Democrats

The

New Trust Busters?

Inside the new battle against Google

Barry Lynn and his team think monopoly is the next great Democratic political cause. But what happens when they aim for the tech giants?

One of the biggest, most embarrassing divorces in the normally quiet world of Washington think tanks blew into the open earlier this month, when writer Barry Lynn and nine others defected from New America. Lynn said they were pushed out of the influential Democratic think tank after he wrote a post this summer criticizing Google, one of its key funders. Anne-Marie Slaughter, who heads the foundation, called the story reporting the news "false"—then wrote a long Medium post walking her charge back. 

Lynn's group, called Open Markets, has spent six years arguing that the Democrats have become too comfortable with corporate money and power, and need to rally around a new principle: breaking up monopolies. As the party remains locked in a struggle to reboot itself, unable to craft a unifying vision in the Trump era, Lynn and his group are trying to push it into a new fight against global corporate titans, targeting big companies like Google by name, and arguing that it’s time to use federal antitrust law to chip away at their influence. They see the fight as both a boon to democracy and a political framework that could excite voters in a new, more energized populist moment. 

Lynn and his team argue that the concentration of money and power in a small number of companies is a huge danger to our economy and politics, and that Washington's main weapon to combat it, antitrust law, has become rusty from lack of use. They want to revive the New Deal antitrust regime that prioritized competition and worried about the political power of large companies—a reform that would represent a reboot of antitrust thinking for the new tech age and the kind of new political rallying point that Democrats have been looking for.

DYI:  This newly formed breakaway think tank is moving in the correct direction as corporate power has significantly lessened competitiveness not just in high tech but across many other industries as well.  If they were to add on the anti-trust mentality – to which DYI completely agrees – to government agencies through their very size have become monopolistic and tyrannical in nature no different than their big business cousins.  This one, two punch would go a long way to restoring States rights by reducing big business/big government power and restoring much needed democratic local control. 

     DYI