OLD BOYS NETWORK SPREADS INFLUENCE

“Our campaign-finance laws allow big businesses to buy a great deal of influence in Washington. The sociology of the American élite means that the people at the higher rungs of government and the people at the higher rungs of business often went to school together, live in the same neighborhoods, and move back and forth between the two sides during their careers. That dulls the edge of their putative opposition. The European Union, which can go after monopolies under an “abuse of dominance” standard that doesn’t exist in the United States, has been rattling its sabre at Google and Amazon. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, has not. And so the ‘Trust problem’ has become a trust problem.”

Nicholas Lemann, “Notorious Big, Why the Spectre of Size Has Always Haunted American Politics,” in the New Yorker, March 28, 2016, pp: 72-75.