Title: The Curse of Bigness Pdf Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
Author: Tim Wu
Published Date: 2018-11-13
Page: 170
"As Tim Wu argues in The Curse of Bigness, global economic concentration is now at levels unseen in more than a century -- since the early days of industrial capitalism. A policy advocate and law professor at Columbia University, Wu offers a vital diagnosis: America has abandoned its rich tradition of anti-monopoly, or antitrust, law. And while the very term 'antitrust' may strike many as dreadfully dry, Wu manages to make this brisk and impressively readable overview of the subject vivid and compelling." -- The Washington Post"It's a big idea for a little book, but Wu knows how to keep everything concise and contained. The Curse of Bigness moves nimbly through the thicket, embracing the boons of being small." -- Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times"Sweeping in scope, The Curse of Bigness is probably the best popular account of the history of American antitrust law and policy. It captures the stakes in the battle for antitrust―and it cuts to the heart of one of the central questions of our time: Can democracy survive?"--The New Republic"Tim Wu's short and sharp new book, The Curse of Bigness, is an excellent primer for anyone who wants to understand why corporate wealth and power have grown so concentrated in the past four decades, and why that might be a problem for democracy." -- Rana Foroohar, Financial Times"Mr. Wu writes with elegance, conviction, knowledge -- and certitude." -- Richard A. Epstein, The Wall Street Journal"Tim Wu, in his book The Curse of Bigness, which is a cool 160 pages and politely holds the reader’s hand through about 200 years of American economic policy and practice, argues that the time is now, 'to control economic structure before it controls us.'" -- VOX"Tim Wu has pulled off an incredible feat―he’s written a short, compelling book on antitrust....Wu skillfully avoids economic and legal rabbit holes, keeping the book laser-focused on his thesis: that antitrust enforcement must be restored 'as a check on power as necessary in a functioning democracy before it's too late.' Persuasive and brilliantly written, the book is especially timely given the rise of trillion-dollar tech companies." -- Publishers Weekly"A brief diagnosis of our monopolized moment and an eloquent articulation of principles that Wu believes can lead us into an era of shared prosperity, economic and political independence, and, in the words of Brandeis, 'the right to live, and not merely to exist.'”--The American Conservative"Several books have been written about monopoly over the past few years, and several more are still to come. But none are as succinct and pointed as The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust In The New Gilded Age, the new book from Tim Wu, the Columbia University law professor and former Federal Trade Commission advisor perhaps best known for coining the phrase “net neutrality." - Global Competition Review"The Curse of Bigness is a useful guide to the evils of privatized scale... A revitalization of aggressive trustbusting is as radical a proposal as could be taken seriously in the short term, and Wu charts a clear path to temporarily forestall the social ills of an oligarchic private tech industry."―Dissent Magazine800-CEO-Reads Editor's Choice for November 2018 Tim Wu is a policy advocate, a professor at Columbia Law School and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is best known for coining the phrase "net neutrality." He worked on competition policy in the Obama White House and the Federal Trade Commission, served as senior enforcement counsel at the New York Office of the Attorney General, and worked at the Supreme Court for Justice Stephen Breyer. His previous books are The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires and The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside our Heads.
From the man who coined the term "net neutrality," author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our economic and political future.
We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms -- big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the "curse of bigness" can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century.
In The Curse of Bigness, Columbia professor Tim Wu tells of how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age--but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.
Gilded Age II - A Study in Attempted Tyranny An excellent short book on the dangers of unfettered power in the economic and corporate realm. Wu's method of providing a clearly explained historical context for the roots and origins of problems we face today works very well in exploring this contentious area. He makes a very persuasive link between the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century when Industrialists like Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan were a law unto themselves until they were reigned in by Teddy Roosevelt riding a wave of public perception that the Robber Barons needed to be brought under control.Wu rightly cites and admires Louis Brandeis as a key figure in this legal and political battle to redress the balance of power. He explains and justifies the reasons why the Antitrust laws were intended to address the large problem of suppression of competition and not just the narrow issue of "consumer welfare".This is a very relevant and timely book given the development towards ever greater concentration of economic power in very few companies in the modern world.Here's one way to address economic inequality The Curse of Bigness highlights one of the most significant policy questions facing American society. The author, Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, insists it's time to restore America's lost commitment to the antitrust legislation passed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Break up big corporations, he urges, since the increasing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands has enabled the superrich to get their way with Congress and frustrate the popular will. Nothing less than the integrity of our democratic system is at stake, Wu contends. "[E]xtreme economic concentration yields gross inequality and material suffering, feeding an appetite for nationalistic and extremist leadership," he writes. In other words, Wu is suggesting nothing less than that vigorous antitrust action might go to the roots of today's extreme politics.Taking action against the "malefactors of great wealth"Defenders of tax cuts for the rich and corporate welfare will no doubt howl in protest at Wu's thesis. But it's difficult to see how they could logically refute his argument or disprove it on historical grounds. In The Curse of Bigness, Wu traces the history of antitrust from the passage of the Sherman Act in 1890 to the present. He argues that once Theodore Roosevelt ascended to the White House and launched the antitrust movement with an attack on the Northern Securities Company, public sentiment shifted decisively in favor of taking action against what the President called "the malefactors of great wealth."Roosevelt saw antitrust not just as an economic policy but as a political necessity. Monopolists ("the trusts") wielded such power that they were able to dictate policy decisions to Congress. Thus, democracy was in peril since the trusts were able to lord it over the economy. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called it the "Curse of Bigness." And Wu cites Brandeis' writing as central to the thinking that dominated US antitrust policy until the 1970s.Brandeis once said, "The 'right to life' guaranteed by our Constitution" should be understood as "the right to live, and not merely to exist. In order to live men must have the opportunity of developing their faculties; and they must live under conditions in which their faculties may develop naturally and healthily." Clearly, this is a conviction not shared by the leadership of today's Republican Party.Break up big corporations to restore democracy?It wasn't until the 1970s that a legal attack on antitrust led by Robert Bork began pushing against the antimonopoly sentiment that had prevailed since the turn of the century. Bork's crusade, abetted by increasingly sympathetic judges, yielded a series of landmark decisions in Federal courts. In the decades that followed, these cases undermined the ability of the Justice Department to take action against monopolistic corporations. His argument rested on what can only be a willful misreading of the Sherman Act. Bork insisted the only justification for an antitrust prosecution was if monopolists were charging higher prices and thus harming consumers. He rejected any argument that antitrust action could rest on anything but the narrowest economic grounds. And Bork prevailed. When George W. Bush entered the White House, antitrust had become effectively a dead letter."[D]uring the Bush years," Wu observes, "the anti-monopoly provisions of the Sherman Act went into a deep freeze from which they have never really recovered . . . [T]he Bush Justice Department proceeded to bring a grand total of zero anti-monopoly antitrust cases over a period of eight years, and did not block any major mergers." Antitrust action resumed under Barack Obama and would have continued in earnest under Hillary Clinton. And Donald Trump claims to be taking antitrust "very seriously."Two big antitrust actions in the 1980s and 90sIt's true, as Wu makes abundantly clear, that two major antitrust prosecutions took place in the 1980s and 1990s. Under Ronald Reagan, the Justice Department sued to break up AT&T, then the largest private company in the world. But the case never went to court, as AT&T eventually consented to the breakup. Then, in the Bill Clinton era, Microsoft came under the microscope. The case was still in court in 2000 when George W. Bush was elected by the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision. Bush's Justice Department essentially dropped the case, settling for what have since been viewed as cosmetic changes.The problem doesn't lie just with the tech industryThese days, most of the little talk in the air about antitrust involves the tech industry: Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. These companies all certainly deserve close attention, and most if not all of them could easily become targets under a more rigorous interpretation of antitrust law. But Wu argues forcefully that the "Curse of Bigness" has infected much more than the tech industry. For example, look at the market share for the major firms in the oil, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries. And consider this: the stock market has been shrinking for the past two decades. "The market is half the size of its mid-1990s peak," according to the New York Times. Anyone who so much as glances at the news about mergers and acquisitions knows perfectly well that the American corporate sector has been consolidating for decades.Wu concedes that "antitrust alone will not cure the curse of bigness or eliminate the excesses of private power. But it strikes at the root, and getting the engines of the law restarted is an important part of dealing with a problem that has reached Constitutional dimensions." To that end, Wu lays out "A Neo-Brandeisian Agenda" in the conclusion to The Curse of Bigness. However, the actions he advocates will clearly have to await a political realignment in Washington, DC.About the authorTim Yu has taught antitrust, copyright, the media industries, and communications law at Columbia Law School since 2006. He is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. The Curse of Bigness is his fourth book.
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