[pessimizer]

> Antitrust efforts against Standard Oil did not prevent the downstream effects of the business model, i.e., ecological disaster.

Even worse, it was seminal liberal makework. The owners of Standard Oil were saw their holdings double in value as it was broken up, and were now the owners of the resultant entities. It was money and effort burned for no purpose other than to support the careers of the kind of "progressives" that don't have a class-based critique or worker orientation. It was a pseudo-technocratic solution that didn't even really have a clear theory about how it would solve the problems that the size and market control of Standard Oil had raised.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tarbell

When it comes to surveillance, I'm not sure that anything short of a Butlerian Jihad can stop this train. Limiting government surveillance powers just allows them to farm out surveillance to favored companies. Breaking up those favored companies just makes trying to stop the aggregation a game of whack-a-mole that no one would have the authority or interest to play.

We need to create enforceable rights based on values that are new. But the people who profit from surveillance will be powerful enough, if they aren't already, to destroy or silence any voice that endangers their business model.

[creato]

You seem to think an antitrust enforcement is a shortcut to achieving progressive goals. It isn't. If anything, antitrust enforcement is an attempt to save market capitalism from itself.