OPINION:
In the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, powerful elites like John Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie controlled oil, railroads and steel, key commercial industries that businesses big and small relied upon to engage in commerce.
With commercial power controlled by these few “robber barons,” capitalism began to become more of an oligarchy, where wealth became concentrated in the hands of the elite to the detriment of consumer prices, innovation and competition for growing enterprises around the country.
Enter Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, who began using the Sherman Act (passed in 1890) to break up Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and Morgan’s Northern Securities railroad conglomerate.
Today, the era of the Big Tech robber barons poses a far greater threat to our country than their Gilded Age predecessors. The Big Tech robber barons like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are the gatekeepers of both commerce and information, giving them the kind of commercial and political power that John Rockefeller could only wield in his dreams. With almost $250 billion in profits in 2021 alone, those four companies are able to wield unilateral power to dictate how we search, share and shop, and are able to crush competitors, amass data, customers and sky-high profits.
Consider how Amazon uses data about independent sellers on its platform to develop cheaper competing products and then prioritize them on its platform. Meanwhile, Google enjoys a virtual unlimited monopoly on search, advertising and mobile, making it nearly impossible for small businesses to compete. Apple similarly enjoys overwhelming power in its market, using that power to decide which apps can and cannot be accessed via its platform and generate mega-profits, all while choking off competition from smaller companies.
Meanwhile, those four Big Tech robber barons not only have cozy business relationships with the People’s Republic of China, but they also cater to the whims of the Chinese government and rely on its cheap labor and production. An estimated 75% of products sold on Amazon are manufactured in China and more than a third of Amazon sellers are based there. Apple hit a record-high 23% Chinese market share last year and is considering using memory chips manufactured by the Wuhan-based Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. in its iPhones, despite more established developers in the United States and other Asian countries.
Despite Facebook being banned in China, the country’s state-sponsored media recently purchased ads on Facebook to push pro-Russian propaganda and Google recently produced a censored search engine project — Dragonfly — at the behest of the pro-censorship Chinese Communist Party.
It is time for lawmakers to fully recognize with words and actions that America’s economic strength is a result of elected leaders like Roosevelt prioritizing the innovation and competition in the marketplace that make capitalism work. Similarly, America’s health as a functioning republic depends on a robust marketplace of ideas, where speech and information are not throttled based on political motivations.
That is why lawmakers must act now to rein in the Big Tech robber barons before America is governed, not by an informed citizenry, but rather by an unholy alliance between Big Tech and the federal government, the former advancing its interest in raw and unfettered commercial power and the latter through political manipulation and censorship.
One key piece of legislation that can help accomplish that is the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.
The bill would create consumer choice and improve access by preventing Big Tech gatekeepers from preferring their own products over competitors, requiring a business to buy goods and services from a Big Tech gatekeeper for preferred placement on the platform, misusing a business’s data to compete against that business, biasing search results in favor of the Big Tech gatekeeper and against the smaller competitor, and prioritizing strict privacy and security protections for U.S. consumers and businesses.
Further, AICOA would give antitrust enforcers the power to deter violations and hold violators accountable for illegal behavior through civil penalties, broad injunctions, emergency interim relief and potential forfeiture of executive compensation.
There will be those that balk at giving the government such significant powers to interfere with the private sector, but that misses the point. The private sector and our system of capitalism are not about allowing unfettered growth of private companies, but rather maintaining a system where competition, innovation and consumer choices can thrive, leading to a stronger system where oligarchic powers are not able to choke off economic growth and achieve the kind of raw power to influence policy solely on its behalf, as is the case with the Big Tech robber barons.
It is imperative for our elected officials, regardless of party, to recognize that they are in a moment in history that calls for the same kind of action that Roosevelt applied over 100 years ago, and it is time for them to similarly act.
• Ian Prior is the former principal director of public affairs for the Trump administration’s Justice Department.
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