Will the Biden Administration Enforce Anti-trust Laws?

[beechnut79]

This one is pretty self-explanatory. For the past half century or so, at least since the time of Reagan, anti-trust laws, while remaining on the books, have been given no more than scant lip service as companies have continued to get bigger and bigger through mergers and buyouts with seemingly no end in sight. Even the two previous Democratic administrations have failed to reverse the trend. Do you feel that time may finally right for it now? And why has no candidate so far pledged to break up the gigantic corporate trusts of our time they way Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican BTW) did at the turn of the previous century?

[pbrower2a]

Supposedly, anti-trust laws got in the way of progress that depended upon elites getting everything that they wanted. Those elites saw themselves as the only people capable of wielding power and wealth competently, so everyone else needed to be broke (ideally heavily in debt), helpless, and scared.

The most ruthless and rapacious elites have always seen themselves as the only ones competent to manage assets and command people. They demand everything and offer survival as a privilege and as a gift instead of something to be assumed as a reward. I am reminded of how slave-owners of the pre-Civil War era saw their relationship to their human chattels: as benefactors to people incapable of making their way in life. The American Civil War was practically inevitable because such collided with the idea that toil had to be rewarded with wages instead of being exacted with the lash.

I'm not convinced that monopoly is efficient. It might guarantee a profit, but it also stifles innovation and all but ensures a harsh order in which a few get everything and the rest get nearly nothing other than promises of pie-in-the-sky. It creates a hierarchical economy that ensures hierarchy in all else.

[David Horn]

(03-02-2021, 02:12 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: This one is pretty self-explanatory. For the past half century or so, at least since the time of Reagan, anti-trust laws, while remaining on the books, have been given no more than scant lip service as companies have continued to get bigger and bigger through mergers and buyouts with seemingly no end in sight. Even the two previous Democratic administrations have failed to reverse the trend. Do you feel that time may finally right for it now? And why has no candidate so far pledged to break up the gigantic corporate trusts of our time they way Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican BTW) did at the turn of the previous century?

There is a simple two-word answer: Milton Friedman.  He managed to capture the zeitgeist of the emerging 3T, and rode it to fame, fortune and a place in popular culture not normally open to economists.  His ideas got him a Nobel Prize and the undying admiration of the ownership class.  His ideas never worked, but they made the rich richer. Since the rich have inherent power, they managed to dust-off this piece of crap several times, and pretend it was revealed wisdom. But yes, it may finally have rotted to the point that the stink is obvious even to the rich.

[Einzige]

No, obviously not. Biden isn't going to do anything to rock the boat. He'll speak loudly and do nothing.

[David Horn]

(03-03-2021, 02:16 PM)Einzige Wrote: No, obviously not. Biden isn't going to do anything to rock the boat. He'll speak loudly and do nothing.

Politics is the art of the possible.  Biden has a pretty weak hand to play, but he's actually come-out for labor organizing (hasn't happened since Truman).  Let's see where that leads, if anywhere.