Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Over the past couple of decades, corporations have increased their control of nearly aspect of American life. Big technology platform monopolists like Facebook and Google, and life science companies like Bayer have a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen in the United States since the Gilded Age. Critics say that massive, multinational companies are evolving into political entities that often have more influence than actual governments, bending state and federal legislatures to their wills and even creating courts that circumvent the U.S. justice system. The big question for many, of course, is: How can we recover our freedom from these giant companies? Anti-corruption scholar and activist Zephyr Teachout has one answer: Break up the monopolies that are increasingly in control of American democratic institutions and public life. In her new book, Break 'Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money, Teachout argues that monopolies are the root cause of many of the issue