The latest smartphone from Apple hit stores this weekend and reportedly the bell of the ball is the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Customers want it for its advanced telephoto lens, large display and battery life. Investors want it to keep up with the Joneses. While Apple remains one of the globe’s most valuable tech companies, there is growing concern on Wall Street that the industry leader is lagging behind some of its rivals when it comes to artificial intelligence. Ideally the new model addresses some of that chatter.
Competition — the bedrock of a free market society. Without competition, innovation is stifled and choice becomes an illusion.
Case in point: Prior to 1984, AT&T customers were required to rent AT&T telephones for its services. Sounds innocuous until you realize through a series of acquisitions and regulatory rules changes, the telecommunication company was able to take control of 80% of all telephones in the U.S. This was not by accident. One of the company’s earliest presidents, Theodore Vail, introduced a motto in 1907: “One system, one policy, universal service.” Vail was selling efficiency, but what AT&T eventually acquired was near total control of how Americans talked with one another. By the time Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the only choice nearly 80 million American households were left with was deciding what kind of AT&T phone to rent.
When the courts broke up the monopoly, not only did we have more carriers to choose from; we also saw an explosion in innovation. That is what happens when real choice is possible.
Within a week of President Trump’s reelection, Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav said, “it’s too early to tell, but it may offer a pace of change and an opportunity for consolidation that may be quite different, that would provide a real positive and accelerated impact on this industry that’s needed.”
Then Skydance acquired Paramount, and Nexstar has its eyes on Tegna. More consolidation in the media industry is expected. What were once solid walls between content, tech and distribution are crumbling, along with the modern corporate media infrastructure.
For industry leaders like Zaslav, the Ellison family and other stakeholders, the chaos is an opportunity to increase profits under the guise of efficiency. But for the rest of us, we’ve seen this story before, with AT&T when we were “free” to call but only from a centralized system.
Vail’s seductive promise of making phone usage efficient led us into a monopoly. And this consolidation of media threatens to lull the country into a false sense of choice when it comes to free speech. Sure, we may still have lots of channels to choose from, but if the decision of what is appropriate to broadcast, aggregate online, post or publish lies in the hands of a few private citizens, then there is no real choice.
Not when it comes to free speech.
The main reason founders such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin often quoted Roman philosopher Cicero — who championed free speech — was that he warned against centralized power.
After the murder of Julius Caesar, Cicero documented how the erosion of freedom of speech led Rome away from a thriving republic where vigorous debate was encouraged to a repressive empire ruled by a singular voice. A society where one worldview was the only acceptable one. There were still elections, Cicero noted, but without the freedom to criticize government, choice was but an illusion.
The American founders also leaned on the teachings of the French philosopher Montesquieu, who is credited with the development of the three branches of government. Preventing a consolidation of power was key for preventing tyranny, he warned in his work “The Spirit of the Laws.”
“There is no liberty if the power of judging is not separated from the legislative and executive,” he wrote in 1748.
The danger of media being controlled by a few conglomerates is reflected in the fates of past centralized powers: the fall of the Roman Empire, the breakup of AT&T. The potential harm to innovation is one concern. The restriction on speech is the much greater issue. That’s because if the citizenry has only an illusion of choice, then the people have only an illusion of freedom.
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