Although not all worrywarts are progressives, all progressives are worrywarts. They believe that there are evermore things urgently in need of their supervision – things to ban or mandate or regulate to help society shimmy up the pole of progress.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is progressivism incarnate. The former Harvard Law School professor should possess, if there were such, a PhD in Advanced Worrying. She represents the cutting edge of modern fretting, forever anxious lest something, somewhere, escapes the government’s improving attention. So she has Xed (tweeted, for those who are not au courant) her joy that the Federal Trade Commission recently has been preoccupied with the menace of Big Tech is turning its disapproving squint at Big Sandwich. (This delicious phrase is from the Washington Examiner’s Tom Joyce.)
Roark Capital, a private equity firm, owns or otherwise supports various fast-food chains (Arby’s, Sonic Drive-In, Jimmy John’s, McAlister’s Deli, Schlotzky’s) that serve sandwiches. (Maybe. The government disagrees with itself about the definition of “sandwich.”) Now, Roark reportedly plans to purchase the Subway chain for $9.6 billion. The FTC evidently shares Warren’s worry that this might create, what she calls, “a sandwich shop monopoly.” Well.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “monopoly” as the “exclusive possession or control of the trade in a commodity, product, or service; the condition of having no competitor in one’s trade or business.” But for the FTC-Warren posse, there are difficulties.
Can there be a monopoly in the provision of something that millions of parents make to put in their school-age children’s backpacks? Something a 9-year-old can produce?
Subway is basically a brand. Its sandwich stores are small businesses owned by people who buy one or sometimes several franchises, and who benefit from the chain’s national advertising. Some Subway shops inevitably compete with nearby Jimmy John’s shops or other sandwich sellers. Can a monopoly be riven by internal competitions, while surrounded by external competitors?
Sandwiches (Oxford dictionary: “an item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between them”) seem to have been around long before the 18th century, when the fourth Earl of Sandwich, loath to leave a gambling table, was said to have snacked on meat that was sandwiched (as we now say) between pieces of bread. He, however, made these light meals fashionable, and today antiaristocratic Americans eat billions of them annually.
Perhaps to inflate the specter of a sandwich shop monopoly, the FTC is considering diminishing the number of such shops by semantic fiat – by decreeing that a sandwich made of beef or chicken is not a sandwich if the meat is not served cold. Thousands of McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A’s would be defined out of the sandwich business. And scores of thousands of other shops selling hamburgers, and chicken or fish sandwiches would disappear from the calculations. The Agriculture Department, however, says that hamburger or chicken between bread is – drum roll – a sandwich.
America is so thickly planted with fast food stores that in many places you cannot fling a brick without hitting one. In addition, there are about 43,000 U.S. food trucks, according to IBISWorld industry research, many of them selling what even the FTC would recognize as sandwiches. Most of New York City’s approximately 13,000 bodegas (a.k.a., corner grocery stores) sell them.
Sandwich vendors also compete with sellers of pizzas, tacos and items from Chopt, Panda Express, etc. Yet Warren surveys the crowded landscape of U.S. sandwich commerce and trembles about a potential monopoly.
Her evident belief – mystifying but actual – is that if Roark Capital buys Subway, competition in the sandwich market will somehow shrivel, leading “to higher food prices.” She might not know that many states, including Massachusetts, forbid the owners of brands like Subway to dictate prices to franchisees. Their pricing is dictated, in part, by the proximity of many competitors.
By urging the FTC to devote resources to fending off a sandwich shop monopoly, Warren contributes to the public stock of harmless hilarity, making busybody progressivism more amusing than annoying. And she encourages the FTC to divert to Big Sandwich some meddlesomeness that might otherwise be used for more consequential mischief.
The current FTC’s apparent belief, and Warren’s, is that when an enterprise (Apple, Google, etc.) becomes big by satisfying many customers, these customers have created something worrisome. Hence the itch to combat the chimera of Big Sandwich, even though there is not, and can never be, any such thing.
Reach George Will at georgewill@washpost.com.