There was a time, back in the late 1890's, I think, where the rich and powerful ran over the rights of everyone else. Monopolies were formed. Bad stuff happened. Laws were eventually enacted to rein in the robber barons. Life went on. If memory serves correctly, this sort of thing has happened more than once. It's happening again and it needs to be stopped.
That's the story that is current in the mainstream, it doesn't bear scrutiny, and the evidence from that time, and what has emerged since about who was related to whom, who was funding which politician and controlling which party, points towards the actual picture being a complete mirror image of that. What follows is absolutely not personal against anyone on the board.
Up until 1896, there was a big difference between the American political parties, Dems were typically Jeffersonian laissez-faire liberals, and appealed to ethnics, Catholics and liturgical protestants. To them, the state should be the minimalist night Watchman.
The Republicans had from the start been a party of great moral crusades on the surface, and of Hamiltonian big state and Clay high tarriffs and subsidies for cronies beneath that surface. Even the anti slavery issue that destroyed the American Whigs and split the democrats, the republican position doesn't withstand scrutiny; here's dishonest Abe's position during his 1858 debates with senator Stephen Douglas
There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. - Dishonest Abe
In 1896, control over the democratic party was seized by a group of ultra pietist protestants, and the policies of the party became even more intrusive (eg Pro alcohol prohibition) than the republicans, who under Rockefeller influence were moderating their intrusive policies in order to broaden their electoral appeal.
From that point on, there's virtually no difference between the two parties.
American railroads, the first of the big corporations, are hardly the result of a free market.
Even in the civil war, general Dodge, chief projector of the union Pacific spent the war using northern troops to murder Indians along the route, with full political blessings.
The railroads were subsidised and given massive land grants of up to 15 miles either side, while lands from the outer edge of the land grants were closed to settlement for 100 miles either side. Ordinary investors were screwed over with political blessing, and the promotors and politicians had shares in the construction companies, who milked the projects for what they were worth.
About the only trans continental railroad that was not subsidised, and it was the only one that didn't go bankrupt! Was the northern Pacific.
Attempts were made (mostly by the Morgan's) to cartelise industries and once cartelise, to reduce production and raise prices.
Every time, it was a failure. Cartel members secretly made competitive deals, or new competitors started up and broke the cartel.
Railroad cartels, starch and sugar cartels, leather tanning cartels, iron and steel cartels (judge Garry's dinners, to set prices for Pittsburgh steel makers)...
All flopped on The free market.
Mergers and buying out were no more successful
McCormick international Harvester lost market share and couldn't keep prices high, standard oil lost market share as oil refining expanded, production rocketed and prices fell.
The only way to get cartels and price fixing to stick was with government enforcement
That was what the ICC achieved for railroad cartelisation.
Get into the progressive era, and the rhetoric from people like this Roosevelt, Hurley, Crowley, McAdoo etc is "the government extending its machinery of helpfulness to other branches of industry, and doing for them what the FCC has done for the railroads"
Notice, doing for, not too!.
The rhetoric is also about price maintenance, of opening businesses books to scrutiny (to prevent secret price cutting), ending unfair and cutthroat competition (ending competition) preventing over capitalisation (keeping competition out).
There's lots more.
Refs for further reading would be Kolko, the corporate state
And
James Weinstein's works on the progressive era.
The finger prints of the Rockefeller family are all over the republican party, and the Morgan's are all over the Dems right through from the post civil war era to the present
With family friends and business partners in all of the key positions.
Please don't confuse any of that with a free market
One last thing, Sinclair's the jungle, was published 3 months before federal meat inspection was instituted, even Sinclair stated that federal meat inspection, that the Chicago meat Packers had lobbied for since 1870, was about marketing, and about imposing costs and bureacracy on smaller competitors.
