New America Policy Papers: 2012

In some respects, America’s market for beer has never looked healthier. Where fewer than a hundred brewers operated a generation ago, we now can count more than 2,000, producing a mind-boggling variety of beers. Yet just below this drinkers’ paradise, we see a market that has never been more closed. Two giant firms — Anheuser-Busch Inbev and MillerCoors — now control some 90 percent of production. At the same time, a few giant retailers — led by Costco — are rolling up control over sales. This concentration is already diminishing real variety in much of the country.

The last thirty years of American history have witnessed, at least rhetorically, a battle over the size of government. Yet that is not what the history books will say the next thirty years of American politics were about. With the frontiers of the state roughly fixed, the issues that will dominate American politics going forward will concern the complexity of government, rather than its sheer size.

The latest battle over who governs the Internet is taking place in Dubai this week. As the world’s governments meet at the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT), hosted by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), it is already clear that the Internet governance system is under pressure. The legitimacy of this governance system and the Internet’s future success will be affected by these debates.

The fundamental ideological conflict surrounding the Welfare State in the U.S. is no longer over the scope of government, but instead how the government carries out its responsibilities and delivers services. The conservative and neoliberal vision is one of a government that provides a comparable range of benefits as conventional liberals, but rather than designing and delivering the services directly, it provides coupons for citizens.