Poltical economy

Current events are too fast and furious, and too bizarre, for me to feel like commenting right now. But for all you Whatabouters, you have no idea what the FBI was looking for at Mar a Lago or what they found. So trying to compare it to any other incidents is just farting out loud. 

Anyway, now for today's contribution to the discourse, I'm re-reading The Prize by Daniel Yergin, which is a global history of the role of petroleum in the economy, society and war. I first read it shortly after it came out in 1990, but not a whole lot has changed  yet regarding the oil industry. It still has humanity by the 'nads, and getting free of it has to be one of our highest priorities. But what struck me as I was reading today was a paragraph not about the oil industry specifically, but about the early 20th Century more generally.

The growth of Standard Oil had not occurred in a vacuum. It was a product of the swift industrialization of the American economy in the last few decades of the 19th Century, which within a remarkably short time had transformed a decentralized and competitive economy of many small firms into one dominated by huge industrial corporations called trusts, each one sitting astride and industry, many with interlocking investors and directors. As the 19th Century gave way to the 20th, they looked to government to restore competition, control the abuses and tame the economic and political power of the trusts, those vast and fearsome dragons that roamed so freely across the country. 

And this did happen to a considerable extent. Congress passed legislation that gave the Federal Trade Commission authority to break up anti-competitive trusts and regulate against anti-competitive behavior. But today, we're back where we started. They aren't called "trusts," but Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, are the same kind of entity. Facebook and Google even acknowledged this by formally designating new names for their overarching conglomerates. Amazon could certainly do the same because it's not longer just an on-line department store, in fact I believe (correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not going to look it up) that on-line shopping now accounts for less than half of its revenue. The vast economic and political power of these conglomerates, and the incomprehensible wealth of their principal owners, have taken us right back to the gilded age.

Hardly anyone is talking about this.