For instance, it’s remarkable, or scary, that companies have so effectively monetized “free” (or better yet, “zero-price) content. In light of this dynamic, some companies have determined that people are more likely to pay attention to, and engage with, “angry” types of content, incentivizing companies to emphasize extremism, racist content, and misinformation. Given the scale of large platforms and apps, this dynamic has truly altered society’s fabric and discourses. Markets as well as our lives are indeed meaningfully different than just a couple of decades ago.
The Digital Revolution allows non-state actors such as large tech companies to become centers of powers in an information society. Is there any parallelism between this phenomenon and the so called “Gilded Age” that was marked by the rise of corporate giants? What similarities and differences do you see between the “Gilded Age” and today’s rise of Big Tech such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft?
This is a really good yet difficult question. To a lot of observers, a motivation of the Sherman Act was the accumulation of political power—not just economic power. It is said that people during the Gilded Age feared not just high prices and restricted output, but also the ability of large corporations and powerful magnates to alter America’s political and social landscape. In this light, you could perhaps draw similarities between the Gilded Age and today’s era of Big Tech. There are, however, notable differences. A huge distinction is that some of today’s ostensible monopolists like Amazon offer a wide variety of cheap prices! Another firm described as a monopolist, Apple, offers extremely popular products known for their high-qualities. In this sense, it can be much more difficult to tell how monopoly power harms people—at least using conventional metrics. And this is precisely why antitrust law is at the center of vibrant debate:
the nature of Big Tech can seem so different than the types of harms resulting in the Sherman Act in 1890.
Some argue, including the current U.S. administration along with the theorists of the so-called Neo-Brandeisian school that antitrust law should react to and eliminate the detrimental effects of the rise of Big Tech. Different schools of thought such as the Harvard or the Chicago schools have different approach to antitrust law. Price, consumer welfare, innovation, competition or something else should be the priority of the antitrust policies in the digital markets in your view? Which approach would you prefer applying to these markets?