Historically, competition has powered progress under capitalism. Companies with productive new products rise to the top, but sooner or later, competitors come along with better innovations and disrupt the threat of monopoly. Dominant firms like Walmart, Amazon, and Google argue that this process of “creative destruction” prevents them from becoming too powerful or entrenched.
But the threat of competition has sharply decreased over the past twenty years, and today’s corporate giants have come to power by using proprietary information technologies to create a tilted playing field. This development has increased economic inequality and social division, slowed innovation, and allowed dominant firms to evade government regulation.
In the face of increasing calls to break up the largest companies, economist, technologist and author James Bessen, argues that a better way to restore competitive balance and dynamism is to encourage or compel these companies to share technology, data, and knowledge.
James Bessen, author of The New Goliaths: How corporations use software to dominate industries, kill innovation and undermine regulations, joins Mountain Money.
