I wrote in a comment under "Changing the Battlefield" the big issue we are facing as an American economy.
The key idea is this: We are seeing more and more of our economic freedoms being captured by a handful of people. Bit by bit, we are losing power and "THEY" are gaining power.
The American economy was never meant to be this way. We NEVER endorsed "Laissez-Faire". We NEVER embraced unrestrained capitalism. In the 1800s and early 1900s we had a huge national debate about what our economic policy would be and it came down to "ANTI-TRUST."
When someone finds a new way to do something that saves a lot of money, NATURALLY they capture the market. This is GOOD because people see lower prices. But it is also BAD because they are losing their economic freedom. The government was expected to identify monopolies and trusts and to break them up so that regular people had access to the innovations or new technologies.
For instance, from our FOUNDING we had the concept of the PATENT. If you invent something, you get X years where you are allowed to exploit that new technology, but after X years, anyone and everyone could use it and never give you a red penny. The idea was you can get rich inventing new technologies, but you can't control the American people.
In agriculture, we are seeing a HUGE shift away from family farms to huge megacorporations owning or leasing everything and making all the calls about how animals and farm products should be raised and processed. YES, this is financially a good idea, because we all get to save a few dollars on our steaks and eggs. But it is a really, really bad idea because we end up LOSING our economic freedom to buy our steaks and eggs from someone else, or grow our own, or to sell what we grow.
Let me be more specific:
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people own all the land.
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people dominate certain agriculture sectors.
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people run all the processing plants, or the factories, or the stores.
THESE THINGS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.
You may be one of those libertarian types who think that the natural market forces can prevent these things from happening, but IN PRACTICE, YOU ARE WRONG. What inevitably happens is someone captures a segment of the marketplace, AND THEN THEY CAPTURE GOVERNMENT TO ENSURE THEIR MONOPOLY CONTINUES FOREVER.
Thus, it MUST be the policy of the government to BUST MONOPOLIES anywhere and everywhere they can be found. Business will go to government to DESTROY the big corporations, not protect them.
We should have MILLIONS of people owning 100s of acres each, making money farming and ranching.
We should have MILLIONS of people owning stores and supply chains and processing plants and factories.
We should have MILLIONS of people competing over every little thing at all times.
Right now, the key factor seems to be transportation. It used to be that we could ship all of our products anywhere in the US using competing owner-operator truck fleets and rail companies. Now, increasingly, Amazon uses Amazon trucks, Wal-Mart uses Wal-Mart trucks, and so on and so forth. The idea that an owner-operator can compete with Amazon or Wal-Mart is absurd.
We must figure out WHY they cannot compete, and we must make the MORE EXPENSIVE to own thousands of trucks and hire thousands of truckers. We must FORCE the companies to rely on MILLIONS of people they cannot control to distribute their products.
When someone comes up with an innovation that makes life better, they get X years to exploit that. But after a while, they should lose ALL profits from that innovation and turn it over to the people of the United States. I truly believe that at some point, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc... should be busted up so that they are a distant memory, one of many successful competitors.
