We need a Theodore Roosevelt monopoly buster

"I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this free country—the people through their governmental agents, or a few ruthless and domineering men whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.”

.

—Theodore Roosevelt

Address at the Pilgrim Memorial Monument, Provincetown, Mass., August 20, 1907

Editor  -  I have come full circle from insane libertarian laissez-faire capitalism to fully embracing the trust busting Theodore Roosevelt. Simply the corrupt Malefactors of Great Wealth not only own both parties in Congress but also own the Media Machine that spoon feeds us the news the Elites want us to hear. Break up the ultra huge corporations and allow freedom to return.

(Bloomberg)  -  Economists are increasingly turning their attention to the problem of monopoly. This doesn’t mean literal monopoly, like when one utility company provides all the power in a city. It refers to market concentration in general -- when an industry goes from having 20 players to having only 10, or when the four biggest companies in an industry start taking a bigger and bigger share of sales. This sort of creeping oligopoly acts much like a literal monopoly -- it raises prices, limits market size and tends to make the economy less efficient.

There’s now evidence that market concentration could also be hurting workers, by decreasing the share of national income that they receive. It’s probably making inequality worse. I also suspect that creeping monopoly will prove to be one of the main reasons for decreasing business dynamism.  And it could even be a contributor to slow productivity growth. In other words, many of the diseases in our economy can probably be traced, at least in part, to the problem of market concentration. And it’s getting worse.

Why is monopoly power increasing? The best minds in the econ profession are on the case, but there’s no definitive answer yet.

In a previous post, I mentioned a couple of potential causes. The obvious culprit would be a more lax attitude toward antitrust enforcement. If free-market fundamentalism caused the U.S. to be friendlier toward big mergers since the 1990s, this could have encouraged concentration.

Another possible cause is regulation. Measured by sheer number of words, the amount of federal regulation has been on the rise.

Regulation can increase monopoly power by raising barriers to entry. If a new startup has to wade through oceans of red tape, pay millions of dollars in compliance costs and develop a whole regulatory compliance infrastructure just to start to be able to compete in a market, it gives the big established players a huge and enduring advantage. Big companies are able to bear the cost of regulation much better than small ones. If it turns out that regulation is a central reason behind increased market concentration, I’ll have to become much more libertarian.

Read More . . . .

“These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and the columns in those papers to club into submission or drive out of office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”.
 – Theodore Roosevelt 
(New York Times)