American Oligarchy Strangles Democracy in Their Pockets!

Last Friday evening, I terminated my subscription to the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos, who famously adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies In Darkness,” opted to hinder his editorial team from backing Harris, thereby choosing obscurity over the future of our nation. I find it impossible to support such a decision.

Historically, John D. Rockefeller’s significant oversight was his failure to acquire a media platform like a newspaper—a mistake neither Jeff Bezos nor Elon Musk seems inclined to repeat. If Rockefeller had owned such a vehicle to influence public opinion, the narrative of American history might have been altered substantially.

By the 1880s, Rockefeller’s Ohio-based enterprise dominated more than 90 percent of the national oil market, maintained 4000 miles of pipelines, and had over 100,000 employees. As his oil kingdom expanded, devouring numerous smaller ventures, ruthlessly inflating prices, crushing competitors, and displacing workers, public disapproval escalated.

America must sooner or later tackle its issue with oligarchs.

In 1887, Ohio initiated legal action against him, claiming his operations harmed the state and its citizens and businesses; in 1892, the Ohio Supreme Court mandated his company be dissolved. As detailed in Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People,” this led Rockefeller to relocate Standard Oil to New Jersey, a state that had revised its corporate laws to support his monopolistic practices.

This eventually involved the federal government; in 1890, Ohio Senator John Sherman introduced and successfully passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which imposed not only fines but also prison sentences for individuals like Rockefeller, who were dedicated to eliminating competition and monopolizing markets. The act had several loopholes and was therefore amended in 1914 by the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.

In 1906, under the administration of progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt, a federal antitrust lawsuit was filed against Rockefeller that reached the Supreme Court in 1911 during the tenure of another progressive Republican, President William Howard Taft. The corporate giant was dismantled into 34 separate entities, a move that—similar to the breakup of AT&T under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan—sparked a surge in market competition and significantly increased shareholder value.

Returning to Jeff Bezos and his 2013 acquisition of The Washington Post.

During the First Gilded Age (1880-1900), it was the reporters and editors from the numerous independent newspapers that spearheaded the campaigns against Rockefeller and his monopolist peers. Investigative journalism thrived, fueling public demand for competitive markets and the dethronement of the era’s oligarchs.

The vast majority of workers endured hardships while serving a tiny 10 percent of the populace who controlled most of the nation’s wealth—a situation we find ourselves in once again.

This led to consistent conflicts, strikes, and even the assassination of labor leaders; entire communities were often armed and occasionally set ablaze due to labor disputes. The “problem of labor” was the foremost issue at the time. As President Grover Cleveland, the only Democrat elected during that era, declared in his 1887 State of the Union address:

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

There was widespread agreement across American society that these “Robber Barons” were enriching themselves at the public’s expense, adversely affecting both the working class and small businesses. The Supreme Court supported the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, and even dismantled the Associated Press in 1944.

The enforcement of the law was so stringent—to ensure the business game was fair for all players, not just the “big boys”—that in the 1960s, the Supreme Court prevented the merger of Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because their combined operations would have controlled a mere 5 percent of the shoe market.

Back in the ’60s, every shopping mall and downtown area in America was populated with small, locally-owned businesses; while a Sears might anchor a shopping center or retail district, most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.

However, in 1983, Reagan ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to halt enforcement of the Sherman Act, leading to a situation today where, for instance, Nike controls about a fifth of the entire national shoe market. This pattern repeats across various industries, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to software to social media to semiconductor manufacturing to airlines to hotels—and so forth. In almost every sector, a few colossal corporations control 80 percent or more of the market.

The Biden administration is the first since Carter’s time to take serious action on enforcing the nation’s anti-trust laws, challenging Google and blocking mergers in numerous industries. This has prompted a slew of American billionaires to call for the dismissal of the head of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Kahn.

Last year, Kahn and her FTC team targeted Bezos, suing Amazon for operating a monopoly that overcharges customers and stifles competition. The trial is set for 2026, contingent on Kahn retaining her position; a Trump administration would likely dismiss her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is mounting on Harris to do the same.

Bezos also vividly recalls his conflict with then-President Trump over the Post’s coverage of Trump’s falsehoods and misdemeanors; in a moment of spite, Trump awarded a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft, surprising industry analysts.

Moreover, Bezos is lobbying for his Blue Origin spaceship company to secure additional billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts. His and his enterprises’ holdings include billions in Google and AirBNB stock, as well as outright ownership of nearly a hundred other companies.

It seems like an opportune moment to own one of America’s two most influential newspapers, right?

Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, while seemingly taking directives from Russian President Vladimir Putin, is contending with multiple government attempts to regulate his businesses (largely existing thanks to Obama’s 2010 bailout of Tesla with $465 million, and NASA’s ongoing substantial investments in SpaceX):

— Tesla is contesting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on union-related issues, with Musk escalating a lawsuit to the Supreme Court claiming government protections of unions are unconstitutional.
— SpaceX is fighting the NLRB regarding employee terminations.
— The SEC is investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private.
— The FTC is probing X’s adherence to a $150 million privacy settlement.
— The Federal Communications Commission recently rejected SpaceX’s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.
— The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.
— The FAA is at odds with SpaceX concerning launch licensing and environmental reviews.
— The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.
— The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has initiated multiple probes into Tesla’s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.
— SpaceX is under scrutiny for its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.

To avoid repeating Rockefeller’s error, Musk—with the alleged assistance of two Russian oligarchs and the leader of Saudi Arabia—acquired Twitter, the online digital equivalent of our nation’s largest newspaper.

Now, as we navigate America’s Second Gilded Age—with today’s billionaires far wealthier than Rockefeller could have ever imagined—we face a crossroads akin to that of previous generations.

And now, he’s leveraging it to attempt to secure the election of Trump and Republicans, likely so they can dismantle the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and any other regulatory body that might challenge him, all in the name of protecting workers, the public, and national interests.

We successfully challenged the ultra-rich during the First Gilded Age, and our enforcement of antitrust laws continued until Reagan obstructed them in 1983, sparking the “merger mania” of the 1980s and leading to today’s oligarchic business empires across numerous sectors.

Now, in what’s being called America’s Second Gilded Age—with today’s billionaires vastly richer than those of Rockefeller’s era—we are at a similar pivotal moment as past generations.

Is it acceptable, for instance, for billionaires to own media outlets they can use to manipulate politics and government agencies to boost their other business interests? Or for five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court to decree that our excessively wealthy plutocrats can own judges and politicians? Most Americans would likely answer “No” to both questions.

At some point, America needs to address its oligarch issue. And the sooner, the better, if we hope to prevent darkness from completely engulfing our democracy.