Discussion
Rome wasn't overthrown in a day. Oligarchies are stubborn, and by the time they've established and entrenched themselves, they have resources, power blocs and even mercenaries they can deploy to repel would-be dethroners.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/05/divorce-court/#irreconcilable-conflicts-of-interest
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The USA got its first antimonopoly law, the Sherman Act, in 1890, but it took *22 years* before that law could be used to crush John D Rockefeller's corrupt, sprawling empire. Senator John Sherman promoted his law as a way of *preventing* monopolies from emerging, warning the Senate that they would struggle to overthrow the "autocrats of trade" that monopolies created:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/
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The Senate passed his law and Harrison signed it, but then successive administrations left the Sherman Act to gather dust on a shelf as Rockefeller went on a spree, accumulating the kind of power that made him a true "autocrat of trade," so powerful that he and the US government were practically evenly matched.
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Allowing Rockefeller to create, expand and consolidate his monopoly power was a terrible tactical blunder, giving him decades in which he was able to loot America and its trading partners, pauperizing ordinary people and smashing anyone who got in his way. No one was willing to admit that Rockefeller was a threat to democracy and prosperity until he had amassed all that power, and once he had all that power, it took heroic effort to break him.
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The Rockefeller story is like the punchline of that joke: "When it doesn't rain, the roof don't leak; and when it's raining, it's too wet to fix it." Alternatively, there's my other favorite punchline: "If you wanted to get there, I wouldn't start from here."
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The Rockefeller blunder was no one-off. The Apple 2+ hit shelves the same year Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the tech industry's rise was simultaneous with the dismantling of competition enforcement. Tech companies were the first "post-antitrust" industry, and it wasn't until these companies became palpable, undeniable, existential civilizational risks that we remembered that we had all these laws on the books that were *designed* to curb excessive corporate power.
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Under Biden, a group of generationally talented, visionary trustbusters were given access to those dormant enforcement powers: Lina Khan at the FTC; Rohit Chopra at the CFPB, Tim Wu in the White House, and Jonathan Kantor at the DOJ Antitrust Division. Together with a staff of canny and skilled lawyers and economists, these people scored *incredible* victories against Big Tech. During the Biden years, Google lost *three* federal antitrust cases. Three!
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