioned how it's like the most popular antitrust case of all time.

I think that's probably because it's such a consumer-specific case.

It's like everyone buys tickets to go to stuff and to go to live events and concerts and

I feel like it's very...

And it's very obvious to people how a monopolized economy could result in higher ticket prices.

It's very easy to see that link and make that connection.

So it's very popular.

My question is, how important is popularity today?

when it comes to antitrust enforcement?

I don't know, mentally healthy thing to do.

Like when people come up to you on the street and they say, oh my gosh, like you're the guy who did that Ticketmaster case.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.

Is that important when it comes to enforcement?

Like, do you need public support?

Does that help your case?

Does it advance the case?

Like what role does popular support have in antitrust?

Go to a support group and talk about problems.

Just on that note, when you look at the rise of someone like Zoran Mamdani, and people are not happy with capitalism right now, and then someone like Mamdani comes along, who is a democratic socialist,

And his view, in many cases, is that, one, that affordability is a problem, and I think we can all agree with that.

But in some cases, the solution isn't about trying to figure out how to let competition and markets bring prices down, but how to enable government to sort of take ownership and then...

have government bring prices down.

So as an example, the city-owned grocery store, I think that's probably gotten maybe too much attention.

It's a pilot program, whatever.

But the reality is, his view is, okay, the government will come in, they'll run the grocery store, they'll bring the prices down.

And I think that that is indicative of a growing belief among Americans right now that capitalism doesn't work for us and we need to go to...

more state-heavy solutions, something closer to socialism.

I just want to get your reactions to what we're seeing in terms of that trajectory.

But your view is the solution is capitalism, not socialism, but regulated capitalism.

Exactly.

Jonathan Cantor is the former Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S.

Department of Justice under the Biden administration.

During his tenure, he brought major antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, UnitedHealth, RealPage, American Airlines, the meatpacking industry, and many others.

He also previously served as an attorney at the FTC and founded his own law firm, Cantor Law Group.

We really appreciate your time, Jonathan.

Thank you so much for joining us again.

Thanks, Jonathan.

Well, just responding to what you just said there about the surgery, one thing that's really frustrating to me is

agreed preventative medicine is easier and more effective.

But what is so upsetting to me is they actually did figure out the surgery.

They did identify where to make all the cuts between the Siamese twins, especially with Google as an example and the search division.

And they figured that whole thing out.

They laid out the plan.

They laid out the remedy.

And I think one of the craziest things that we saw when it comes to antitrust this year was...

the judge agreeing that Google had a monopoly.

And then when it comes to dishing out the punishment, he sort of backs off, retraces his steps.

And he says, actually, AI is happening.

And, you know, AI means that Google is going to be, you know, competing and they have to deal with this really difficult thing called chat GPT.

So I'm not really going to punish.

And that to me was like a giant slap in the face to Google.

all of the work that all of these antitrust guys... And to your point, yeah, they spent years and years trying to figure out, how do we make that surgery?

They figured it out.

And then the guy, all he had to do was just carry the ball across the line.

And he didn't do it.

And now we see, like, Google is actually beginning to dominate in AI.

We saw those statistics.

It's eating opening ice lunch.

So...

I don't know, I agree with you that this stuff is difficult.

It doesn't mean that it's impossible, and they proved that, and yet still our system bent in favor of big tech, concentration of power, monopolization.

So I was certainly disappointed about that.

I know Jonathan was too.

I would like to just get your reaction to the capitalism-socialism discussion that we had at the end there.

These are large, very kind of overly generalized philosophical discussions, and I generally don't like them because I think they simplify things too much.

However...

they are having a place in the national conversation now.

The question of capitalism versus socialism actually is a conversation that is being had right now because so many people are losing their faith in capitalism, and we are, of course, seeing a rise of more socialist-minded political leaders, and the obvious example is Mamdani.

I want to get your reactions to that.

What did you think of what he said?

Where do you land on all of this?

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.

Our research team is Dan Shallan, Isabella Kintzel, Chris Nodonohue and Mia Silverio.

Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.

Thank you for listening to Property Markets from Property Media.

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I have a lot more questions that I can't get to because we have to get to this conversation with Jonathan Cantor.

We have to talk about this boring thing called antitrust.

I want to hear more about Carlson.

Let's get on with it.

This is not CNBC.

Okay.

Here is our conversation with Jonathan Cantor, former Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S.

Department of Justice.

Jonathan, great to have you back on Profity Markets.

Thank you for being with us.

So we really wanted to bring you on to get your reaction to what is happening in AI.

We've discussed potential antitrust concerns when it comes to AI before.

We've been talking about it going way back to when we realized that all of these board directors on all of these different AI companies, they all serve on each other's boards.

And then it

kind of progressed to these AI companies or these big tech companies investing in AI startups and then swallowing them up and taking their employees and oftentimes taking their profits.

We saw that with scale AI.

We saw that with inflection.

We even saw that with open AI.

And now we're getting to a point where they're all financing each other

through these circular deals where you invest in an AI startup and then the AI startup turns around and spends that investment money on your chips and on your compute, it's all getting a little bit shady, is what we would say.

And we have a lot of concerns in the community, in the investment community, that we are seeing a bubble.

So that's sort of the picture that we're seeing.

We want to get your reaction as a preeminent antitrust expert.

What do you think of what is happening in AI right now?

So when you look at the big players here, who would you consider to be the new Rockefellers, the new JP Morgans?

Who are those players that you think are the most apt to compare?

What is the danger here with all of this?

I mean, collusion might be a strong word.

It sounds sort of like conspiratorial, but what we're describing is these very, very large and powerful companies that are cooperating with each other instead of competing against each other to build market power.

They're investing in each other.

They're becoming friends with each other and sitting on each other's boards.

I think colluding probably describes what's happening here.

What is the danger there?

Because on the one hand, you've got this fear of a bubble that they're kind of creating their revenue by just going out and saying, oh, we'll invest in you and then turn around and pay for our products.

But then on the other hand, maybe this is an effective monopolization strategy.

Maybe this is how the Rockefellers of the past built up market power.

And ultimately, I mean, those were good investments because generally speaking, investing in a monopoly can work out.

I mean, where is this all headed?