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The Antitrust Revolution


Liberal democracy’s last stand against Big Tech

Along with friends including Zephyr Teachout, Tim Wu, and Lina Khan, and allies such as Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Keith Ellison, and David Cicilline, I helped set in motion a revolution that aims to rebuild something like a true liberal democracy in America. The effort culminated in 1628, when Coke, now a member of Parliament, led the fight to force James’s successor, his son Charles, to recognize the Petition of Right, a document that clarified and reinforced prohibitions dating to the Magna Carta against arbitrary taxation, imprisonment, seizure of property, and the billeting of soldiers. And so, early in the Reagan Administration, they issued enforcement “guidelines” stating that the purpose of anti-monopoly policy was not to protect the liberties of the citizen but rather the material welfare of the “consumer.” This in turn allowed them to claim that we should no longer view these laws as tools for mastering power but only as ways to promote what Bork called “productive efficiency.”

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