Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that parent company Unilever has silenced its attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees, and threatened to dismantle its board and sue its members over the issue.
The lawsuit is the latest sign of the long-simmering tensions between Ben & Jerry’s and consumer products maker Unilever. A rift erupted between the two in 2021 after Ben & Jerry’s said it would stop selling its products in the Israeli-occupied West Bank because it was inconsistent with its values, a move that led some to divest Unilever shares.
The ice cream maker then sued Unilever for selling its business in Israel to its licensee there, which allowed marketing in the West Bank and Israel to continue. That lawsuit was settled in 2022.
A better functioning government would break up these conglomerates as they operate like cartels, price fixing and gouging and colluding with each other, all at consumer expense, while simultaneously watering down product offerings to their worst versions.
This is NOT the free market.
What are you talking about, this is the natural conclusion of a free market.
Sure, sans regulation. The point of govt regulations is to ensure that platforms that control two sided markets are not given complete largesse to fleece the participants. It’s ultimately a defeating strategy with diminishing returns, as both producers and consumers lack the necessary surplus required to participate AND to invest/reinvest resources toward long term growth. Another reason that stock buy-backs used to be illegal.
And obviously you can probably guess I believe they should be illegal again.
I completely agree with you that the results (monopolies and oligopolies) are undesirable, and you’re doing a great job of explaining why the results are undesirable. But you’re not explaining why you think monopolies and oligopolies are not the natural outcome of a free market. The free market is not a good thing.
You mean to say there’s only a few mega corporations controlling all of capitalism? Who would have thunk!? /s
If only someone had warned us in 1867, 1885, and 1894!