Monopoly Round-Up: How to Stop the Enshittification of America

BIG by Matt Stoller

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Monopoly Round-Up: How to Stop the Enshittification of America<br>Cheating as a business model exists because Americans can no longer sue big business. A Democratic Congress could fix this problem with one simple law. Plus, a defeat for Paramount-Warner, and more...<br>Matt Stoller<br>Jul 27, 2026<br>∙ Paid

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As usual, there’s a lot of monopoly-related news. There was an important win in the Paramount-Warner merger fight, the world of tech giants is in a civil war over open source AI models, and Lina Khan continues to annoy the superrich by becoming the Chair of one of the most important economic development posts in New York City.<br>Before getting to all of that in the full round-up I want to discuss a political opportunity to improve the lives of Americans very quickly.<br>In a few months, it’s likely that Congress will change hands. If it does, one thing Democrats could do is pass a law making it possible to sue big companies who cheat their customers, suppliers, or employees. Right now, it’s virtually impossible to do that, and the result is a degradation of our economic order so significant that we’ve had to invent a new word to describe it.<br>The Legal Roots of Enshittification

The term “enshittification” was coined in 2022 by novelist Cory Doctorow. He initially used it to describe the decline in quality of monopolistic tech platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, who lock in users and then degrade their experience to secure more profit. But people now use the term to describe how everything from veterinary services to landlords are getting worse, rapidly.<br>On a consumer level, we’ve all experienced getting nickeled and dimed, as well as stuff breaking more often than it used to. I’ve written a lot about this dynamic, from Ticketmaster’s junk fees to bad service from water cooler giant Primo Brands to stripping our ownership in video gaming and farming equipment.<br>The word “enshittification” was recently added to the dictionary, and there’s a reason for that. The experience of being trod upon is now routine. There’s a site called Worse On Purpose that regularly profiles the prevalence of poor quality products, from appliances to mattresses to Whole Foods to cookware to pet care. As the New Yorker put it, we live in the “Age of Enshittification.”<br>We didn’t always have to put up with poor quality products, bad service, and unfair treatment. What happened? And can we reverse it? The answer is pretty simple. From the 1980s onward, corporate America convinced judges to stop letting ordinary people sue big businesses for screwing them. Small businesses, like independent pharmacies, also lost the ability to get their day in court.<br>The right to sue is fundamental in America, so fundamental that the seventh amendment of the Constitution guarantees a right to a jury trial where “the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars.” So if it’s enshrined in the Constitution, how did they take it away? The answer is the big business lobby convinced judges there were simply too many frivolous lawsuits frustrating the rights of capital. (Remember the public relations campaign about how McDonald’s got sued for serving ‘hot coffee’ because of those greedy trial lawyers?)<br>One way to get rid of these nuisances was to say that people were voluntarily waiving their rights. Of course, in most cases, people had no choice, and usually didn’t even know they were waiving their rights. You know when you click on the endless parade of “accept” buttons when signing up for a new service? Or signing dozens of documents when getting a loan, or an employment agreement? Yeah, that’s one of things you are signing away - your right to sue.

Courts have traditionally not allowed people to waive these rights. Starting in 1983, however, the Supreme Court reinterpreted a 1925 law, the “Federal Arbitration Act,” meant to legalize arbitration of contract disputes between large businesses. They ruled that Congress preferred moving disputes out of the courts and into secretive arbitration panels.<br>Soon arbitrators, who were hired by corporations and whose proceedings are secret, were judging matters of law, such as antitrust, consumer protection, and employment discrimination. Here’s Lina Khan and Deepak Gupta on what was a de facto massive transfer of wealth to big business:<br>Against the backdrop of a movement claiming excessive lawsuits were strangling small businesses, courts would continue to expand the realms in which companies could compel arbitration. In the 1995 case Allied-Bruce Terminix v. Dobson, the Supreme Court permitted the use of arbitration clauses by companies in routine consumer contracts.<br>This prompted Justice O’Connor to remark that, “over the past decade, the Court has abandoned all pretense of ascertaining congressional intent with respect to the Federal Arbitration Act, building instead, case by case, an edifice of...