My Ultimate History Crash Course | Robert Reich
Robert Reich
Premiered Feb 21, 2024 (Archived July 2024)
730K subscribers ... 236,971 views ... 13K likes
Are we in a second Gilded Age?
Is Trump really a Fascist?
Why are we so politically polarized?
How did corporations take over our politics?
To understand the present, study the past.
Transcript
- 0:01
- Oh! Hello. I was just studying some history. We can learn a lot about our present moment from studying the past.
- I want to share with you six tales from history that I find especially meaningful — some from before my time, like the rise of fascism
- in the 1930s, Another is that I witnessed with my own eyes. Please join me for this journey through history.
- 0:25
- Let's start with the robber barons of the 19th century. Now, you might be surprised by just how much
- 0:31
- they have in common with today's billionaires. Watch this.
- The Gilded Age
- 0:37
- Ultra-wealthy elites, political corruption, vast inequality... These problems are not new.
- 0:44
- In the late 1800s, they dominated the country during America's first Gilded Age.
- 0:50
- We overcame these abuses back then, and we can do it again.
- 0:55
- Mark Twain coined the moniker “The Gilded Age” in his 1873 novel to describe the era in American history
- 1:03
- characterized by corruption and inequality that was masked by a thin layer of prosperity for a select few.
- 1:11
- The end of the 19th century and start of the 20th century marked a time of great invention — bustling railroads,
- 1:19
- telephones, motion pictures, electricity, automobiles — which changed American life forever.
- 1:28
- But it was also an era of giant monopolies — oil, railroad, steel, finance —
- 1:35
- run by a small group of men who had grown rich beyond anything America had ever seen.
- 1:41
- They were known as “robber barons” because they ran competitors out of business, exploited
- 1:46
- workers, charged customers exorbitant prices, and lived like royalty as a result.
- 1:52
- Money consumed politics. Robber barons and their lackeys donated bundles of cash to any lawmaker willing to do bidding on their behalf.
- 2:02
- And when lobbying wasn't enough, the powerful turned to bribery, resulting in some of the most infamous political scandals in American history.
- 2:12
- The gap between the rich and poor in America reached astronomical levels. Large numbers of Americans lived in squalor.
- 2:19
- Anti-immigrant sentiment raged, leading to the enactment of racist laws to restrict immigration.
- 2:25
- And voter suppression, largely aimed at black men who had recently won the right to vote, was rampant.
- 2:32
- The era was also marked by dangerous working conditions. Children, often as young as ten years old, but sometimes younger, worked brutal hours in sweatshops.
- 2:41
- Workers trying to organize labor unions were attacked, sometimes killed. It seemed as if American capitalism was out of control, and American democracy couldn't do anything about it
- 2:53
- because it was bought and paid for by the rich. But Americans were fed up and they demanded reform.
- 3:01
- Many took to the streets in protest. Investigative journalists, often called “muckrakers” then, helped amplify their cries
- 3:09
- by exposing what was occurring throughout the country. And a new generation of political leaders rose to end the abuses.
- 3:16
- Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt, who warned that, “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically
- 3:23
- powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” could destroy American democracy.
- 3:30
- After becoming president in 1901, Roosevelt used the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up dozens
- 3:37
- of powerful corporations. Seeking to limit the vast fortunes that were creating a new American aristocracy,
- 3:44
- Congress enacted a progressive income tax through the 16th Amendment, as well as two wealth taxes.
- 3:51
- The first wealth tax, in 1916, was the estate tax — a tax on the wealth of someone accumulated during their lifetime, paid by the heirs who inherited it.
- 4:01
- The second tax on wealth, enacted in 1922, was a capital gains tax — a tax on the increased value of assets,
- 4:09
- paid when those assets were sold. The reformers of the Gilded Age also stopped corporations from directly giving money to politicians
- 4:17
- or political candidates. And then Teddy Roosevelt's fifth cousin —
- 4:22
- you may have heard of him — continued the work through his New Deal programs, creating Social Security, unemployment insurance,
- 4:30
- a 40-hour workweek, and requiring that employers bargain in good faith with labor unions.
- 4:37
- But following the death of FDR and the end of World War II, when America was building the largest middle class the world had ever seen — we seemed to forget about the abuses of the Gilded Age.
- 4:49
- Now, more than a century later, America has entered a second Gilded Age.
- 4:55
- It's also a time of extraordinary invention. And a time when monopolies are taking over vast swaths of the economy,
- 5:02
- so we must bring new antitrust enforcement to bust up powerful companies. Now, another generation of robber barons is accumulating unprecedented money and power.
- 5:13
- So once again, we must tax these exorbitant fortunes. Wealthy individuals and big corporations are once again paying off lawmakers,
- 5:22
- sending them billions to conduct their political campaigns, even giving luxurious gifts to Supreme Court justices.
- 5:29
- So we need to protect our democracy from big money, just as we did before. Voter suppression runs rampant in the States, as during the first Gilded Age,
- 5:38
- making it harder for people of color to participate in what's left of our democracy. So it's once again critical to defend and expand voting rights.
- 5:47
- Working people are once again being exploited and abused. Child labor is returning.
- 5:53
- Unions are busted. The poor are again living in unhealthy conditions.
- 5:58
- Homelessness is on the rise and the gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else is nearly as large as in the first Gilded Age.
- 6:07
- So once again, we need to protect the rights of workers to organize, invest in social safety nets,
- 6:14
- and revive guardrails to protect against the abuses of great wealth and power.
- 6:20
- The question now is the same as it was at the start of the 20th century. Will we fight for an economy and a democracy that works for all rather than the few?
- 6:31
- We've done it before. We can and must do it again.
- 6:40
- From Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, it took a generation to dismantle the power of the robber barons.
- 6:48
FASCISM
- But during FDR presidency, a new threat emerged. The rise of fascism.
- 6:54
- Once again, there are disturbing parallels to the present day. Watch this.
- Fascism
- 7:00
- I want to talk to you about the f-word. No, no, not that f-word. I'm talking about fascism.
- 7:08
- Is Donald Trump really a “fascist,” as some would say? Or is the word “authoritarian” sufficient?
- 7:16
- The term fascism is often used loosely, but you can generally identify fascists
- 7:21
- by their hate of the “other,” vengeful nationalism, and repression of dissent.
- 7:28
- To fight these ideas, we need to be aware of what they are and how they fit together.
- 7:34
- Let's examine the five elements that define fascism and what makes it distinct from and more dangerous
- 7:41
- than authoritarianism. First, the rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman.
- 7:49
- Authoritarians believe strong leaders are needed to maintain stability. So they empower strongmen,
- 7:55
- dictators, or absolute monarchs to maintain social order through the use of force.
- 8:01
- But fascists view strong leaders as the means of discovering what society needs.
- 8:08
- They regard the leader as the embodiment of society. The voice of the people.
- 8:13
- “I am your voice.” “I alone can fix it.”
- 8:22
- Second, stoking rage against cultural elites.
- 8:28
- Authoritarian movements cannot succeed without at least some buy-in from establishment elites.
- 8:35
- While fascist movements often seek to co-opt the establishment, they largely depend on fueling
- 8:41
- resentment and anger against presumed cultural elites for supposedly displacing regular people.
- 8:49
- Fascists rile up their followers to seek revenge on the elites. “The out-of-touch media elites,”
- 8:56
- “The political elites,” “But the elites,” “From the elites who led us
- 9:02
- from one financial and foreign policy disaster to another.”
- 9:07
- They create mass political parties and demand participation. They encourage violence.
- 9:14
- “Know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this?” “They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
- 9:20
- “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you.” “Knock the crap out of ‘em, would you?” “We fight. We fight like hell.”
- 9:27
- Third, nationalism based on “superior” race and historic bloodlines.
- 9:33
- Authoritarians see nationalism as a means of asserting the power of the state. For fascists, the state embodies what is considered a “superior”
- 9:43
- group — based on race, religion and historic bloodlines. To fascists,
- 9:49
- the state is a means of asserting that superiority. “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
- 9:58
- They're not sending you. They're not sending you.” Fascists worry about disloyalty and replacement
- 10:04
- by groups that don't share the same race or bloodlines. “And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat,
- 10:13
- I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” Fascists encourage their followers to scapegoat, expel
- 10:21
- and sometimes even kill such “others.” Fourth, extolling brute strength and heroic warriors.
- 10:29
- The goal of authoritarianism is to gain and maintain state power at any cost. For authoritarians, strength comes in the form of large
- 10:37
- standing armies that can enforce their rule. They seek power to wield power. Fascists seek state power to achieve their ostensible goal,
- 10:47
- achieving their vision of society. Fascism accomplishes this by rewarding those who win
- 10:55
- economically and physically and denigrating or even exterminating those who lose.
- 11:03
- Fascism depends on organized bullying — a form of Social Darwinism.
- 11:08
- “Our people are tougher and stronger and meaner and smarter.” For the fascist,
- 11:13
- war and violence are means of strengthening society by culling the weak and glorifying heroic warriors.
- 11:23
- “I am your warrior. I am your justice. I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”
- 11:29
- Fifth and finally, disdain of women and LGBTQ+ people.
- 11:36
- Authoritarianism imposes hierarchies. It's about order. Fascism's idea of order is organized around
- 11:43
- a particular hierarchy of male dominance. The fascist “heroic warrior” is male.
- 11:51
- Women are relegated to subservient roles. In fascism, anything that
- 11:57
- challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider, and controller of the family
- 12:04
- is considered a threat to the social order. Fascism seeks to eliminate homosexuals,
- 12:11
- nonbinary, transgender, and queer people because they are thought to challenge or weaken
- 12:17
- the heroic male warrior. “I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing
- 12:23
- that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female,
- 12:29
- and they are assigned at birth.” These five elements of fascism fit together
- 12:35
- and reinforce each other. Rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman
- 12:40
- depends on galvanizing popular rage. Popular rage draws on a nationalism
- 12:47
- based on a supposed superior race or ethnicity. That superior race or ethnicity is justified
- 12:54
- by a Social Darwinist idea of strength and violence, as exemplified by heroic warriors.
- 13:02
- Strength, violence, and the heroic warrior are centered on male power.
- 13:08
- These five elements find exact expression in Donald Trump.
- 13:14
- His uniquely American version of fascism is rooted largely in white Christian nationalism.
- 13:20
- It is the direction that most of the Republican Party is now heading in. It's not enough to call Trump and those promoting his ideas
- 13:29
- authoritarians when what they are really advocating is something far worse:
- 13:37
- fascism. Shortly after America helped defeat the fascists, something happened in 1946
- 13:46
- that had a bigger impact on my life than anything before, or possibly since. I was born.
- 13:53
- Since then, I've watched our country become more divided than I ever could have imagined.
- 13:58
- But it didn't happen for the reasons the pundits claim. Watch this.
- Political Spectrum
- 14:14
- Look, I got my start in American politics 50 years ago. My political views then — to grossly simplify them —
- 14:21
- were that I was against the Vietnam War and the military-industrial complex, strongly supportive
- 14:27
- of civil and voting rights, and against the power of big corporations. That put me here: just left of the center.
- 14:35
- Back then, the political spectrum from left to right was short. The biggest political issue was the Vietnam War.
- 14:41
- The left was demonstrating against it, sometimes violently. Since I was committed to ending the war through peaceful
- 14:47
- political means, I volunteered for George McGovern, the anti-war presidential candidate.
- 14:53
- Even Richard Nixon on the right was starting to look for ways out of Vietnam. 25 years later, I was in Bill Clinton’s cabinet,
- 15:00
- and the left-to-right political spectrum stretched much longer. The biggest change was how much further right
- 15:07
- the right had moved. Ronald Reagan had opened the political floodgates
- 15:12
- to corporate and Wall Street money — bankrolling right-wing candidates and messages that decried
- 15:18
- “big government.” Bill Clinton sought to lead from the “center,” but by then the “center” had moved so
- 15:24
- far right that Clinton gutted public assistance, enacted “tough on crime” policies that
- 15:30
- unjustly burdened the poor and people of color, and deregulated Wall Street.
- 15:35
- All of which put me further to the left of the center — although my political views had barely changed.
- 15:42
- Today, the spectrum from left to right is the longest it’s been in my 50 years in and around politics.
- 15:49
- The left hasn’t moved much at all. We’re still against the war machine, still pushing for
- 15:54
- civil and voting rights, still fighting the power of big corporations. But the right has moved far, far rightward.
- 16:03
- Donald Trump brought America about as close as we have ever come to fascism. He incited an attempted coup against the United States.
- 16:11
- He and most of the Republican Party continue to deny that he lost the 2020 election.
- 16:21
- And they’re getting ready to suppress votes and disregard election outcomes they disagree with.
- 16:27
- So don’t believe the fear-mongering that today’s left is “radical.”
- 16:39
- So how did the “culture wars” we are now immersed in really get started?
- 16:44
- There was a key moment in 1970 that surprisingly few people seemed to know about.
- 16:50
- Watch this. Missing from most history books is a key moment leading to the culture wars now ripping through American politics.
- The Hard Hat Riot
- 16:59
- In 1970, hundreds of construction workers pummeled around a thousand student demonstrators in New York City, including two of my friends.
- 17:08
- as it came to be known, ushered in an era of cynical fear- mongering aimed at dividing the nation.
- 17:14
- The student demonstrators were protesting the Vietnam War and the deadly shooting of four student activists at Kent State University that occurred just days before.
- 17:22
- [Crowd chant] Peace now! The workers who attacked them carried American flags and chanted,
- 17:29
- “U.S.A. all the way,” and “America, love it or leave it.” They chased the students through the streets, attacking those
- 17:36
- who looked like hippies with their hard hats and steel-toed boots. When my friends in the anti-war movement
- 17:41
- called to tell me about the riot later that day, I was stunned. Student activists and union workers duking it out in the streets over the war?
- 17:49
- I mean, for goodness’ sake, weren’t we on the same side? According to reports, the police did little to stop the mayhem.
- 17:55
- Some even egged on the thuggery. When a group of hardhats moved menacingly toward the action, a patrolman
- 18:01
- apparently shouted, “Give ’em hell, boys! Give ’em one for me!” The construction workers then marched toward a barely protected city hall.
- 18:08
- Why? Because the mayor's staff had lowered the American flag in honor of the Kent State dead.
- 18:13
- In a scene eerily foreshadowing the January 6th Capitol riot, they pushed their way toward the building.
- 18:19
- Fearing the mob would break in, city officials raised the flag. The hard hats also ripped down the Red Cross banner
- 18:26
- that was hanging at nearby Trinity Church. And in their fury against university students protesting the war,
- 18:31
- they stormed a nearby Pace University building, smashing lobby windows with their tools and beating students and professors.
- 18:39
- Around 100 people were wounded that day, most of whom were college students. Several police officers were also hurt.
- 18:44
- Six people were reportedly arrested, but only one construction worker. My friends escaped injury, but they were traumatized.
- 18:51
- The Hard Hat Riot had immediate political consequences. It was, in my opinion, a seminal moment in America's culture wars.
- 18:59
- Then President Richard Nixon exploited the riot for political advantage. His administration had been working on a “blue collar strategy”
- 19:07
- to shift white working class voters to the Republican Party. Nixon exclaimed when he heard about the riot.
- 19:14
- But rather than passing pro-labor policies to court workers, which would go against the values of the pro-business Republican Party,
- 19:22
- Nixon sought to use cultural issues like patriotism and support for the troops to drive a wedge between factions of the Democratic Party —
- 19:30
- workers without college degrees, and progressives. Nixon invited union leaders, some of whom were involved in the riot,
- 19:37
- to the White House. They presented Nixon with a hard hat inscribed with “Commander in Chief” and an American flag pin.
- 19:45
- Nixon praised the union workers as “people from middle America who still have character and guts and a bit of patriotism.”
- 19:52
- Nixon’s strategy to use the Hard Hat Riot to appeal to blue-collar voters paid off.
- 19:58
- In his 1972 re-election campaign against the anti-war Democrat, George McGovern.
- 20:03
- Nixon secured a victory with ease and gained the majority of votes from organized labor – the only time in modern history
- 20:10
- a Republican presidential candidate accomplished such a feat. The Hard Hat Riot revealed a deep fracture in the coalition of workers
- 20:17
- and progressives that FDR had knitted together in the 1930s and the later alliance of Black Americans, liberals, and blue-collar whites
- 20:25
- that led to Lyndon Johnson's landslide reelection in 1964. The mostly white construction workers who attacked the demonstrators had felt
- 20:33
- abandoned and forgotten as the Civil Rights movement rightfully took hold. They felt stiffed by the clever college kids with draft deferments
- 20:41
- and burdened by an economy no longer guaranteeing upward mobility. The class and race based tensions
- 20:48
- that Nixon exploited would worsen over the next half century. I witnessed this when I was secretary of labor during the Clinton administration.
- 20:56
- I spent much of my time in the Midwest and other parts of the country where blue-collar workers felt abandoned in an economy dominated by Wall Street.
- 21:04
- I saw their anger and resentment. I heard their frustrations. In my view,
- 21:09
- the Democratic Party has not done enough to respond as Republicans have destroyed unions,
- 21:15
- exacerbated economic inequality through trickle down economic nonsense, tried to gut just about every social safety net we have
- 21:22
- and stood in the way of practically every effort to use the power of government to help working people.
- 21:28
- Today, the right is trying to channel that same anger and violence against the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ+ community, especially
- 21:37
- transgender people and drag queens, and whatever else they consider “woke.” It's the same cynical ploy to instill a fear of “the other” as a means
- 21:45
- to distract from the oppression and looting being done by the oligarchs who dominate so much of our economy and our politics.
- 21:53
- As such, today, we face the same questions we faced in 1970.
- 21:58
- Will we finally recognize that we have more in common with each other than with those who seek to divide us for political and economic gain?
- 22:05
- Can we unite in solidarity and build a future in which prosperity is widely shared by all?
- 22:12
- I truly believe that we can. Just a couple of years
- 22:18
- after the Hard Hat Riot came another crucially important but under-recognized moment in American history.
- 22:25
- Nearly 40 years before Citizens United, this one action made possible the corporate takeover of American politics.
- 22:34
- Watch. The corporate takeover of American politics started with a man and a memo
- The Corporate Takeover
- 22:41
- you've probably never heard of. In 1971, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked Lewis Powell, a corporate attorney who would
- 22:48
- go on to become a Supreme Court justice, to draft a memo on the state of the country. Powell’s memo argued that the American economic system was “under broad attack”
- 22:58
- from consumer, labor, and environmental groups. In reality, these groups were doing nothing more than enforcing the implicit social contract
- 23:06
- that had emerged at the end of the Second World War. They wanted to ensure corporations were responsive to all their stakeholders
- 23:12
- — workers, consumers, and the environment — not just their shareholders.
- 23:18
- Powell and the Chamber saw it differently. In his memo, Powell urged businesses to mobilize for political combat,
- 23:25
- and stressed that the critical ingredients for success were joint organizing and funding.
- 23:31
- The Chamber distributed the memo to leading CEOs, large businesses, and trade associations hoping to persuade them that Big Business could dominate American politics in ways not
- 23:41
- seen since the Gilded Age. And it worked. The Chamber’s call for a business crusade birthed a new corporate-political industry
- 23:50
- practically overnight. Tens of thousands of corporate lobbyists and political operatives descended on Washington
- 23:56
- and state capitals across the country. I should know — I saw it happen with my own eyes. I worked at the Federal Trade Commission.
- 24:03
- Jimmy Carter had appointed consumer advocates to battle big corporations that for years
- 24:08
- had been deluding or injuring consumers. Yet almost everything we initiated at the FTC was met by unexpectedly fierce
- 24:16
- political resistance from Congress. At one point, when we began examining advertising directed at children,
- 24:22
- Congress stopped funding the agency altogether. I was dumbfounded. What had happened?
- 24:28
- In three words, the Powell Memo. Lobbyists and their allies in Congress — and eventually the Reagan administration — worked
- 24:36
- to defang agencies like the FTC — and to staff them with officials who would overlook corporate misbehavior.
- 24:43
- Their influence led the FTC to stop seriously enforcing antitrust laws — among other things —
- 24:49
- allowing massive corporations to merge and concentrate their power even further.
- 24:54
- Washington was transformed from a sleepy government town into a glittering center of corporate
- 25:00
- America — replete with elegant office buildings, fancy restaurants, and five-star hotels.
- 25:07
- Meanwhile, Justice Lewis Powell used the Court to chip away at restrictions on corporate
- 25:13
- power in politics. His opinions in the 1970s and 80s laid the foundation for corporations to claim
- 25:20
- free speech rights in the form of financial contributions to political campaigns. Put another way — without Lewis Powell, there would probably be no Citizens United
- 25:29
- — the case that threw out limits on corporate campaign spending as a violation of the
- 25:34
- “free speech” of corporations. These actions have transformed our political system.
- 25:40
- Corporate money supports platoons of lawyers, often outgunning any state or federal attorneys
- 25:45
- who dare to stand in their way. Lobbying has become a $3.7 billion dollar industry.
- 25:51
- Corporations regularly outspend labor unions and public interest groups during election years.
- 25:56
- And too many politicians in Washington represent the interests of corporations — not their constituents.
- 26:02
- As a result, corporate taxes have been cut, loopholes widened, and regulations gutted.
- 26:09
- Corporate consolidation has also given companies unprecedented market power, allowing them
- 26:14
- to raise prices on everything from baby formula to gasoline. Their profits have jumped into the stratosphere — the highest in 70 years.
- 26:24
- But despite the success of the Powell Memo, Big Business has not yet won.
- 26:29
- The people are beginning to fight back.
- 26:35
- Both at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, we’re seeing a new willingness to take on corporate power.
- 26:44
- Across the country workers are unionizing at a faster rate than we’ve seen in decades
- 26:49
- — including at some of the biggest corporations in the world — and they’re winning.
- 26:57
- Millions of Americans are intent on limiting corporate money in politics — and politicians
- 27:02
- are starting to listen. All of these tell me that
- 27:11
- — at the ballot box, in the workplace, and in Washington. Let’s get it done.
- 27:17
- We began today's history lesson with the Gilded Age and the robber barons, and how antitrust laws saved America from becoming an oligarchy.
- 27:26
- So what happened to antitrust enforcement in the last 50 years? I have the answer, and it's personal for me.
- 27:34
- Watch.
- Robert Reich ... Robert Bork
- 27:42
- And I knew him! He was my professor and my boss. His name...Robert Bork
- 27:50
- Robert Bork was a notorious conservative who believed the only legitimate purpose of antitrust law
- — that is anti-monopoly law — is to lower prices for consumers, no matter how big corporations get.
- His philosophy came to dominate the federal courts and conservative economics.
- I met him in 1971, when I took his antitrust class at Yale Law School.
- He was a large, imposing man with a red beard and a perpetual scowl.
- He seemed impatient and bored with me and my classmates, who included Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham,
- as we challenged him repeatedly on his antitrust views.
- “Do you remember what they were like in class?” “No, I remember Robert Reich, because he sat up front and talked a good deal.”
- He's not wrong. We argued with Bork that ever-expanding corporations had too much power.
- Not only could they undercut rivals with lower prices and suppress wages, but they were using their spoils
- to influence our politics with campaign contributions. Wasn't this cause for greater antitrust enforcement?
- He had a retort for everything. Undercutting rival businesses with lower prices was a good thing, he said,
- because consumers like lower prices. Suppressing wages didn't matter because employees
- are always free to find better jobs. He argued that courts could not possibly measure
- political power, so why should that matter? Even in my mid-twenties, I knew this was hogwash.
- But Bork's ideology began to spread. A few years after I took his class, he wrote a book
- called The Antitrust Paradox, summarizing his ideas. The book heavily influenced Ronald Reagan
- and later helped form a basic tenet of Reaganomics — the bogus theory that says government should
- get out of the way and allow corporations to do as they please.
- Despite our law school sparring, Bork later gave me a job in the Department of Justice
- when he was solicitor general for Gerald Ford. Even though we didn’t agree on much,
- I enjoyed his wry sense of humor. I respected his intellect. Hell, I even came to like him.
- 30:03
- Once President Reagan appointed Bork as an appeals court judge, his rulings further dismantled antitrust. And while his later
- 30:11
- Supreme Court nomination failed, his influence over the courts continued to grow.
- 30:18
- Bork's legacy is the enormous corporate power we see today, whether it's Ticketmaster and Live Nation
- 30:25
- consolidating control over live performances, Kroger and Albertsons dominating the grocery market,
- 30:31
- or just a handful of companies taking over the entire tech world.
- 30:36
- It's not just these high profile companies either.
In most industries, a handful of companies now control
- more of their markets than they did 20 years ago. This corporate concentration costs
- the typical American household an
- Companies have been able to jack up prices without losing customers to competitors because there's often no meaningful competition.
- And huge corporations also have the power to suppress wages because workers have fewer employers
- 31:09
- from whom to get better jobs. And how can we forget the massive flow of money these corporate giants are funneling into politics,
- 31:18
- rigging our democracy in their favor? But the tide is beginning to turn under the Biden Administration.
- 31:25
- The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are fighting the monopolization of America in court,
- 31:31
- and proposing new merger guidelines to protect consumers, workers, and society.
- 31:37
- It's the implementation of the view that I and my law school classmates argued for back in the 1970s —
- 31:44
- one that sees corporate concentration as a problem that outweighs any theoretical benefits
- 31:51
- Bork claimed might exist. Robert Bork would likely regard the Biden administration's
- 31:56
- antitrust efforts with the same disdain he had for my arguments in his class all those years ago.
- 32:03
- But instead of a few outspoken law students, Bork's philosophy is now being challenged
- 32:09
- by the full force of the federal government. The public is waking up to the outsized power
- 32:15
- corporations wield over our economy and democracy. It’s about time.
- That concludes today's history lesson. Those who can't remember their history are doomed to repeat it.
- So if you've already forgotten something you learn today, go back and watch again. And please share this video with someone you think needs a history lesson.
- Thanks.
| |