The Limits of Vertical Integration

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

In the late nineteenth century, there was a presumption that companies shouldn't be allowed to merge with their competitors. The people who wrote these statutes and voted for them were super explicit that they said they didn't like monopolies because monopolies created concentrated corporate power. They had this thing we can really only describe as a conspiracy theory. And in the case of anti trust, they had this thing called 'the court sorcerr' This is an economist's interpretation of what happens when you give government too much power.

The early Internet was open, exciting, and deeply optimistic. So how did we end up, just a few decades later, with one that’s closed, exploitative, and makes most of us incredibly depressed? Longtime Internet gadfly and author of How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, Cory Doctorow, joins Adam to break down how the Internet has changed for the worse, and what we can do about it. Check out his book at https://factuallypod.com/books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.