The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust within the New Gilded Age

We dwell in an age of maximum company focus, through which world industries are managed by only a few large corporations — large banks, large pharma, and massive tech, simply to call a number of. However concern over what Louis Brandeis referred to as the "curse of bigness" can now not stay the province of specialist legal professionals and economists, for it has spilled over into coverage and politics, even threatening democracy itself. Historical past means that tolerance of inequality and failing to regulate extreme company energy could immediate the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In brief, as Wu warns, we’re in grave hazard of repeating the signature errors of the 20 th century.

In The Curse of Bigness, Columbia professor Tim Wu tells of how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the good trusts of the Gilded Age–but the teachings of the Progressive Period had been forgotten within the final 40 years. He requires recovering the misplaced tenets of the trustbusting age as a part of a broader revival of American progressive concepts as we confront the fallout of persistent and excessive financial inequality.