Exploring Antitrust: Examining the Impact of Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age

Hande Z: Klobuchar is a Democrat Senator with a strong opinion on monopoly power. Given the deep divide in America, one side is likely to think this a one-star book, and the other will give it a 5-star rating. This reviewer is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I give this book four stars because it is a well-written book, well-researched (it has 251 pages of notes and index; the text itself covers 355 pages). The author’s position is well-argued, and makes a lot of sense. This book may, in my view, merit five stars if it had not been peppered with declarations and statements with a political audience in mind.

Monopoly power is not the only thing that depresses wages, but it is an important factor. Whenever there is no competition, the employer has the stronger hand and may tell its workers to take it or leave it. Klobuchar examines the many instances of how this works, and includes in her account, the fortuitous failure of the Uber -Grub-hub merger. Imagine the detriment to all, not just the workers, but everyone who depends on food delivery in the time of the Pandemic?

Klocbuchar accepts that complex antitrust issues exist in the international arena. Big corporations...

Singapore on Feb 07, 2022

Lianna Evans: I bought this book on pre-order and finally got through to the end TONIGHT. I have several kids, a busy professional day job, and all the rigamarole that comes with... so finding the time was hard. I finally decided to pair an audio book version (listened at 1.80x speed to match my reading speed) while I read the chapters and the (extensive!!) footnotes while listening about 1 week ago - otherwise I might still be on page 97...

This book is DENSE. It's COMPLEX. It's a huge subject... but even with me not being a lawyer I feel like I have a much greater understanding of the subject. There were times I felt like the author was "grand standing" on all the bills she's sponsored or co-sponsored, but then I realized it's because she really HAS done a lot with her passion for this topic and felt an appreciation for that passion and commitment to writing a few million words in those bills... and it led to respect, more than anything. If you're not interested in our nation's economy or big business, this book isn't for you. If you're really wanting to understand exactly how things got so messy and frustrating? This book ties a lot of it together in a comprehensible format that,...

United States on Jul 09, 2021

Jim Miller: Very well written book. Lots of factual information and excellent insight into the workings of lobbyists and not so honest politicians.

Canada on Jun 22, 2021

ChrisD: Canes and Pseudo D sum up the tone and content of the book very well. Having scattered factoids of history I’ve known put together in context was great. Even with some understandable bias Klobuchar does a good job making an often complicated topic more accessible. I liked seeing the early political cartoons but had to use a magnifying glass to see the small print in some. Otherwise the layout was also well done.

Having been in the software industry for over 30 years I agree with those that say technology companies are a different beastie and often misunderstood.

I still cringe when I hear Y2K was a dud - nothing happened - waste of money. It’s because we spent time and money doing tedious, non-marketable maintenance work that nothing much happened. After teaming up with our customer for months of code review, fixes and testing, we all waited for midnight to see how the system settled into the millennial digit change from 1 to 2. Turns out we had few bugs that our code scouring and testing missed, but they were minor and quickly patched.

From my experience in several successful software company acquisitions from both sides, it can be an effective way to...

United States on May 11, 2021

Pseudo D: Sen. Klobuchar writes on the topic of antitrust or what she calls competition policy. She begins
with some family history in her ancestors working for James J. Hill in the Twin Cities. There is
a detailed history going back to Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations, the Boston Tea Party
and the East India Company, and various comments of the founding fathers. Then there is the
great era of the "robber barrons" or "captains of industry" such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, J.P.
Morgan, Vanderbilt, etc. She discusses how the farmers in the Midwest were getting ripped
off by the railroad companies and fought back.

In this area of policy the legislators and judges are important, but it is helpful to frame history
in terms of the commanders in chief. This begins in detail with McKinley, and the trust-busting
era continued with Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson and even continued into Harding, but slowed
down under Coolidge. Besides the Presidents, a key statesman was William Jennings Bryan.
Klobuchar also discusses figures such as Eugene Debs and the various muckrakers.

In the 50s or so there was the matter of Alcoa and Reynolds, which is of local...

United States on May 01, 2021