Publication Date

2018

Description

We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms – big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the “curse of bigness” can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century.

In The Curse of Bigness, Columbia professor Tim Wu tells of how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age – but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.

Disciplines

Antitrust and Trade Regulation | Business Organizations Law | Law

ISBN

978099974546

Publisher

Columbia Global Reports

City

New York, NY

Reviews

“While the very term 'antitrust' may strike many as dreadfully dry, Wu manages to make this brisk and impressively readable overview of the subject vivid and compelling.”
—Benjamin C. Waterhouse, The Washington Post

“It’s a big idea for a little book, but Wu knows how to keep everything concise and contained. 'The Curse of Bigness' moves nimbly through the thicket, embracing the boons of being small.”
—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“Wu's gift as a communicator of difficult technical and legal ideas is in full evidence here. Don't let the little package fool you: it's a book with a big punch.”
—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

“Tim Wu, in his book The Curse of Bigness, which is a cool 160 pages and politely holds the reader’s hand through about 200 years of American economic policy and practice, argues that the time is now, ‘to control economic structure before it controls us.’”
—Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox

“A sharp analysis of antitrust law is a welcome guide to power today. ... Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, [his] short and sharp new book, The Curse of Bigness, is an excellent primer for anyone who wants to understand why corporate wealth and power have grown so concentrated in the past four decades, and why that might be a problem for democracy. Wu is no populist or Democratic socialist; rather, he’s a historian and academic who makes an impassioned case for a return to an earlier interpretation of antitrust law, one focused on power.”
—Rana Foroohar, Financial Times

“In this short but persuasive book, Wu (The Attention Merchants), a Columbia law professor, connects the current political climate to a decline in antitrust enforcement. ...The book’s brevity is an asset – Wu skillfully avoids economic and legal rabbit holes, keeping the book laser-focused on his thesis: that antitrust enforcement must be restored 'as a check on power as necessary in a functioning democracy before it’s too late.' Persuasive and brilliantly written, the book is especially timely given the rise of trillion-dollar tech companies.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Wu joins a rising tide of public intellectuals now trying to rescue U.S. antitrust from the brink of obsolescence. ...Like Wu’s previous book The Master Switch, The Curse of Bigness takes history seriously ...He offers an agenda for reform that is both bold and realistic ...The Curse of Bigness shows with clarity and precision what such an agenda would look like.”
—Frank Pasquale, Commonweal Magazine

“The Curse of Bigness is a useful guide to the evils of privatized scale... A revitalization of aggressive trustbusting is as radical a proposal as could be taken seriously in the short term, and Wu charts a clear path to temporarily forestall the social ills of an oligarchic private tech industry.”
—Evan Malmgren, Dissent Magazine

“A brief diagnosis of our monopolized moment and an eloquent articulation of principles that Wu believes can lead us into an era of shared prosperity, economic and political independence, and, in the words of Brandeis, 'the right to live, and not merely to exist.’”
—Daniel Kishi, The American Conservative

Comments

Also available as an eBook through the Columbia University Libraries.

Recommended Citation

Wu, Tim, "The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age" (2018). Faculty Books. 63.
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/63