Corporate monopolies are harming neighborhoods and communities across the country, every day. Though they work hard to hide it, these dominant corporations take advantage of workers and bully local businesses, siphon wealth out of local communities, lobby for huge corporate handouts from local taxpayers. Not only do these corporate giants undermine local democracies by reducing transparency between communities and elected officials, but they reduce economic opportunities for local businesses and entrepreneurs.
Fortunately, a new generation of policymakers are responding to threats at the state and local level. At Economic Liberties, we’re providing these leaders the hands-on policy advice and political support needed to ensure they succeed.
Learn What’s at Stake
In our research, you’ll find proposed state- and city-level solutions for addressing the harms caused by these corporations and actionable remedies.
Prohibiting Surveillance Prices and Wages
This report, from Economic Liberties and partners, reveals how corporations are using mass surveillance and hidden algorithms to illegally inflate prices for consumers and suppress wages for workers -- and pushes state policymakers to take action.
A New Culprit in the Housing Crisis: Rent-Setting Software Algorithms
In March, Economic Liberties and Local Progress released a brief outlining the tools that states and municipalities can use to combat software-driven rental price-fixing.
How States Can Take on Junk Fees
This policy brief explains how state lawmakers can protect their communities from the scourge of junk fees across the economy.
Better Wages and Working Conditions: How States Should Tackle Noncompete Agreements, “TRAPs,” and Other Restraints On Worker Mobility
The purpose of this memorandum is to provide model legislation and relevant context for state lawmakers seeking to protect workers, small businesses, and consumers from the harmful effects of noncompete agreements.
The Local Harms of Amazon and What State Lawmakers Can Do About Them
This policy brief breaks down the harms Amazon inflicts on local communities, including businesses and workers, and lay out proactive policy solutions state lawmakers can adopt to deal with them. Where appropriate, model legislation has been suggested.
Critical Condition: How UPMC’s Monopoly Power Harms Workers and Patients
"Critical Condition" lays out the effect of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s monopoly and monopsony power have on hospital workers and patients in the Pittsburgh area and provides policy recommendations for every level of government to rein in anti-competitive behavior.
The Harms of Hospital Mergers and How to Stop Them
"The Harms of Hospital Mergers and How to Stop Them" lays out how hospital consolidation raise prices and lowers quality of care for patients, reduces access, and dampens wages and benefits for hospital staff, along with how policymakers can take action.
The Truth About Google, Facebook, and Small Businesses
We expose the ways Google and Facebook prey on small businesses and inspire terror across the commercial landscape.
Tools for State & Local Leaders
We’ve released a set of three aggressive policy toolkits for state and local lawmakers seeking to tackle the harms of Big Tech firms, lax antitrust laws, and the corporate subsidy machine.
Tools For Reining in Monopoly Utilities: A Guide for State Lawmakers
"Tools For Reining in Monopoly Utilities: A Guide for State Lawmakers" serves as a how-to-guide for state and local lawmakers to fight back against corporate consolidation in the utilities industry.
How State Legislatures Can Protect Key Biden Consumer Protection and Small Business Rules
This joint memo with the Consumer Federation of America Progress details ten policies based on FTC and CFPB actions that state legislatures can adopt.
Tools To Challenge Big Medicine: A Guide for State Lawmakers
"Challenging Big Medicine: A Guide for State Lawmakers" serves as a how-to-guide for state and local lawmakers to fight back against corporate consolidation in healthcare and its harms to patients, healthcare workers, independent medical practices, and taxpayers.
Reforming Antitrust Policy to Challenge Corporate Power: A Guide for State Lawmakers
"Reforming Antitrust Policy to Challenge Corporate Power: A Guide for State Lawmakers" lays out several ways for state governments and enforcers to decentralize economic power, redistribute that power to communities, and create an inclusive, robust democracy.
Tools for Taking on the Corporate Subsidy Machine
“Tools for Taking on the Corporate Subsidy Machine” serves as a how-to-guide for state and local lawmakers to reform and rework corporate subsidy programs so that they are more transparent, better serve their communities, and don’t entrench dominant corporations.
Tools for Taking on Big Tech’s Economic Power: A Guide for State Lawmakers
“Tools for Taking on Big Tech’s Economic Power: A Guide for State Lawmakers” outlines potential policy solutions, and explains how to respond to some of the critiques – both legitimate and not – from those invested in the status quo.
Opportunities to Engage
From state enforcers filing antitrust suits against Big Tech firms to communities passing new laws to protect local businesses from predatory delivery app platforms and states updating antitrust laws—the momentum is growing to crack down on corporate actors. Join us!
End Rental Price-Fixing
Across the country, landlords are using to a new tool to raise rents and exacerbate the housing crisis: software algorithms. But state lawmakers are fighting back. This campaign provides resources and organizing support to help advocates, policymakers, and renters to secure a fair and open housing market. Already legislators in eleven states have introduced bills in 2025 to ban this practice
End Junk Fees
The End Junk Fees campaign provides research and model legislation to guide lawmakers through the junk fee issue and possibilities for addressing it, as well as original multi-state polling in collaboration with Lake Research Partners attesting to the broad-based support for legislative action. The campaign also elevates the voices of concerned citizens, soliciting their junk fee stories and connecting them to their state representatives to demand action.
Ban Secret Deals
Ban Secret Deals is a coalition of national and state-based policy and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum calling for state-level bans against the use of non-disclosure agreements in economic development deals.
New Yorkers for a Fair Economy
Labor organizations, small businesses, and immigrant and community organizations are uniting to safeguard our communities from abusive practices of big corporations and achieve an economy that works for all New Yorkers.
End Tax Giveaways
A coalition of 15 states (and counting) have proposed legislation to join together to form the interstate compact to end tax giveaways for big corporations. The compact would outlaw using taxpayer money or other economic privileges to poach an existing business in another compact state.
Key Media
The Hill: Power to the people: It’s time to take on the modern monopoly
The Hill: Power to the people: It’s time to take on the modern monopoly
New York Times: Judge Backs Challenge to F.T.C.’s Noncompete Ban, at Least for Now
New York Times: Judge Backs Challenge to F.T.C.’s Noncompete Ban, at Least for Now
The Atlantic: We’re Entering an AI Price-Fixing Dystopia
The Atlantic: We’re Entering an AI Price-Fixing Dystopia
Governing: Looking for a Surefire Political Win? Ban Junk Fees.
Governing: Looking for a Surefire Political Win? Ban Junk Fees.
CBS News: Department of Justice files letter of interest in case accusing UPMC of holding monopoly over workers
CBS News: Department of Justice files letter of interest in case accusing UPMC of holding monopoly over workers
SF Examiner: SF bans automated software accused of price-fixing housing rents
