If Rupert Murdoch’s succeeds in his bid for Time Warner (as he almost always does, eventually; even the former owners of the Wall Street Journal couldn’t resist), he’ll have control over most of what Americans see over cable, on TV and the Internet -- in addition to control he already has over the information we get through Fox News, the Journal, and his other media outposts. But Murdoch’s empire is only part of a huge consolidation of American industry: Amazon gaining control over publishing; Comcast over broadband service; Google over access to information; Facebook over person-to-person connectivity; the top five Wall Street banks over our financial system; a handful of giant health insurers and drug companies over the health services we receive. This translates into higher prices (if not now, eventually). It also centralizes power over what we’ll know and how we’ll lead our lives. Both the antitrust division of the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are AWOL -- perhaps because the private-sector behemoths already have enough political power to keep the antitrust enforcers quiet. Our government is in gridlock, incapable of doing much of anything, while a handful of giant corporations are consolidating their power over America. What shall we do about it?
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 03:34:42 +0000
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