Libertarian suspicion of concentrated power
Bob Zadek frames the fear of concentrated power as a founding principle of the American political and economic order. In a 2020 episode on the two-party system, he says America’s political DNA has been a fear of, a distaste for, an abhorrence of any accumulation of power in any institution, public or private, and that the Founders built a governmental system designed to neutralize and minimize an accumulation of power. The reason for checks and balances, in his account, is to have power neutralize power, with the result that no power survives. He extends the same logic to the economy: the United States has generally had a free market system, more or less, but is sensitive to distortions in it, and has a body of law called antitrust law, which prevents the establishment of monopoly power. He adds that Americans do not like it when one institution, with governmental help often, establishes a monopolistic system and imposes its will upon the public. Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop (2020)
In a 2014 episode, Zadek makes the same point in the language of coercion. He tells Matt Zwolinski that libertarians as a group abhor and fear any concentration of power, whether it is in the executive branch in Washington or whether it is through unfair business practices in a commercial setting, and that it is the power component in a hypothetical that scares libertarians. Zadek also offers the observation that the only distinguishing factor that distinguishes government from any other social institution is that government is the only institution that is permitted to use force. Zwolinski agrees that the power component gives rise to the potential for a kind of coercion, and calls the state pointing guns at people’s heads the paradigmatic case of coercion, but he hesitates to agree that government is the only institution authorized to use force. Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014)
Private coercion and the check of competition
Zwolinski argues that libertarians sometimes make the mistake of thinking that if they are worried about preventing coercion or force, then all they have to worry about is government coercion and force. He says there is such a thing as private coercion and force too, and that libertarians should find it equally troubling. He acknowledges this sounds un-libertarian, and locates the analysis in standard libertarians going back to Lysander Spooner or going up to the 20th century in people like Friedrich Hayek. Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014)
The usual check, on Zwolinski’s account, is market competition, which prevents corporations from exerting undue coercive power. Zadek proposes the qualification that this holds at least in the long run, and that firms might be able to do it in the short run but not in the long run. Zwolinski agrees: in the long run, in usual circumstances, corporations cannot exert too much power over their employees or their customers because if they try to, some other company will sweep in and offer them a better deal. But he identifies cracks where this fails, either because there is a downturn in the economy or some firm acquires temporary monopoly power, usually because government has given it to them, but sometimes on their own. In those cases, he says, libertarians need to worry about coercive power being wielded by private firms, not just by the government. Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014)
Antitrust against Big Tech
A 2020 episode with Ryan Young turns on whether antitrust law reaches the conduct of large technology firms. Zadek argues that the only ones hurt by Google’s power are the government, which likes to be the most powerful enterprise around and jealously protects its power from others who, by lawful means, have also acquired power. He characterizes the action as one where government does not want the competition in power from private enterprise, and says that if anybody is exercising monopoly power, it is those at DOJ who are taking advantage of their monopoly power to get rid of competition for the attention of Americans. He adds that Google has no monopoly on the data, that everybody has access to the data, and that if Google is cooking the search books, users will leave and the marketplace will punish Google. Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020)
Young’s answer is that there is no antitrust angle to the Twitter case. He says it is ultimately not a question of monopoly power because of the dozen keystrokes argument, and illustrates it with the fact that Google pays Apple as much as $12 billion a year to make its search engine the default on iPhones; a co-worker who is an iPhone user switched away in three taps on the screen. He concludes that this by itself collapses an antitrust argument on free speech. He also argues that consumers decide whether Twitter and Facebook and Google rise and fall, noting that Google was not the original search engine and took over from Yahoo and Altavista, and that Facebook took over from Myspace. Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020)
On the underlying speech question, Young says Twitter made a mistake when it muted the Hunter Biden story that the New York Post published, but that it was a business decision and not a legal issue because government should not censor speech. He describes the resulting publicity as a Streisand Effect that doubled the story’s reach. Zadek summarizes the legal landscape by saying that under existing legislation, Twitter and Facebook and Google to some extent are free to do whatever they want from an editorial standpoint, or they are not allowed to exercise editorial control over what other people publish in their electronic platforms if they are just like a platform; once they start editorializing and making editorial judgments, a different body of law is triggered and they could be liable for defamation. He notes that the episode does not have time to discuss Section 230. Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020)
Consumer loyalty and the making of a monopoly
In a 2021 episode, Roger L. Martin gives the consumer a role in creating monopoly power. Asked by Zadek about loyalty to Amazon, Martin answers that the reason he does not want Zadek to be loyal to Amazon is that he is making them a monopoly, and that as companies become monopolies they start abusing the very customers that they used to give great service to. He says Amazon is already abusing Zadek by deceiving him as to what is the most recommended product, and that they did not used to do that. He urges buying 50% or 60% of one’s goods from Amazon but also buying from other online services and from local stores, because a resilient environment is needed and Zadek will not like it when they truly have monopoly power. When More is Not Better (2021)
Zadek responds that he encourages Amazon and will give them all his business, and that when they start behaving like monopolists he will close his account. Martin replies that it will be too late, because Zadek will have destroyed all the good alternatives in the meantime. When More is Not Better (2021)
Across episodes: what changed
The topic recurs across 2014, 2020 and 2021, and the treatment shifts with the guest rather than developing along a single line. Zwolinski in 2014 supplies the theoretical case that private firms can wield coercive power when competition fails, while Young in 2020 argues that switching costs are so low that no monopoly power exists in the tech cases and that antitrust is being misused for political ends. Martin in 2021 moves the question to consumer behavior, treating loyalty itself as the mechanism that builds monopoly power. Zadek’s own framing — antitrust law as an expression of the founding abhorrence of accumulated power — is consistent across the 2020 two-party episode and the 2020 tech episode.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of any antitrust case, the text or terms of Section 230, or the holding of any decision. They do not give the founding date of antitrust law, the name of any bill, or the title and affiliation of every speaker beyond what the labels and introductions supply. The 2014 excerpt breaks off mid-sentence as Zadek returns from a break, and the 2020 two-party excerpt ends with Zadek’s question to Lee Drutman, so neither guest’s full argument on monopoly power is available.