THE SMALL ACT

The SMALL Act — Safeguard Markets Against Large-scale Leverage

Stop Wall Street From Rigging Main Street

Reive knows this problem firsthand as a small business owner in the Fox Valley.

Here's how it works: Mega-investment firms buy significant stakes in multiple companies that provide the same service in the same area. Those companies appear to compete — but they're effectively controlled by the same hands. The result is market saturation that looks like competition but functions like a monopoly, forcing small businesses to cut prices to the bone just to survive.

In Reive's own industry, this plays out through shared ownership stakes across major food and beverage service providers — all operating in the same regional markets, all tied back to the same institutional investors pulling strings behind the scenes.

The SMALL Act is straightforward: if companies share a common owner above a defined ownership threshold, they cannot saturate the same market or geographic area with the same services. If they do, they must divest or separate operations.

This isn't anti-business. It's pro-fair-business — the kind of trust-busting that keeps markets honest, protects small businesses, and ensures that when you compete, you're competing on a level playing field.