Monopoly

Opposition to globalization. Efforts to weaken intellectual property protections. Pushing for municipal broadband. Calls for the National Institutes of Health to develop drugs. What do these positions have in common? They are all examples of the recent turn toward anti-corporate progressivism. This shift is defined by a fierce determination to expand government provision of goods […]

A strange development of recent years has been the revival on parts of the left and the right of the long-dormant ideology of antimonopolism, once associated with agrarian populists like William Jennings Bryan and progressives like Louis Brandeis. Strange, because the antimonopoly school seeks to channel popular discontent with bipartisan neoliberalism, which puts too high […]

In March, I could see that our social response to the coronavirus would be more consequential than the virus itself. Natural disasters can do great damage, but they do not usually change societies. By contrast, mass mobilizations for wars in the modern era have been deeply consequential. The lockdowns and country-wide quarantines have been exercises […]

Two Federal Reserve economists have just come out with a paper on the social consequences of widespread monopolization of markets by large corporations. And the short story is, nothing good. The paper suggests that elevated market power causes: Declining labor share and rising profit share of national income Rising income and wealth inequalities Rising household […]

The modern-day Titans of Industry testified before Congress Monday ostensibly for a hearing on anti-trust.  The hearing could have been an opportunity for left and right to question the immense market power of organizations that have an inordinate amount of power over the daily lives of American citizens.  All of my optimism for the much-anticipated […]