Net Neutrality's Death Could Spark Populist Revolt

With echoes of the Gilded Age, Washington coddles moneyed, monopolistic internet barons.

In the Gilded Age, wrenching economic and technological change hardened life for the vast majority of Americans while an elite few prospered. Innovators like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt disrupted old industries, creating news ones, and cemented their fortunes via government-approved monopolies. The most pernicious of these were railroad trusts.

In our times, wrenching economic and technological change hardens life for the vast majority of Americans while an elite few prosper. Innovators like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg disrupt old industries, create news ones and ….

We know how the Gilded Age ended – in a populist uprising against monopolies, sparked by muckraking journalists and harnessed by a trust-busting president named Teddy Roosevelt. Who will be our era's T.R.? Well, a leader needs a cause. A better question might be, what will be the modern-day trust – a force so destructive and distant and deeply engrained that a sleepy public is stirred to revolt?...