
Liberty from All Masters
The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People
- 317 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
"An eye-opening and persuasive defense of robust antitrust enforcement as essential to the core principles of American democracy" ( Publishers Weekly ).
"Very few thinkers in recent years have done more to shift the debate in Washington than Barry Lynn.Ā
InĀ
Liberty from All Masters
, he proves himself as a lyrical theorist and a bold interpreter of history. This book is an elegant summoning of a forgotten tradition that can help the nation usher in a new freedom." āFranklin Foer
Americans are obsessed with liberty, mad about liberty. On any day, we can tune into arguments about how much liberty we need to buy a gun or get an abortion, to marry who we want or adopt the gender we feel. We argue endlessly about liberty from regulation and observation by the state, and proudly rebel against the tyranny of course syllabi and Pandora playlists. Redesign the penny today and the motto would read "You ain't the boss of me."
Yet Americans are only now awakening to what is perhaps the gravest domestic threat to our liberties in a centuryāin the form of an extreme and fast-growing concentration of economic power. Monopolists today control almost every corner of the American economy. The result is not only lower wages and higher prices, hence a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. The result is also a stripping away of our liberty to work how and where we want, to launch and grow the businesses we want, to create the communities and families and lives we want.
The rise of online monopolists such as Google and Amazonādesigned to gather our most intimate secrets and use them to manipulate our personal and group actionsāis making the problem only far worse fast. Not only have these giant corporations captured the ability to manage how we share news and ideas with one another, they increasingly enjoy the power to shape how we move and play and speak and think.
"An examination of our fall into the economic pit crafted by Amazon, Google, et al.āand ideas for how to crawl outā¦. Admonitory, cautionary, and essential." ā Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Frequently asked questions
- Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
- Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Introduction: The Crisis of Liberty
- One: The Oligarchs in the Garden
- Two: Autocracy, Automatic
- Three: The American System of Liberty
- Four: Citizens by Design
- Five: To Democratize the Machine
- Six: The First PageāRedeemed at Last?
- Seven: New Liberties for the Master
- Eight: Other Peopleās Gods
- Nine: The Sword in Your Hand
- Acknowledgments
- Selected Bibliography
- Notes
- Index
- Also by Barry C. Lynn
- About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
- Contents
- Copyright