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Why the US must break the grip of huge monopolies | Ganesh Sitaraman | Big Think - YouTube
Channel: Big Think
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GANESH SITARAMAN: So I think one of the things
that we've seen in the last decade or so is
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increasing concentration in sector after sector
in the economy.
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And it's a problem for a few reasons.
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First, it's an economic problem.
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When you have massive concentration into a
small number of monopolists you often get
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higher prices, less innovation, because there's
less competition.
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And you have a political problem, which is
that a small number of companies can lobby
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Washington to try to pass policies or support
regulations that benefit themselves at the
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expense of others.
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So we have this problem that's both economic
and political, that comes from concentration
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and consolidation.
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What's really striking is that we have anti-trust
laws, and throughout our history have really
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had an anti-trust, an anti-monopoly movement
that was very concerned about this kind of
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consolidation, both for economic reasons and
for constitutional and democratic reasons.
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And it goes way back to the first Gilded Age,
in the late 19th century, and the Industrial
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Revolution.
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Back in that time period, there were, there
was massive concentration of companies into
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a smaller and smaller number, they called
them the trusts back then.
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And the trusts wielded great power economically
over society, and politically over government.
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They were often depicted in writings as an
octopus with their tentacles all over American
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society.
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And so what people of the Progressive Era
did, is they passed anti-trust laws.
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The Sherman Act in 1890, the Federal Trade
Commission Act, the Clayton Act.
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And the goal of these laws was to try to breakup
these consolidations of economic power, and
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in other laws, to try to regulate economic
power in places where there were natural monopolies,
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to create them to be more like public utilities.
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And in either case, the idea was that democracy
should be able to control significant economic
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power, rather than economic power controlling
democracy.
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And that was the idea of these laws in the
Progressive Era, and it really continued for
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most of the 20th century.
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And then starting in the 1970s, there was
a real shift.
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And this shift was to say that anti-trust
wasn't really about power and concentration
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and distribution of power, it was really about
economic efficiency, about a kind of idea
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that all that really mattered was consumer
prices, and lowering prices.
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And this idea started to expand, starting
in the 1970s, and it became more and more
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powerful, and over time really took over much
of the anti-trust profession, to the point
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that we're now in a place where the anti-trust
laws have not been significantly enforced
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in the way that they might have been in early
generations.
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And what we're seeing is greater and greater
consolidation.
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So I think one of the things that we need
to do as we think about achieving an economic
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democracy, a system in which there's no one
that has so much economic power that they
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can dominate either the economy or our politics,
is we need to think about reinvigorating our
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anti-trust laws and the principles of anti-monopoly
that gave spirit to those laws and to lots
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of other regulations.
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One of the things I think that's really interesting
about this moment, is that people in the country,
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from all different parts of the country, whether
geographically, or parties, walks of life,
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understand that there is something very, very
wrong.
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When you look at polling there's people, you
know, it's a very common thing, that people
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think that they don't trust the government,
that they think the government is corrupt,
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that they think the economy is rigged against
ordinary people or for people at the very,
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very top.
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And in the middle of the coronavirus, especially,
people understand that in a public health
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emergency, you actually need government to
be able to work for you and help.
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And so I think this is a moment where people
are really starting to see, even across political
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parties, how important it is to have a government
that works, in order to be able to address
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the public health emergency, in order to be
able to address the economic crisis that is
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a consequence of that emergency, and that
they have seen that where we've been as an
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economy over the past 30 years, where we've
been in terms of our politics over the past
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30 years, hasn't really been working for everyday
ordinary people, and instead has been really
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working for a small number of people, and
a small number of corporations, and interest
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groups.
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I think that is a place where there's an opportunity
to start moving together and delivering on
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results that actually help a lot of people,
and help them see that we can actually have
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a government that works for us.
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That will help change some of the polarization
that we're seeing when those results are delivered.
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