American thought and politics will be at the mercy of those who operate these stations.

If placed in the hands of a single selfish group, then we'll be to those who dare to differ with them.

A quick reminder that we have launched our two-in-one winter fund razor to raise funds for my

upcoming climate-ride event, raising money to fight against climate change, probably goes without saying.

Alongside a membership drive, that's to support the show and we are including incentives like

t-shirts and hoodies that we only make available during fund razors. So check out the campaign at

bestfulleft.com slash winter 17. Of course, you'll also find a big obvious banner right on our homepage

or you can just click the link right in the show notes on the device you're using. And now welcome

to the award-winning bestfulf podcast with us today from We The Podcast, The Bradcast,

The Ralph Nader Radio Hour, The Larflanders Show, Thinking Cap, and The Tom Hartman Program.

This week we're talking about market concentration, how huge corporations control entire sectors

of our economy without having to compete and why it matters to you. Yes, you.

You know, back in the old days, if two or three companies controlled an entire industry,

we understood that this would make it hard for small businesses to break into the market.

It would make it difficult on competition and even consumer choice. We wrote any trust laws

that restricted corporations for cornering the market and trying to engage in anti-competitive

behavior using their size to keep out the competition, stop choice, and limit people's opportunity.

These antitrust laws are still on the books and are among the strongest antitrust and anti-monopoly

laws in the world. Then in the early 1980s, our government decided to stop enforcing anti-monopoly laws.

From that point forward, we saw mergers that consolidated entire industries into the hands of a few.

As a result, our economy is ruled by monopoly power. There is only a handful of big banks to

control our entire financial sector. Our beverage industry is controlled by a few massive corporations.

...