3.5 stars. It's a short book that reads more like a thesis to me.

Wonder if it's an age thing? Ten years ago, I was all for companies saving money by merging ... government, get out of the way. Now, I'm dismayed how some of the famous monopolies are coming back together into near monopolies (AT&T and Standard Oil). And we have the new monopolies of Amazon, Facebook and Google.

I enjoyed the history lesson, especially about Teddy Roosevelt.



( )

Not entirely convincing. Wu should include more on the steady rise of oligopolies in the modern US economy. He needs much more support for the claim that these oligopolies have caused growing inequality, and for their effects on politics. Wu glosses over the links here, and it is pretty weak. He also needs more on European antitrust policy. Still, there is a decent legal history here, and reasonable proposals for improved antitrust enforcement. Most of this would fit in a short magazine article, but the book itself is short.

> Robert Bork and others at the University of Chicago over the 1970s. Bork contended, implausibly, that the Congress of 1890 exclusively intended the antitrust law to deal with one very narrow type of harm: higher prices to consumers. That theory, the “consumer welfare” approach, has enfeebled the law. Promising greater certainty and scientific rigor, it has delivered neither, and more importantly discarded far too much of the role that law was intended to play in a democracy, namely, constraining the accumulation of unchecked private power and preserving economic liberty

> Today, as in the 1910s, two essential economic facts characterize the industrialized world. The first is the reemergence of an outrageous divide between the rich and the poor. This trend is most stark in the United States, where the top 1 percent today earn 23.8 percent of the national income and control an astonishing 38.6 percent of national wealth. The second is a return to concentrated economies—that is, industries dominated by fewer and larger companies

> It cannot be denied that some of the firms built during this era were impressive creations, and that the American economy, as a whole, experienced impressive if not wholly unprecedented growth.

> The language of the law is extremely broad. In section one it bans “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise … in restraint of trade.” In section two it declares that “every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize … any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony.” The language is so strong—its literal text bans so much—that the scholarly debate over the Sherman Act’s meaning and history may never end.

> The more concentrated the industry, the fewer who need to coordinate, and the fewer among whom the stakes need be divided. If an industry has sixty or eighty firms in it, they may squabble, be incapable of acting as a group, and also face the problem of collective action. But, after consolidation, we might be speaking of just six firms, and the prospects for political cooperation improve. And after a merger to monopoly, there is no need to cooperate at all. The simplest—if slightly overstated—way to put this is as follows. The more concentrated the industry, the more corrupted we can expect the political process to be.

> After pausing briefly to settle the Microsoft case, the 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. ( )

في العقود الأخيرة، شهدت الدول الصناعية عودة ظهور مشكلة التركُّز الاقتصادي، وهي العملية التي يتم من خلالها هيمنة عدد أصغر وأصغر من الشركات على الصناعات، والتي تنمو بشكل أكبر وأكبر، حتى يسود عدد قليل من الشركات العملاقة. يلقي هذا الكتاب نظرة على كيفية وسبب ظهور هذه المشكلة لأول مرة في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر، وانحسارها في أوائل القرن العشرين إلى منتصفه، ثم معاودة الظهور في أواخر القرن العشرين. أثناء القيام بهذه الجولة السريعة عبر التاريخ الاقتصادي والسياسي، ينظر المؤلف أيضاً في العواقب المقلقة للتركُّز الاقتصادي وبعض الحلول الممكنة.
الخلاصة هي أنَّ التركُّز الاقتصادي نشأ مع اتفاق المنتجين والاتحاد الاحتكاري في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر، ثم تراجع مع حركة مكافحة الاحتكار في أوائل القرن العشرين، ليعود مع زوال مكافحة الاحتكار في أواخر القرن العشرين. يُعتبر هذا التطور مقلقاً لأن الهيمنة التجارية المطلقة واحتكار القلة لها آثار مهلكة على الاقتصاد والمجتمع ككل. لذلك يجب على الحكومة أن تعود إلى تقاليدها السابقة في خرق التجمعات الاحتكارية وتجزئة الشركات العملاقة من أجل حماية الديمقراطية من مخاطر السلطة الخاصة المركزة. ( )

Kudos to Tim Wu, who has written a readable treatise on the lamentable decline of anti-trust policy in the U.S. He praises the pioneering work of Louis Brandeis and the political strength of Teddy Roosevelt in ending the Gilded Age, led by men like Morgan, Carnegie, and Rockefeller. Sadly, we are slipping back into a world dominated by one behemoth (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google) or just a few companies (banking, airlines, cable, wireless services) because our government has fallen back to the laissez faire policies of yesteryear, which has produced inordinate wealth concentrated in the top 1% of Americans. The last great anti-trust breakup was the telephone business which led to more choice, services and products than ever before. ( )

Immensely important. Trying to discern what I can do personally. Letting go of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, even where it hurts. ( )