The Tea Party movement is a protest against big government spending, high taxation and over-regulation. You might say that the Internet is a protest against dominance of news and commentary by Big Media.
But there are other oppressive monopolies that are being challenged. And still other challenges are coming.
For example, there is rumbling against the largely unchecked power of large government unions that manage to grow and prosper as the private sector shrinks--and also escape much of the scrutiny that accompanies individuals' and businesses' forays into politics.
There is the growing frustration with a higher education monopoly. As the public finds out about sweetheart deals for tenured faculty and bureaucracy, and costs for students (and parents) rocket upwards, a higher education bubble is developing.
People are beginning to demand accountability for the high cost of legal bills at big law firms. It's all very jolly to joke about the litigious nature of American life and to tut-tut the lack of tort reform. My lawyer friends may try to strangle me for saying it, but legal expenses at some point get out of control and damage commerce rather than assist it.
We see two other bigness phenomena that are perhaps linked and also injurious. One is the power of big foundations that over-whelm civil society with left wing "studies" (suitable for NPR grist) and action teams. As Milton Friedman said of government funded activities, it is fortunate that these big guys often are inefficient. Think what would happen if they really got their money's worth.
And then there is what I suspect is a ballooning of non-profits generally. If one views non-profits as a place to serve humanity rather than to wax rich, one does sometimes become uncomfortable at seeing how tax-deductibility is exploited for personal ends. The government itself seems to encourage excess. The whole idea of non-proift gets stretched. As taxes on business go up, expect to see more and more entrepreneurs rebrand themselves as charities to avoid the bite of Uncle Sam. The cure is not more IRS pursuits, however, but lower taxes and regulation on new businesses--and more non-profit directors and trustees who hold charitable leaders to account. Even those of us in the non-profit sector need to ask: how many non-profits can society support?
Finally, there is Big Science and its handmaiden, huge federal funding. Among other things, it is leading to an emphasis on consensus science--read, safe studies coming to safe conclusions--and funding for well-established scientists rather than younger ones. That often is path to stagnation. Scott Walter of Philanthropy Daily has an excellent account of this latter development and reminds of the warning of the late philosopher Robert Nisbet:
"Probably more scientists have been adversely affected - estopped altogether from a given line of research, guided, shaped, propelled, decelerated, forced into nonpublication, secrecy, turned down for funds or promotion, and barred from access to laboratory space or archives - because of defiance of conventional wisdom in America since World War II . . . than existed in the whole of the world in Galileo's day."
So all you big guys, stop trying to help us. We can't help feeling sometimes that you are just trying to help yourselves.
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