(2017-08-31) I Criticized Google, It Got Me Fired; That's How Corporate Power Works

Barry Lynn: I criticized Google. It got me fired. That’s how corporate power works.

I’ve studied monopolies for about 20 years. I got into this line of work back in 1999

For the past 15 years, I’ve directed the antimonopoly Open Markets division of the think tank New America. Shortly after my group published a statement praising the European Union for fining Google for violating antitrust standards in June of this year, I was contacted by Anne-Marie Slaughter, the president of New America, who said that Eric Schmidt, Google’s parent company’s executive chairman, was furious about the statement.

Slaughter gave me two months to sever ties with New America and find a new source of funding for Open Markets.

Slaughter said in New America’s statement that Open Markets was severed from New America because I, personally, have been less than collegial and open. She said the claim “that Google lobbied New America to expel the Open Markets program” is “absolutely false.”

How did we drift so far from the founding generation’s deep fear of massive corporations? In the 1970s and 1980s, an alliance of economic and legal scholars from the right and left of the parties — including Robert Bork and John Kenneth Galbraith — combined to overthrow America’s two-century-old antimonopoly system. They said that rather than protect the liberties of producers and buyers, and rather than distribute power in ways that helped preserve our democracy, antimonopoly should aim only at promoting the “welfare” of the consumer. Some of these Chicago School intellectuals believed unleashing monopoly would improve the “efficiency” of the U.S. economy and drive down prices.

That’s why so few among these professional competition regulators see any way to take on monopoly power today, even if they personally fear it.