The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
The size problem is made more complex by two more factors. One is that as the size of the operation increases, “dis-economies” of scale begin to creep in, as economists since Alfred Marshall in the 1920s have suggested. For example, as a firm adds more and more employees, it needs to add more managers, and ever-more complex systems of internal cont
... See moreTim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
Or, as Robert Pitofsky put it, we should always be concerned that “excessive concentration of economic power will breed antidemocratic political pressures.”
Tim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
Hence, antitrust law was serving as a new kind of limit: a check on private power, by preventing the growth of monopoly corporations into something that might transcend the power of elected government to control. His pursuit of this goal makes it fair to call Roosevelt the pioneer of political antitrust.
Tim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
All who recall the condition of the country in 1890 will remember that there was everywhere, among the people generally, a deep feeling of unrest. The nation had been rid of human slavery, fortunately, as all now feel—but the conviction was universal that the country was in real danger from another kind of slavery sought to be fastened on the Ameri
... See moreTim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
As Justice William Douglas would later put it, “power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy.”
Tim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
All of this amounts to just a more fancy way of demonstrating Roosevelt’s point: Concentrated private power can serve as a threat to the Constitutional design, and the enforcement of the antitrust law can provide a final check on private power. This, by itself, provides an independent rationale for enforcement of the antitrust laws.
Tim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
The retreat, rather, is best attributed to a combination of fear and uncertainty among those who enforce and interpret the laws—especially departments of government and federal judges.
Tim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
“Men are not free,” he wrote, “if dependent industrially on the arbitrary will of another.” Economic security was a foundation on which one could really be free in a meaningful sense—hence the importance of steady but not oppressive work, of education, time and space for leisure, parks, libraries, and other institutions.
Tim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty.”
Tim Wu • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
If he had a unifying principle, politically and economically, it is what we have said: that concentrated power in any form is dangerous, that institutions should be built to human scale, and society should pursue human ends. Every institution, public and private, runs the risks of taking on a life of its own, putting its own interests above those o
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