While Brandeis is right that society needs to prevent monopolies that block technology or business innovation in the way that the old AT&T monopoly suppressed the progress of telecommunications, today’s largest companies have actually enabled innovation and the creation of even more value by providing a platform for everything from business productivity software (Slack) to entertainment (Netflix). The smartphones we love, for example, are mass-market consumer electronics that depend on economies of scale. Scale creates dominant companies, but scale also creates enormous value. Second, we believe that while big can sometimes be bad, big can also be great. In contrast, companies like Apple and Amazon have to win their customers every day, and if they fail to do so, those consumers can simply buy Dell laptops and order books from Barnes & Noble. Consumers had no alternatives and were forced to do business with them. Those trusts held virtual monopolies over the supply of key physical resources like steel and oil. But we believe that today’s blitzscalers are qualitatively different than Gilded Age trusts. Morgan consolidated American industry into powerful, giant companies like U.S. First, Brandeis was speaking during the era of “trusts,” when figures like J. P.
We disagree with this position on the harmfulness of scale in today’s world.
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