You read a lot of criticism of big busines such as Big Oil, Big Pharma and now Big Mac. A lot of the historical anti-big business comes out of the early 1900s when there was a small number of big businesses and an equally small number of captains of industry.
That world has changed dramatically in a hundred years. The biggest change comes from the sheer numbers of these businesses. First, if you look at the top 100 companies only a small handful existed a hundred years ago. In fact their entire industries didn’t exist. Even companies like GE look nothing like they did. Their largest business unit is financial services and not manufacturing.
In something like pharaceuticals, you have hundreds of highly competitive companies that often have very little in common. Instead of conspiring in a big kabal, they are more likely trying ways to take market share from each other.
There is also a tremendous amount of transparancy in the companies because they are publicly traded and often owned by large money funds. At the bottom line what these companies really care about is a stable set of rules to play by.
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