Back in 1911, Standard Oil, was dissolved into 33 separate companies, of which, in today’s world we still have the existence as well as the robustness of those so separately created, as in the names of Exxon, Chevron, and Texaco, all of which are behemoths in their own right. At the time that Standard Oil, was forced to dissolve itself, in conformance with the Sherman Antitrust Act, the market capitalization of Standard Oil (which is essentially the total value of its outstanding common shares) was $100,450,000,000. However, inflation adjusted to today’s currency of 2023, would make the market capitalization of Standard Oil at the time of its breakup to be an astonishing $3,253,215,994,000.
While there are currently no United States corporations with the market capitalization amount of $3.25 trillion, it has to be noted that Apple, as of November, 2023, has a market capitalization of approximately $2.95 trillion, or nearly $3 trillion, and Microsoft is not far behind at $2.748 trillion. Yet, we hear virtually nothing about the imminent breakup of either of these massive hi-tech companies, as if then all is well, when surely it is not. The fact of the matter is that when corporations are permitted to buy out competitors, or merge with other associated companies in order to assure their continual growth, without the United States governmental regulators doing much of anything to preclude such, then there isn’t much that these extremely cash-rich mega corporations, can’t simply purchase then at their own whim. This should not be considered to be a good thing, for whenever businesses pretty much own a market segment, then those business have an unfair advantage over all that they interact with, to the detriment of the general public.
Further to the point, all those that decry the strength, power, and influence of those that are individual billionaires, have got to realize, that artificial creations of the state, which are corporations, of which, these corporations, have sales in not only the multi-billions, but profits of multi-billions, year after year, and therefore cash assets of multi-billions, which are relentlessly growing, are going to, because of all this money, be able to exert an undue influence upon all those governmental officials and institutions that they interact with, including, of course, legislative acts and laws, so being imposed or ignored.
It is an absolute fact that size matters, and the greater the size of a given entity, the more that it matters, so that, for those that are the stockholders of mega-corporations such as Apple or Microsoft, they will not readily accept anything other than a robust return upon their investment in those corporations, and the devil be damned. This thus means what it so implies, that massive corporations, are almost compelled to do whatever that they have to do in order to maintain their growth and their profits, till the end of time. So then, it would be naïve to believe, that huge corporations, will somehow, make it their point to always do the right thing by their people or by their country, when the truth of the matter is, that their god is really the relentless pursuit of money, and profit, above all.