Trump admin's zeal to peel back regs is leading us to another era of robber barons

The Trump administration has a clear economic objective: deregulate. Loosening regulations on industries, the White House believes, will lead to faster growth and more jobs. This is the stated reason for pulling the U.S. from the international climate accord, and the economic justification for seeking to rescind the EPA Clean Power Plan that limits carbon emissions from plants.But an examination of history shows that government regulations are not always harmful to industry; they often help business. Indeed, government regulation is as central to the growth of the American economy as markets and dollars.

Historians of the period like me have, in fact, shown that the progressive era regulations often helped businesses by providing them with a more stable, predictable economic environment, where government regulations enabled increased capital investments and expanded consumer purchases. Progressive regulations of the robber baron market were good for businesses and consumers.

The same is true for regulations a century later. Government activities to ensure competition, transparency and safety in various industries give the American economy stability almost unparalleled in any other country.

This is not to say that all regulation is good. Sometimes regulation chokes innovation by slowing change and prohibiting risk taking. This was evidently true for regulated monopolies in mid-20th-century America, including the venerable Bell telephone company.

What the United States needs is less ideology and more detailed attention among politicians to matching regulatory processes with public purposes. That was, of course, the goal of the progressives more than a century ago. If we don’t return to their model, chances are we will continue the current drift into another age of robber barons.

https://theconversation.com/trump-ad...r-barons-84961

Though the above is taken from a centrist position that I don't agree with, it's central point that the current political trends are leading us to "another age of robber barons" is one I definitely find to be accurate. Don't believe me? Check it out: company towns are back! Remember those from the Gilded Age?! (Remember a certain name frequently cited in that article, by the way: Mark Zuckerberg. He could be our next president!)

Companies buying whole communities really bothers me. In our globalized age where companies can grow much larger than they could back in the 19th century, their re-emergence could even just be the beginning! We could eventually be looking at a scenario where companies grow powerful enough to start buying whole states and provinces, and even nations! That would be the final step in establishing a modern, capitalist feudal order. If feudalism is essentially a situation in which the government is privately owned (perhaps by a particular family, religious institution, or general, for instance), then ownership of governments by particular corporations would mark the establishment of a new, modern brand of feudalism. That's one serious possibility as to where things may ultimately be headed on a much larger scale than towns, I fear. We may well be in a transitional stage thereto right now, methinks.

Early on I sort of predicted this when I was asked what I realistically expect from Trump.

One of my criticisms was that he is going to be a disaster for environmental issues because he is backed by the crony capitalist crowd and this is one of the major issues I have with capitalism. The poor and middle class for that matter bear the TRUE cost of capitalism while the privileged wealthy reap all of the benefits.

And the beat goes on.

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Originally Posted by IMPress Polly

Though the above is taken from a centrist position that I don't agree with, it's central point that the current political trends are leading us to "another age of robber barons" is one I definitely find to be accurate. Don't believe me? Check it out: company towns are back! Remember those from the Gilded Age?! (Remember a certain name frequently cited in that article, by the way: Mark Zuckerberg. He could be our next president!)

Companies buying whole communities really bothers me. In our globalized age where companies can grow much larger than they could back in the 19th century, their re-emergence could even just be the beginning! We could eventually be looking at a scenario where companies grow powerful enough to start buying whole states and provinces, and even nations! That would be the final step in establishing a modern, capitalist feudal order. If feudalism is essentially a situation in which the government is privately owned (perhaps by a particular family, religious institution, or general, for instance), then ownership of governments by particular corporations would mark the establishment of a new, modern brand of feudalism. That's one serious possibility as to where things may ultimately be headed on a much larger scale than towns, I fear. We may well be in a transitional stage thereto right now, methinks.

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Name a company town. Just one.

Some political scientists think global corporations are slowly edging national governments out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IMPress Polly

Though the above is taken from a centrist position that I don't agree with, it's central point that the current political trends are leading us to "another age of robber barons" is one I definitely find to be accurate. Don't believe me? Check it out: company towns are back! Remember those from the Gilded Age?! (Remember a certain name frequently cited in that article, by the way: Mark Zuckerberg. He could be our next president!)

Companies buying whole communities really bothers me. In our globalized age where companies can grow much larger than they could back in the 19th century, their re-emergence could even just be the beginning! We could eventually be looking at a scenario where companies grow powerful enough to start buying whole states and provinces, and even nations! That would be the final step in establishing a modern, capitalist feudal order. If feudalism is essentially a situation in which the government is privately owned (perhaps by a particular family, religious institution, or general, for instance), then ownership of governments by particular corporations would mark the establishment of a new, modern brand of feudalism. That's one serious possibility as to where things may ultimately be headed on a much larger scale than towns, I fear. We may well be in a transitional stage thereto right now, methinks.

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Originally Posted by Captdon

Name a company town. Just one.

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Here are two that I think are considered company towns:

Menlo Park, CA (facebook)
Orlando, FL (Disney)

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Originally Posted by Captdon

Name a company town. Just one.

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Facebook and Google are planning for their own company towns.