<\/p>\n
True to the title of the presentation, \u201cThe Many Faces of Rotgutzen: The Not-So-Comic Nemesis of Independently Owned Businesses,\u201d Dave Thibodeau, co-owner and president of Ska Brewing Co., delivered a witty yet somber presentation at the Green Business Roundtable on Wednesday at the Henry Strater Theatre, closing GBR\u2019s season.<\/p>\n
The presentation<\/a> centered around Ska\u2019s<\/a> comic, \u201cTales of the Legion of Ska,\u201d a creative representation of Ska\u2019s origin story in which three na\u00efve punk kids (Ska founders Thibodeau, Matt Vincent and Bill Graham) take on corporate beer giant Rotgutzen (a metaphor for Budweiser parent company Anheuser-Busch). In the 1990s, with the corporate brewery on a mission for \u201cworld domination,\u201d gobbling up the \u201clittle guy for breakfast \u2026 like a sausage made of hopes and dreams,\u201d and despite having taken a crushing beating, the independent business came out victorious in this David-versus-Goliath-esque tale. Alas, Thibodeau foreshadowed, that \u201cwas only the battle, not the war.\u201d<\/p>\n The metaphorical Rotgutzen has many faces, and two decades later \u2013 in true Batman-villain form \u2013 corporate giants are once again making their ascent. Thibodeau said \u201ca radically new kind of monopoly\u201d is posing a serious threat to Durango\u2019s independent businesses.<\/p>\n Independent businesses are being devoured by the titans nationally and globally. \u201cGoogle, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft have together acquired more than 500 companies in the past decade,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Even in the beer industry, powerful mergers beginning in 2008 have created a colossal duopoly: SAM Miller (Molson and Coors) and Anheuser-Busch InBev, control 90% of the market. The later union has become the world\u2019s largest brewery, consuming craft breweries such as Breckenridge Brewery, Elysian Brewing Co. and Four Peaks Brewery as it grows.<\/p>\n Thibodeau said 50 years ago, a monopoly like this would not have happened.<\/p>\n \u201cIt comes down to antitrust laws \u2026 we have been here before,\u201d he said, drawing a parallel to John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust.<\/p>\n In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Supreme Court ordered the Standard Oil Trust be broken up and dispersed. Standard Oil controlled 90% of U.S. refineries and pipelines. Through methods such as predatory pricing, it either crushed or purchased their competitors \u2013 they had \u201cenough vertical integration\u201d to allow for \u201cone company \u2026 (to) control the entire industry\u201d Thibodeau said. The Sherman Antitrust Act was then established to disallow any merger that restrains trade.<\/p>\n After the dissolution and establishment of antitrust laws, court cases between the 1940s and 1970s began to swing the pendulum, he said, and the metaphorical Davids won every case.<\/p>\n In the 1970s, something happened to make the \u201cpendulum\u201d swing to the other extreme, Thibodeau said. Namely, Robert Bork and his book, \u201cThe Antitrust Paradox,\u201d which essentially claims antitrust laws were countering their own intention and \u201cpunishing competitiveness.\u201d Guidelines under the Regan administration were established to shift the focus onto the consumer, lowering prices, and allowing mergers so long as they supported low prices.<\/p>\n \u201cNow,\u201d he said, \u201cGoliath wins every time.\u201d<\/p>\n Thibodeau paralleled Rockefeller with Jeff Bezos, Amazon\u2019s CEO. With roots as an online book retailer, Amazon has evolved into not just a retailer but a book publisher, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a marketing platform, a grocer and a leading producer of cloud server space and computing power.<\/p>\n The titan of commerce has built itself from the predatory pricing, giving the independent businesses an infertile platform upon which to take the risks, so Amazon can collect data and mine its benefits. In turn, manufacturing their own items, lowering prices below cost and marketing over the small businesses products, this results in small businesses being crushed or bought out.<\/p>\n Thibodeau made a reference to Amazon\u2019s acquiring of its major competitor Zappos through predatory pricing.<\/p>\n This conflict of interest is also displayed in the purchase of RateBeer and Northern Brewer by ZX Venture, a branch of Anheuser-Busch InBev.<\/p>\n Independent businesses, among other things, create higher incomes, decrease inequality, fuel jobs, create more tax revenue and create a sense of community, he said.<\/p>\n He quoted author and co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance Stacy Mitchell: \u201cThe true value of having a vibrant local economy isn\u2019t just in the bottom line of small businesses and the specific jobs they create. It\u2019s also the notion that place matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Thibodeau highlighted Maria\u2019s Bookshop as being exemplary of this place, and sense of community. \u201cYou can feel the warmth when you walk in there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He closed with a few suggestions of ways to take up arms against Rotgutzen in defense of independent businesses: communicate with elected officials; going to the Local Policy Action Toolkit; support local businesses that keep dollars local and foster community; drink (local) beer; and pause to think before clicking \u201cpurchase.\u201d<\/p>\n After the presentation, Cory Kerns, a local solar worker, said the topic was \u201cnot what he expected, but an important discussion for any community to have as technology allows the creation of powerful monopolies.\u201d<\/p>\n The Payroll Department\u2019s Jessie Christiansen, said Amazon\u2019s monopoly \u201cis right in everyone\u2019s faces and no one sees it \u2026 we don\u2019t realize its there.\u201d<\/p>\n Peter Schertz, owner of Maria\u2019s Bookshop, said Thibodeau\u2019s presentation had a fantastic message. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about shopping local, it\u2019s about shopping at independent businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Standard Oil Trust, Thibodeau says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[431,2608],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-94640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-business-general","tag-ska-brewing-co"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94640"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=94640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}