The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

by Tim Wu Narrated by Marc Cashman

Overview

From the man who coined the term "net neutrality," author of*The Master Switch*and*The Attention Merchants, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our economic and political future.

We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms -- big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the "curse of bigness" can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth 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 great trusts of the Gilded Age--but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.

Editorial Reviews

JANUARY 2019 - AudioFile

Talented Marc Cashman offers a measured, authoritative narration of this well-researched treatise on the risks of extreme corporate concentration in our technological world. Tim Wu’s concise arguments praise the advantages and benefits of smaller organizations and the broader spreading of revenue streams, along with its associated responsibilities, over many such organizations. Examples such as the breakup of “Ma Bell” are expertly explained. Cashman’s appealing tone lightens the occasionally leaden subject matter of the roots of American antitrust law and policy. Significant insight is also provided on the Department of Justice’s examination of Microsoft not very long ago, including commentary on the public interviews of its founder, Bill Gates. Wu advocates broader and more far-reaching standards for determining what is a business monopoly. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Jennifer Szalai

Like Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk, a recent book that shows how something most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about—government bureaucracy—is consequential (and potentially terrifying), Wu's The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age is a surprisingly rousing treatment of another presumably boring subject: mergers and acquisitions…Wu is an able guide through the history—from Theodore Roosevelt's campaign against "bad trusts" all the way to the expansive bloat of AT&T and Microsoft's competition-crushing ambitions of more recent memory—but it's on the level of ideas that his book comes into its own…Wu knows how to keep everything concise and contained. The Curse of Bigness moves nimbly through the thicket, embracing the boons of being small.

Publishers Weekly

09/24/2018
In this short but persuasive book, Wu (The Attention Merchants), a Columbia law professor, connects the current political climate to a decline in antitrust enforcement. From the rise of U.S. Steel and Standard Oil through the “trust-busting” days of Teddy Roosevelt, Wu shows how antitrust laws, as championed by Louis Brandeis (who coined the term “the curse of bigness”), once functioned as a check on private power. In the modern era, however, enforcement has steadily declined; the George W. Bush administration did not bring a single antitrust action in eight years. The results, Wu argues, are a widening income gap and corporations subverting electoral politics. In the 20th century, he writes, “nations that failed to control private power and attend to the needs of their citizens faced the rise of strongmen who promised a more immediate deliverance from economic woes.” The book’s brevity is an asset—Wu skillfully avoids economic and legal rabbit holes, keeping the book laser-focused on his thesis: that antitrust enforcement must be restored “as a check on power as necessary in a functioning democracy before it’s too late.” Persuasive and brilliantly written, the book is especially timely given the rise of trillion-dollar tech companies. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

A Washington Post Nonfiction bestseller

“While the very term ‘antitrust’ may strike many as dreadfully dry, Wu manages to make this brisk and impressively readable overview of the subject vivid and compelling.” —Benjamin C. Waterhouse, The Washington Post

“It’s a big idea for a little book, but Wu knows how to keep everything concise and contained. The Curse of Bigness moves nimbly through the thicket, embracing the boons of being small.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“Wu’s gift as a communicator of difficult technical and legal ideas is in full evidence here. Don't let the little package fool you: it's a book with a big punch.” —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

“Tim Wu, in his book The Curse of Bigness, which is a cool 160 pages and politely holds the reader’s hand through about 200 years of American economic policy and practice, argues that the time is now, ‘to control economic structure before it controls us.’” —Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox

“Tim Wu, with [his] short and sharp new book, The Curse of Bigness, is an excellent primer for anyone who wants to understand why corporate wealth and power have grown so concentrated in the past four decades, and why that might be a problem for democracy. Wu is no populist or Democratic socialist; rather, he’s a historian and academic who makes an impassioned case for a return to an earlier interpretation of antitrust law, one focused on power.” —Rana Foroohar, Financial Times

“Persuasive and brilliantly written, the book is especially timely given the rise of trillion-dollar tech companies.” —Publishers Weekly

“Wu joins a rising tide of public intellectuals now trying to rescue U.S. antitrust from the brink of obsolescence.... Like Wu’s previous book The Master Switch, The Curse of Bigness takes history seriously.... He offers an agenda for reform that is both bold and realistic... The Curse of Bigness shows with clarity and precision what such an agenda would look like.” —Frank Pasquale, Commonweal Magazine

“The Curse of Bigness is a useful guide to the evils of privatized scale.... A revitalization of aggressive trustbusting is as radical a proposal as could be taken seriously in the short term, and Wu charts a clear path to temporarily forestall the social ills of an oligarchic private tech industry.” —Evan Malmgren, Dissent Magazine

“A brief diagnosis of our monopolized moment and an eloquent articulation of principles that Wu believes can lead us into an era of shared prosperity, economic and political independence, and, in the words of Brandeis, ‘the right to live, and not merely to exist.’” —Daniel Kishi, The American Conservative

JANUARY 2019 - AudioFile

Talented Marc Cashman offers a measured, authoritative narration of this well-researched treatise on the risks of extreme corporate concentration in our technological world. Tim Wu’s concise arguments praise the advantages and benefits of smaller organizations and the broader spreading of revenue streams, along with its associated responsibilities, over many such organizations. Examples such as the breakup of “Ma Bell” are expertly explained. Cashman’s appealing tone lightens the occasionally leaden subject matter of the roots of American antitrust law and policy. Significant insight is also provided on the Department of Justice’s examination of Microsoft not very long ago, including commentary on the public interviews of its founder, Bill Gates. Wu advocates broader and more far-reaching standards for determining what is a business monopoly. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2018-09-11

Should Amazon and Google be broken up like Standard Oil? Yes, argues legal scholar Wu (Columbia Law School; The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, 2016, etc.), but breaking up is hard to do.

The problem is a decadeslong warping of antitrust law, which the author details in this half history, half polemic book. The title comes from a phrase coined by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who agitated against Gilded Age monopolists like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. Together with President Theodore Roosevelt, who put enforcement muscle behind the Sherman Act, they persuasively argued that monopolistic practices are inefficient, stifle innovation as well as competition, and court abusive practices against workers. (Think of AT&T, Wu suggests, a longtime state-sanctioned monopoly whose breakup cleared the way for the mainstream internet.) For much of the 20th century, Brandeis' view was accepted regulatory practice, until the arrival in the 1960s of Robert Bork, who, as a federal judge, prescribed an exceedingly narrow interpretation of the Sherman Act: So long as consumer prices didn't rise, no conglomerate qualified as a monopoly, regardless of market share. The Borkian argument, however far afield from Sherman's intent, is now gospel, Wu writes, rendering Security and Exchange Commission antitrust regulators toothless. This has allowed Google to bloat with buyouts—though, as Wu points out, it was a beneficiary of antitrust enforcement against Microsoft—developing unchecked acquisitive instincts that have eliminated competitors, with Facebook and Amazon following its lead. The author convincingly draws parallels between the new "tech trusts" and the Gilded Age titans, but one wishes for more fire in the argument: Wu's background about Brandeis is important, but the modern implications could be better woven into his narrative. As it is, his strongest cases for breaking up Google are tucked into dry concluding policy prescriptions.

A valuable briefing on an underappreciated business problem, but it could use a bit of Roosevelt's hard-nosed attitude.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172140433
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Series:	Columbia Global Reports
Edition description:	Unabridged

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