Competition by Design

Free enterprise — with a real definition of “free”

We are pro-market. But a market is only free when it is actually competitive. Concentration is not success; often it is just the power to bully everyone smaller. So New Republic proposes a clear, testable standard:

A sector qualifies for free enterprise when it is served by at least five firms, none holding more than 20% market share.

Below that bar, a market is presumed anti-competitive — a default monopoly or oligopoly. A dominant firm can rebut the presumption with evidence that it is not using its size against smaller competitors and that consumers benefit. Absent that evidence of benevolence, scale is treated for what it too often is: the ability to bully smaller firms.

What this delivers

• Foster small business and innovation. Real competition is the soil that startups and inventors grow in. Break up bottlenecks; lower the barriers a giant builds to keep challengers out.
• A rebuttable presumption, not a witch hunt. Big isn’t automatically bad. But big carries the burden of proof that it is playing fair.
• Competing non-profits where markets can’t sustain five firms. Where a sector can’t support genuine competition, we favor competing non-profit providers — organizations measured against one another (think collegiate competition) in as many sectors as possible — rather than a single entrenched incumbent, public or private.

The principle is consistent: competition keeps power honest. When the market can provide it, let the market. When it can’t, manufacture it through rival non-profits.

The same power, applied

This anti-monopoly power isn’t confined to ordinary markets. We turn it on the two markets that decide the future: the marketplace of political speech — breaking up the Super PACs in Clean Money — and the market for computation itself — breaking up the compute trust in the Age of AI.