This is the Tom Hartman Program.

This is the Tom Hartman Program.

My name is Jefferson Smith.

It's an honor to be with you.

A hundred years ago, starting really almost 130 years ago.

Some would say starting about 150 years ago with the wrapping up of the Civil War. We had a mammoth transition of the American economy,

moving from an agrarian era to industrial era. Economic power moving from the working farm to the

working city. And during that period of transition you had significant

disruptions in democratic systems and in economic systems.

You had vast wealth conglomerated within trusts.

Standard Oil, Enter Carnegie selling Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan, making U.S. Steel. In about 1890, the country recognized that this organization of economic power recognized that the

railroads that were being built conglomerating among too few owners.

We're making it less likely for people to be able to afford what they needed,

less likely for other people to enter the marketplace,

and less likely for there to be a democracy.

Justice Brandeis taught us that you can have vast disparities of wealth or you can have democracy but you can't have both.

Writers in Europe wrote about the means of production in, a revolution during this period,

over corrected and created tyranny of a different sort.

We are now entering into a new era.

For the last, I don't know, 20 or 30 years,

we have been transitioning from an industrial era

into an information age and the companies that are

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