Resurrect Antitrust
The leading technology companies in the United States, like their counterparts in the late nineteenth century, have amassed a dangerous amount of economic, political, and social power, owing to their sheer size and market dominance. And today, too, the right approach is to break up these behemoths and restore a competitive environment.
BERKELEY – America’s Gilded Age in the late nineteenth century began with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – but culminated in mammoth trusts owned by “robber barons” who used their wealth and power to drive out competitors, and then to corrupt American politics.