Matthew Yglesias recently published a sharp-edged essay arguing that all the talk about “corporate power” and the need to rein it in amounts to little more than empty sloganeering. If we cannot define corporate power precisely—let alone measure it—then we cannot say with any confidence which policies expand it and which restrain it. Politics in this area, he suggests, collapses into emotionalism and marketing.
Yglesias is right about one important thing. A large share of what passes for criticism of corporations, or campaigns against them, is in fact nothing more than advertising by rival corporations. That is hardly surprising. If you want to manipulate someone effectively, a time-tested trick is to convince him that he is already being manipulated—and that you alone can set him free. This method is ancient.
But none of this implies that the problem of corporate power does not exist. Still less does it mean that the problem is trivial. And the claim that it cannot be measured strikes me as unconvincing. On the contrary, the following criteria suggest themselves:
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The share of a country’s economy accounted for by multinational corporations.
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The share of multinational corporations within individual market sectors.
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The percentage of the workforce employed by multinational corporations.
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The profit margins earned by multinational corporations (relative to local firms).
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The proportion of total advertising and promotional spending originating with large corporations.
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Whether regulations are increasingly written in ways that small firms struggle to comply with while large corporations can absorb the costs with ease.
Tracked year by year, such measures would allow us to judge whether a country is becoming more thoroughly owned and governed by corporations—or whether their influence is, in fact, receding.
And one final question suggests itself: is this not precisely the kind of empirical assessment that antitrust authorities are supposed to be conducting?