How Anti-Monopoly Policy and Politics Can Restore Rural America
Four decades ago, swayed by dubious economic theories and neoliberal ideology, conservatives and liberals alike embraced corporate concentration. Policymakers stopped enforcing our antitrust laws, sidelined concerns about monopoly power, and reconfigured banking, tax, trade, and other policies to favor the biggest corporations.
The results of this forty-year experiment have been dismal. Nearly every industry is now dominated by just a few giant corporations. As a result, our economy has become less resilient and productive. Inequality has risen sharply. Small businesses and family farms have been wiped out. Rural communities especially have suffered, drained by agribusiness giants and stripped of hospitals, grocery stores, banks, and other essential services. All of this has contributed to a widespread sense of powerlessness and put extraordinary strains on democracy.
The good news is that there’s a growing anti-monopoly movement that is making remarkable progress in recovering our strong antitrust laws and building new political will in Washington to break up concentrated corporate power. Anti-monopoly politics is popular, especially in rural America, and offers a promising pathway for building a durable, multiracial, rural-urban progressive majority.
Stacy Mitchell is Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a research and advocacy organization that challenges concentrated corporate power and works to build thriving, equitable communities. ILSR has been a pioneering leader in the anti-monopoly movement and has a long track record of working alongside grassroots groups to create better alternatives, from community-owned broadband, to independent businesses, to distributed solar. Stacy has published several influential reports on corporate concentration and small business. In 2020 she was profiled by the New York Times for her work on Amazon. She’s also the author of the book “Big-Box Swindle” and has written for The Atlantic, New York Times, The Nation, and Washington Post, among others. She lives in Portland, Maine.