Institute for Local Self-Reliance

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People around the world are hungry for economic systems change.

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Find events near you, communication kits, and more at: www.reclaimtheeconomy.org

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A Local Self-Reliance Agenda for New York City: ILSR's Memo to Mamdani | The Mamdani administration has a crucial opportunity to reverse New York City's affordability crisis; this ILSR policy memo suggests strategies to do so.

1. New York’s affordability crisis flows from a deeper problem: essential systems — groceries, energy, Internet, banking, healthcare — have consolidated in the hands of distant corporations. Today, ILSR sent the Mamdani team a memo laying out policies to reclaim local control.

1. For at least 10 years, Pepsi has conspired with Walmart to force up grocery prices. That’s the shocking evidence made public today in an unsealed FTC lawsuit. The suit was abandoned in May by the Trump FTC just before it was to be un-redacted. We went to court to get it unsealed & won.

New Details Emerge in Accusation of Pepsi's Predatory Business Practices Favoring Walmart Newly unsealed FTC filing accuses PepsiCo of favoring Walmart while artificially inflating prices for local grocers and consumers.

You can read more from us here on the new revelations: ilsr.org/article/inde...

As ILSR Senior Researcher Ron Knox puts it, "enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act is not just good for competition, it's good for consumers because it actually creates the competitive environment that leads to low food prices." 12/12

The PepsiCo filing makes it abundantly clear that it's time to start enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act. Doing so will restore competition, level the playing field, and lower prices for everyone. 11/

There's a solution to the higher prices caused by this anticompetitive corporate behavior: enforcing the antitrust laws that prohibit it. These laws are already on the books, but they've been ignored for decades. 10/

ILSR co-director Stacy Mitchell says, "For years, PepsiCo has been systematically weaponizing its relationship with Walmart to crush competition — not through better service or efficiency, but through discriminatory dealing that the Robinson-Patman Act explicitly prohibits.” 9/

The complaint alleges that Walmart's low prices are not a result of competition. They are the result of artificially inflating everyone else's prices. 8/

The part about raising prices for non-Walmart retailers is key. Walmart's low prices don't actually mean lower prices for consumers. They mean higher prices, since everyone except Walmart has to pay more for Pepsi products. 7/

According to the complaint, PepsiCo maintained Walmart’s "price gap" by tracking prices on behalf of Walmart, raising wholesale prices for non-Walmart retailers, and funding Walmart's promotional displays and price reductions while reducing promotional support to competing retailers. 6/

The complaint outlines a secret plan in which sales executives at Pepsi work to "keep Walmart happy" by ensuring that Walmart has lower prices on Pepsi products than any other competitor, including Target, Kroger, Food Lion, and independent grocers. 5/

The alleged scheme carried out by Pepsi on Walmart's behalf demonstrates that this kind of anticompetitive behavior doesn't actually lower prices for consumers. It raises them. 4/

Though Trump's FTC unceremoniously abandoned the case, the complaint alleges a shocking conspiracy to raise prices at every retailer except Walmart. 3/

Today, we received further confirmation of the answer. ILSR successfully sued to release the largely unredacted 2024 FTC complaint, which alleges price discrimination by PepsiCo in favor of Walmart. 2/

This morning, we drove around and checked the price of a 12-pack of Pepsi at three different places. At an independent grocery store in Columbus, Ohio, it was $11.99. At a nearby Kroger, it was $10.99. Then, at the closest Walmart, it was $7.28. No surprise, right? But why the discrepancies? 🧵 1/

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Break Up with Amazon: A Citizen’s Guide to Ending Amazon’s Government Contracts. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the ... A recent investigation by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has uncovered that Amazon is capturing billions of dollars in government purchasing in cities, counties, and school districts across the...

In 2023, Amazon charged some schools $13 for a case of markers, while other schools paid $74 for the exact same product -- a difference of 469%. It's time for local gov'ts to break up with Amazon. RSVP for the Jan 8th webinar with @ilsr.bsky.social to learn how: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

US schools face big price swings for basics under Amazon’s ‘dynamic pricing’, report claims Amazon calls the report ‘flawed and misleading’ and says it offers lower prices than competitors

Too many state and local governments blindly trust Amazon to offer low prices on things like school supplies. In reality, the site's dynamic pricing means schools can pay wildly different prices for items purchased on the same day. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Turning Public Money into Amazon’s Profits | Independent Business Amazon has quietly captured a growing share of government purchasing. This major report explains how, and what to do about it.

1. Amazon has become a major force in how cities, counties & schools buy basic supplies. Our new report finds Amazon is using opaque pricing algorithms to drive up costs and eliminate transparency—while harming competition by pushing out better-performing independent suppliers.

Learn more about this remarkable collective effort by reading ILSR's new report, "Seeking the Commonwealth of Connection." ilsr.org/wp-content/u... 9/9

"People are feeling like there's a rising quality of life in these beautiful but rural communities that had felt like they were stagnant before," says Jessica Auer, author of a new ILSR report on the remarkable collective effort by a rural region to claim their connectivity future. 8/

The result is Internet rates that are often lower than what the average customer of telecom monopolies pays, and additional service provision made possible for the communities. 7/

Moreover, these 19 Western Massachusetts communities are now in control of how much they pay for Internet and what happens with the resulting revenue from the municipal networks. 6/

Now that these 19 communities have banded together to take their connectivity into their own hands, they're reliably using tools many of us take for granted — video calls, telehealth, remote work, and businesses taking EBT and conducting credit card transactions. 5/

These corporations decided there wasn't enough money to extract and enrich shareholders, so they refused to invest in these communities. This left citizens, businesses, and municipal governments to turn to each other. 4/

This lesser-of-two-evils choice was a result of telecom monopolies' refusal to invest in the region's infrastructure. 3/

The years-long effort to bring high-speed fiber to rural Western Massachusetts was born out of constantly being left behind by big tech and telecom monopolies. Folks in rural Western Massachusetts had to choose slow and decaying DSL infrastructure or no internet at all. 2/

Why did 19 rural communities in Western Massachusetts collectively create the most geographically dense cluster of municipal fiber networks in the United States, resulting in world-class Internet access, often at a fraction of the price charged by telecom monopolies? 🧵 1/

In this world, the playing field would be level enough that a community-oriented independent business can hold its own against big chain competitors by prioritizing community investment.

This world is not only possible, but within reach. 8/8

Individual businesses go bankrupt all the time, but that's not what we're talking about here. The point is that we should demand a regulatory and economic environment that creates opportunities rather than obstacles for a business like Books Inc. to thrive. 7/