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Comment by jobu | Hacker News Reader

NPR's Planet Money Podcast did a fantastic 3-part series on Antitrust in America: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/anti...

Here's an excerpt that starts to answer your question:

> The 1970s was a turning point in the other direction. In the decades leading up to the '70s, the government had grown increasingly aggressive—intervening in the free market to defend competition in more and more ways over time. Then a lawyer named Robert Bork completely transformed the way courts would interpret antitrust law. The approach to enforcement reversed direction away from protecting firms and toward a consumer focus, paving the way for today's tech giants.

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I read recently in the book "A Generation of Sociopaths" an interesting perspective I hadn't before considered. The book's claim was that as the Baby Boomer generation aged into a capital owning class, they used their democratic voting influence to impact companies they increasingly owned via stocks.

I don't know if I buy it, but it was an interesting take on the political and tax changes that began in the late 70s and early 80s.

I don't personally, it conflates boomers with capitalists, and there are plenty of boomers who aren't a part of the capitalist class by any stretch of the imagination. Just because some of them benefited from it, doesn't mean they had any part in its construction, execution, or intention.

This story just obfuscates the fact that this tension between capital and labor existed long before this generation and pretends like the entire generation was in on it, when it was really just the boomer capitalist class, not all boomers.

It does group (majority white) boomers together but I don’t think the auther conflates them with capitalists exactly. It was more so making the point that as a collective voting block, they tended to vote to their own selfish interests and had the numbers to sway policy. For example, reducing capital gains taxes which wasn’t necessary until they, as a collective, had enough vested interest in the stock of companies later in their life.

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