Today, given that the central players in the Internet economy are middlemen – platforms that connect buyers and sellers – pricing laws will determine how the spoils get split. Internet platforms enjoy significant benefits, due to network effects and their collection of troves of data, which means producers are often dependent on a very small number of companies (or even one) to get to market. Leaving the right to price with the makers of goods – like authors and publishers – can help level the playing field between makers and middlemen.

Lina Khan, a policy at the New America Foundation, published a Washington Post article in June entitled “How the United States became uncompetitive and unequal.” She described how the Republicans and Democrats separately and together, over the last 30 years, destroyed the competition and antitrust revolution in America that had begun a century ago under Teddy Roosevelt, William Taft and Woodrow Wilson.

Saying that Amazon’s monopoly over books doesn’t matter because it doesn’t also have a monopoly in televisions is like saying that John Rockefeller’s monopoly over oil didn’t matter because he didn’t also have a monopoly over steel.

As the New America Foundation’s Barry Lynn has described, “Walmart ... has told Coca-Cola what artificial sweetener to use in a diet soda, it has told Disney what scenes to cut from a DVD, it has told Levi’s what grade of cotton to use in its jeans, and it has told lawn mower makers what grade of steel to buy.”

The letter to the Justice Department is being written by Barry C. Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of “Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction.” Mr. Lynn said the letter, which is being prepared with the help of several antitrust specialists, would be ready at the end of the week.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that the group will also lobby the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon for illegal monopoly tactics. That letter, written by Barry C. Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, will be sent later this week.

Lina Khan: "Late last year a massive data hack at Target exposed as many as 110 million consumers around the country to identity theft and fraud."

In another recent conversation occurring on Salon with Thomas Frank, Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation pointed out that the Democratic Party, which has been serving as home for the left, suffers from a schism.

Quite a lot, it turns out.

We could’ve seen this coming. Amazon, embroiled in protracted negotiations over new contract terms with the book publisher Hachette, is using its muscle to pressure the publisher for a bigger cut. S

Since the early 1980s, executives and financiers have consolidated control over dozens of industries across the U.S. economy. From cable companies and hospitals to airlines, grocery stores and meatpackers, where once many small and mid-size businesses competed, today we see a few giants dominate.

Amazon only this week acknowledged the storm it raised earlier this month when it made it much harder for consumers to buy books by Hachette, a major French publisher, in order to extract better contract terms.

Barack Obama made an important promise when he first ran for president. “The Internet is perhaps the most important network in history, and we have to keep it that way,” he said in 2007.

Privacy advocates say we should care about privacy because its erosion threatens liberty.

Last week President Obama urged businesses to “give America a raise.” But even if the minimum wage were raised, it wouldn’t necessarily help a huge class of low-wage employees.

Retailers don’t really talk about how to compete with Amazon—they talk about how to avoid being decimated by it.

The National Retail Federation held its annual convention in New York this week, drawing thousands of industry leaders keen to figure out how they’ll make margins in a world of hyper-informed consumers.

Independent ranchers and animal rights activists don’t agree about much, except that it’s time to stop using federal tax dollars to support the meat lobby.

As biotech giant pays huge sums for data analysis about farms, many are terrified about how it might be harnessed

Two mega-companies are trying to seize control of the world's cocoa supply. What that means for poor African farmers and your favorite chocolate bar.

Roaming the candy aisle of my neighborhood Safeway around Halloween is a dizzying encounter with choice.

A year ago, Hurricane Sandy revealed harrowing realities about the basic systems New Yorkers rely on every day.