The Curse of Bigness

Admit it, part of you really appreciates that everything store with its unlimited inventory, an airline that can fly you anywhere you want to go, banks that will have ATMs wherever you need them, cell phone carriers with nationwide coverage, and social media platforms that can connect you to both your work colleagues and high school crush. Indeed, the network effects of technology and globalization have been driving companies across a number of industries to scale up and consolidate. But are we paying too high a price for the concentrated power then wielded by these ever-bigger corporations? Hasn’t America already suffered from excess business power in a previous gilded age, what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis deemed the “curse of bigness” that is antithetical to our democratic values?

Tim Wu, a former New America Fellow known for authoring the Net Neutrality doctrine and one of the nation’s leading thinkers about law and technology, is sounding the alarm against concentrated corporate power in his new book, and advocating for a reinvigorated embrace of antitrust principles to shore up American democracy.

Join Future Tense for a conversation with Professor Wu and Anne-Marie Slaughter about his new book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age. Follow the conversation online using #CurseofBigness and following @FutureTenseNow.

Lunch will be served and books will be available for purchase and signing.

Participant:

Tim Wu, @superwuster
Professor, Columbia Law School & Former New America Fellow
Author, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

Moderator:

Anne-Marie Slaughter, @SlaughterAM
President & CEO, New America