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more perfect union
Investigation Shows How Decades of Corporate Consolidation Have Devastated US Cattle Ranchers
"The marketplace is fundamentally broken," one rancher explained.
Dec 23, 2025
Even as US beef prices have continued to surge, American cattle ranchers have come under increased financial pressure—and a new report from More Perfect Union claims that this is due in part to industry consolidation in the meat-packing industry.
Bill Bullard, the CEO of the trade association R-CALF USA, explained to More Perfect Union that cattle ranchers are essentially at the bottom of the pyramid in the beef-producing process, while the top is occupied by "four meat packers controlling 80% of the market."
"It's there that the meat packers are able to exert their market power in order to leverage down the price that the cattle feeder receives for the animals," Bullard said.
To illustrate the impact this has had on farmers, Bullard pointed out that cattle producers in 1980 received 63 cents for every dollar paid by consumers for beef, whereas four decades later they were receiving just 37 cents for every dollar.
"That allocation has flipped on its head because the marketplace is fundamentally broken," Bullard told More Perfect Union.
Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, recently highlighted the role played by the four big meatpacking companies—Tyson, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS—in hurting US ranchers.
Writing on her Substack page earlier this month, Huffman zeroed in on Tyson's recent decision to close one of its meatpacking plants in Lexington, Nebraska to demonstrate the outsize power that big corporations have over the US food supply.
The Lexington plant employs more than 3,000 people and is capable of processing 5,000 head of cattle a day, and its closure is expected to both devastate the local economy and have a major impact on US ranchers throughout the region.
Huffman noted a report from the Associated Press estimating that the Lexington plant's closure, combined with projected job cuts at a Tyson plant in Amarillo, Texas, could cut national beef processing capacity by up to 9%.
"Ranchers were already dealing with high costs, drought, and years of uneven prices," Huffman wrote. "Now they face even less competition for their cattle. When there are fewer packers active in the market, ranchers have less bargaining power, and cattle prices fall even as beef prices in grocery stores stay near record highs."
Dan Osborn, an independent US Senate candidate running in Nebraska, has made the dangers of corporate consolidation a central theme of his campaign, and on Monday he released a video explaining why he spends so much time talking about monopolies, particularly in the agricultural industry.
"If you're a farmer, your inputs, your seed, your chemicals, you have to buy from monopolies," he said. "Sygenta, Chinese-owned company you've got to buy your seed from, they control and manipulate that market. And then when your production's over and you're selling it, you're selling it to monopolies as well."
Want to know why I talk about MONOPOLIES all the time? This is why. 👇 pic.twitter.com/MuYh0gZRVr
— Dan Osborn (@osbornforne) December 22, 2025
Osborn said that the trend of industry consolidation wasn't just limited to agriculture, but is now moving forward with major railroad and media mergers.
"We need to create an economic environment in this country that favors competition," he said. "That's what a free market is. A free market isn't three or four big people or big corporations controlling everything."
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Watchdog Celebrates Victory Over Instacart Pricing Scheme—But Says Broader Corporate Abuse Remains
"Instacart is far from the only corporation using AI technologies to determine exactly how much profit they can extract from their customers by overcharging them," said the executive director of Groundwork Action.
Dec 22, 2025
The watchdog group that exposed Instacart's artificial intelligence pricing scheme is rejoicing after the company announced on Monday that it was ending the controversial program.
Earlier this month, Consumer Reports joined the Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union to report that the grocery shopping app—which calls itself the "largest online grocery marketplace in North America"—was using the AI pricing software Eversight to charge up to 23% more for some customers than others for the same items, subjecting users to a "pricing experiment" that could cost them as much as $1,200 extra each year.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took notice of the report, saying it was "disturbed" by the findings, and launched an investigation on Thursday, which caused the company's stock price to plummet by about 7%. It also attracted attention from members of Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who demanded government action on what he called "shakedown pricing."
Instacart agreed that same day to pay the FTC $60 million in a settlement for what the commission said was "a variety of deceptive tactics that misled consumers and caused them to pay more in fees." These included falsely advertising "free delivery" to consumers on their first order, implying that customers would receive a full refund if they were dissatisfied with their delivery, and failing to disclose membership charges.
The settlement does not mention Instacart's use of AI pricing experiments, but on Monday, the company said it would hit the brakes on that as well, following customer backlash.
"Effective immediately, Instacart is ending all item price tests on our platform. Retailers will no longer be able to use Eversight technology to run item price tests on Instacart," the company said in a statement. "Now, if two families are shopping for the same items, at the same time, from the same store location on Instacart, they see the same prices—period."
While it acknowledged that the pricing scheme "missed the mark for some customers," the company maintains that it was not using "dynamic pricing or surveillance pricing" and that it was not changing prices "based on supply or demand, personal data, demographics, or individual shopping behavior."
Alex Jacquez, Groundwork's chief of policy and advocacy, celebrated on social media that "Instacart has ended all item pricing experiments on its platform," calling it a "big win for consumers."
Groundwork Action's executive director, Lindsay Owens, likewise took pride in the fact that "once we pulled back the curtain on Instacart’s hidden pricing experiments, the company had no choice but to close the lab," but also said "it shouldn’t take investigative research, public outcry, and the threat of FTC action to convince companies not to treat consumers like lab rats."
"Instacart is far from the only corporation using AI technologies to determine exactly how much profit they can extract from their customers by overcharging them," she added.
Though the investigation did not find evidence that Instacart was using these methods, other companies—including Amazon, Delta Air Lines, and Home Depot—have been accused of fluctuating prices for consumers based on ZIP code or income level.
Owens said, "It’s time for regulators to put a stop to corporate pricing schemes and take action to restore fair, predictable, and transparent pricing.”
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‘Who Wants to Live Like This?’ Locals Fume as Meta AI Data Center Upends Entire Community
Meta is financing the data center using accounting tricks that the Wall Street Journal reports appear "too good to be true."
Nov 24, 2025
The tiny town of Holly Ridge, Louisiana will soon be home to a massive $27 billion artificial intelligence data center being built by Facebook parent company Meta that, when finished, will be the largest in the world.
However, residents of Holly Ridge do not feel honored that they are at the epicenter of Meta's ambitious data center buildout, which they say has upended their entire community.
As reported by New Orleans-based public radio station WWNO last week, the nonstop parade of trucks driving through Holly Ridge has led to a 600% increase in vehicle crashes over the last year, including three truck crashes that occurred just outside Holly Ridge Elementary School.
Penelope Hull, a fourth-grade student at the school, told WWNO that the data center construction trucks are highly disruptive to learning even on days when they don't get into accidents, as they often cause the classroom walls to shake.
"You can't pay attention," she said. "And then you get off track and you lose what the teacher was telling you to do."
Hull also said that the school has had to shut down its playground out of concern that Meta construction trucks will crash into children playing during recess.
The threat of trucks crashing into schools isn't the only problem that the data center has brought. Local residents Joseph and Robin Williams told WWNO that they've noticed their tap water is frequently rust colored since Meta started building the data center, and they say their electricity frequently goes off for hours on end with no warning.
Similar issues were documented by progressive media outlet More Perfect Union, which sent its reporters down to Holly Ridge and found residents felt their concerns were being completely ignored by both Meta and their local elected officials.
"We had no voting on it, no community meetings, no nothing," one local woman told More Perfect Union. "It was done all under the table."
Another local resident told More Perfect Union that Holly Ridge has become "totally different" ever since Meta began AI data center construction.
"Who wants to live like this?" he asked as he looked on at more construction trucks barreling through the community.
Zuckerberg is building a data center in Louisiana the size of Manhattan — while Meta runs ads about how small towns love their data centers, we found furious locals who plan to leave town completely. pic.twitter.com/xHLG4KJMLO
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) November 19, 2025
According to a Monday report in the Wall Street Journal, the massive Meta Louisiana data center is being funded through debt that is being papered over with accounting gimmicks that the paper notes are likely "too good to be true."
Specifically, the Journal said that Meta has created a joint venture known as a variable interest entity with investment manager Blue Owl Capital, in which Meta will rent the data center for up to 20 years as a way to keep the debt from its construction off its books.
"This lease structure minimizes the lease liabilities and related assets Meta will recognize, and enables Meta to use 'operating lease,' rather than 'finance lease,' treatment," the Journal explained. "If Meta used the latter, it would look more like Meta owns the asset and is financing it with debt."
However, the report noted that Meta is relying on "some convenient assumptions" in justifying its use of this accounting tactic, some of which "appear implausible" and "are in tension with one another," which makes it hard to justify keeping debt from the data center off its books.
"Ultimately, the fact pattern Meta relies on to meet its conflicting objectives strains credibility," reports the Journal. "To believe Meta’s books, one must accept that Meta lacks the power to call the shots that matter most, that there’s reasonable doubt it will stay beyond four years, and that it probably won’t have to honor its guarantee—all at the same time."
Commenting on the Journal's story about the data center financing, Wired editor Tim Marchman described it in a post on Bluesky as "the equivalent of a 500-foot neon sign reading 'FRAUD.'"
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