Tim Sweeney Quotes

There is so much we don't know about Facebook. We know we have a corporate monopoly that has repeated serious violations that are threatening our democracy.

Not surprisingly, corporate monopoly leads to political power. It has always been thus. The giant railroads of the 19th century tried to bully and buy entire legislatures, including the U.S. Congress. Today, Major League Baseball—exempt from antitrust laws—and a cohort of megacorporations such as Delta and Coca-Cola are trying to order about states on election integrity, while Google, Facebook and Twitter decide which citizens may say what in the public square. Nike lectures the nation on social justice while it is suspected of profiting from forced labor overseas, as the Congressional-Executive Commission on China noted in its March 2020 report. Welcome to the woke economy, led by concentrated woke capital. Do as these companies say or face cancellation.

The C.E.O. of Google doesn't look like a Dick Cheney World Domination sort whom we should worry about as Google ogles our houses, our oceans, our foibles, our movements and our tastes.

Today, we have our own concentrations of economic power. Instead of Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, the Union Pacific Railroad, and J. P. Morgan and Company, we have Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.

The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much. There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy.

The fossil fuel industry commands outsize sway over U.S. politics, markets, and democracy. I knew these companies were formidable, but when I served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, I got a close up view of how the industry disregards government safeguards.

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

The power of groups of men organized by incorporation ... or of small knots of rich men acting in combination has developed with unexpected strength in unexpected ways, overshadowing individuals and even communities, and showing that the very freedom of association which men sought to secure by law when they were threatened by the violence of the potentates may, under the shelter of law, ripen into a new form of tyranny.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of the country.

The great issue before the American people today is the control of Government and industry by private monopoly.

Free markets were supposed to lead to free societies. Instead, today’s supercharged global economy is eroding the power of the people in democracies around the globe. Welcome to a world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple are among the most powerful monopolies in the history of humanity. So, the problem is, is that they have tremendous ability to shape the way that we think, the way that we filter the world, the way that we absorb culture. And if they were just companies, maybe we shouldn't be so concerned about them, but they play an incredibly vital role in the health of our democracy.

While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government.

Corporations are a good thing. But corporations should not be running our government... They have driven the American economy since its founding, and the prosperity of our country is largely dependent on the free operation of corporations. But some corporations don't want free markets, and they don't want democracy. They want profits.

There seems to be something sacrosanct about big business.

The issue is whether the trusts or the people shall rule …whether the Railroad [Louisville & Nashville Railroad] is the servant or the master of the people.

… a union of power in the same hands over industry, commerce and finance, with a resulting power over public affairs.

Any railroad corporation has infinitely more influence in any department of government than all the human beings that live in the territory that the railroad traverses.

The Republican Party is the open and avowed handmaiden of the trusts.

The time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads;

… the rules of big business … have superseded the teachings of our parents and are reducible to a simple maxim: Get a monopoly; let Society work for you: and remember that the best of all business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation”

He [President Dwight D. Eisenhower] came under enormous pressure to authorize the purchase of expensive military systems, often from retired officers who had joined corporate boards.

Perhaps it’ll surprise you but we socialists don’t agree with your rebate agony. The quicker the concentration of wealth is completed the better it suits us…. The point that all you reforming folks seem to miss is that you are locking the stable doors after the horse is gone. The trusts are formed. The big shipper has got the money. Also, with the money he has bought the government.

You know that big government doesn't hurt big corporations. They've got the best lawyers and accountants in the world. You know who gets destroyed by big government? It's the little guys.

Ultimately, I don't think even a five-company platform oligopoly is good for consumer tech. By its very nature, it handicaps independent companies with new ideas. But it will end one day. I just don't know when.