The Curse of Bigness audiobook cover - Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

The Curse of Bigness

Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

Tim Wu

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Economics

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The Curse of Bigness
Rise of Economic Concentration+
The Dangers of Monopolies+
The Golden Age of Trust-Busting+
The Fall of Antitrust+
Solutions & Revival+

Quiz — Test Your Understanding

Question 1 of 8
How did the proponents of the late nineteenth-century 'trust movement' view economic competition?
  • A. They viewed it as the essential driver of technological innovation and lower prices.
  • B. They viewed it as a form of chaos that caused market volatility and bankrupted companies.
  • C. They believed it was necessary to prevent the government from over-regulating industries.
  • D. They thought it was the best way to ensure workers received fair wages and benefits.
Question 2 of 8
How did the trust movement use the concept of 'social Darwinism' to justify the existence of monopolies?
  • A. They argued that the government should actively subsidize the weakest companies to maintain a balanced economic ecosystem.
  • B. They claimed that monopolists were simply the most capable and well-adapted companies that had naturally survived the culling process of capitalism.
  • C. They believed that businesses must constantly evolve their labor practices to attract the most highly educated workers.
  • D. They stated that monopolies were an unnatural mutation in the economy that needed to be strictly controlled by the state.
Question 3 of 8
According to the text, what is a primary reason a massive monopoly might suffer from 'diseconomies of scale'?
  • A. They are forced by law to pay higher corporate tax rates than smaller competitors.
  • B. They become too complex, requiring complicated hierarchies that make them less nimble and adaptable to market changes.
  • C. They run out of raw materials because they consume resources faster than the earth can replenish them.
  • D. They inevitably alienate their consumer base, who automatically switch to international competitors.
Question 4 of 8
Why did President Theodore Roosevelt view monopolies as a direct threat to democracy?
  • A. He believed their concentrated private power rivaled state power and could make desperate citizens turn to extreme solutions like a communist revolution.
  • B. He was concerned that monopolies would refuse to fund the military during times of international conflict.
  • C. He feared that monopolies would outsource all American manufacturing jobs to Europe.
  • D. He thought monopolies were inherently inefficient and would cause the immediate collapse of the American banking system.
Question 5 of 8
What historical observation fueled the US government's renewed fervor for trust-busting immediately following World War II?
  • A. The realization that monopolies had directly caused the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression.
  • B. The observation of how unchecked monopolies had become deeply intertwined with and empowered fascist regimes, such as in Nazi Germany.
  • C. The discovery that monopolies were secretly funding communist organizations within the United States.
  • D. The need to break up large corporations to generate revenue to pay off massive wartime debts.
Question 6 of 8
What was the result of the US government breaking up the AT&T monopoly in the 1980s?
  • A. It caused a temporary collapse in the nation's telecommunications infrastructure.
  • B. It led to the immediate nationalization of the telephone network by the federal government.
  • C. It resulted in stagnant technology and permanently higher prices for consumers.
  • D. It sparked a flood of innovation, paving the way for modems, online service providers, and the modern mobile phone industry.
Question 7 of 8
How did legal scholar Robert Bork drastically alter the enforcement of the Sherman Act in the late twentieth century?
  • A. He successfully argued that the Act should be used to ban all forms of corporate lobbying in Washington.
  • B. He convinced courts that the Act was solely concerned with 'consumer welfare,' specifically whether a monopoly raised consumer prices.
  • C. He established a legal precedent that any company controlling more than 50 percent of a market must be automatically broken up.
  • D. He argued that the Act was unconstitutional because it violated the free speech rights of large corporations.
Question 8 of 8
According to the book's proposed solutions, what policy could the US adopt from the UK to help fight economic concentration?
  • A. Implementing a strict cap on the annual profits any single corporation can legally earn.
  • B. Nationalizing any industry that provides essential public utilities, such as internet and healthcare.
  • C. Instituting a law that triggers an automatic government investigation if an industry is dominated by a single company for 10 or more years.
  • D. Providing government subsidies to any start-up that attempts to compete with a designated tech monopoly.

The Curse of Bigness — Full Chapter Overview

The Curse of Bigness Summary & Overview

The Curse of Bigness (2018) deals with topics and questions that have become especially pressing in recent times. How and why have markets become dominated by a handful of corporate giants? And what can we do about it? To answer these questions, the author recounts the political, economic and legal history of economic concentration. Along the way, he examines the dangers that come with it, and how they can be mitigated.

Who Should Listen to The Curse of Bigness?

  • Citizens worried about unchecked corporate power  
  • People interested in the intersection between politics, economics and law
  • Late-nineteenth and twentieth-century US history buffs

About the Author: Tim Wu

Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School. He was formerly a senior advisor to the US Federal Trade Commission, a senior enforcement counsel at the New York Office of the Attorney General and a member of the Obama administration’s National Economic Council. As a policy advocate, he is best known for the phrase "network neutrality," which he coined in his influential 2003 paper, “Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination.” He is the author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants.

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