Monopoly

There is one major economic issue that might unite the right and left if we ever get a marginally functional government again: monopoly. The article uses a great example of how Americans get worse service at higher prices than other countries: the internet.  Internet service providers are routinely awful and expensive at the same time.  Given how consolidated telecommunications companies are, this is hardly surprising.  Monopoly and consolidation have a cost in medicine as well.

Back in 1912, Wilson and Roosevelt squared off over the issue of how to manage increasing consolidation.  Roosevelt won the argument in the long term, by arguing that government regulation was the best way to accommodate inevitable consolidation.  After the Reagan Revolution attacked the idea of the state, Wilson's argument was proved right.  As he put it:

If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don't you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don't you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it. Are you going to invite those inside to stay inside? They don't have to get there. They are there. 

We need a more vigorous regulatory state, but ultimately, unless there is competition, we will just trend back into the hands of oligarchs once Republicans take power again.