Glenn Harlan Reynolds, USA Today: Donald Trump must bust Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google monopolies like Teddy Roosevelt.
President Donald Trump has an opportunity to follow in former President Teddy Roosevelt’s footsteps. Will Donald Trump follow TR’s lead?
I’ve just finished reading Columbia Law professor Tim Wu’s new book on antitrust, "The Curse of Bigness," and my biggest takeaway is that President Donald Trump has an opportunity to follow in former President Teddy Roosevelt’s footsteps.
Roosevelt built a strong reputation by going after the trusts, huge combinations that placed control of entire industries in the hands of one or a few men. He broke up John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, the Google of its day. He shut down J.P. Morgan’s Northern Securities Co., which would have monopolized rail transportation in much of the United States. And he pursued numerous other cases (45 in all) that broke up monopolies and returned competition to markets.
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WNU Editor: The difference between now and the times of former President Teddy Roosevelt is that during Roosevelt's day there was broad public support to break-up the monopolies. Today .... aside from some conservatives, I see very little public support to break up these internet monopolies. This is unfortunate. Amazon has helped to destroy retail as we know it, and Google/Facebook/etc. have gone all out in limiting their platforms to conservatives and other groups that they disagree with. If there was ever a time when a monopoly should be busted into thousands of pieces it is now. My prediction. Nothing is going to happen. The corruption is very deep .... Schumer got $50K in donations from Facebook — and his daughter got a job (NYPost).