Private companies are getting scary. Did you hear about Amazon's contract with the NSA to design a cloud system for all their mission intelligence? It's online now. Apparently it connects like all of the federal agencies to a cloud system that enables queries, and I'd be willing to bet that Amazon can see those queries. I mean, Amazon is so powerful, who is really working for who in that situation?
I did see that, and you're right. Why we haven't started anti-trust, monopoly busting actions against all these zillionaires by now can only be traced back to the fact that by now, they own the government. We lost our country wile we weren't paying attention.
Its sad, but I think we lost this country before most of us were born. Lobbying is actually protected under the first amendment (not the bribery, but the right to petition government), but it was never a significant issue until the federal government centralized so much power over the economy. In the late 1800's most lobbying was was done at the state level, and the number of politicians involved made it far less practical to pay everyone off. If the power has never been centralized at the federal level, companies would probably never have gained enough sway over the law to build themselves into the monoliths of commerce we see today.
And indeed, if antitrust laws had been applied properly along the way, it would have slowed the growth of influence of the major corporations significantly.
True. It doesn't really matter though. Technology is outpacing all law and you need to worry as much, if not more about all these damn private companies that have turned our lives into nothing more than data they can sell. No one seems to even care as long as they can FB their buddies.