“reducing-minimum-scale” role played by open platforms

platforms are the essential infrastructure of commerce in our time.

“There is no hope for American democracy,” said Justice Louis Brandeis, “unless the American working man is permitted to combine, and, through combination and collective bargaining, secure for himself the rights of industrial liberty.”[11]

Having worked with Keynes, Galbraith did not believe that “perfect competition” would solve this problem. He believed instead that the key was “countervailing power”—which is to say, the power not of those who compete but of those who bargain with a giant. He argued that countervailing power could prevent economic exploitation. Unfortunately,

In our times, the great tech platforms should be understood as the public callings of our time and given similar duties. Businesses depend on them; we depend on them; they are, for better or worse, the utilities of contemporary life. And as in those times, there is reason to expect more of them—to impose duties that we do not impose on other

Anti-monopoly programs done right force the dominant firm to fight on the merits. In innovative, technology-centered markets, the very goal of antitrust should be understood as creating the openings for industrial succession, peaceful or otherwise.

A government devoted to the long-term prosperity of its people must have in place structures that are committed to the constant balancing of the economy—the equivalent to checks and balances for political power.

The mistake is believing or allowing a social safety net to become understood as a substitute for a balanced economy. It is a mistake that has at times infected the left, particularly the American left, which has too often devoted all its energies to fighting for wealth transfer programs while ignoring the deeper questions of economic imbalance.

To borrow from Galbraith: every aggregation of power needs to be balanced.