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White House with "stop" barrier in front

If Trump wins, should Democrats turn over the keys to the White House?

Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs on stage

Luke Combs, politics and healing our nation's divide

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The 12 worst House districts: Experts label gerrymandering's dirty dozen

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Florida top court ruling on felon voting is hardly the final word

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Governance & Legislation

What would really happen if Trump wins?

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Mobile phone listing Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft

Like black holes, the largest companies have a reach seemingly exceeds human capabilities, writes Frazier.

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Corporate black holes prevent fair play in the U.S. economy

Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University and a Tarbell fellow.

NASA defines a black hole as “a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out.” This celestial abnormality can even distort space-time. Though invisible to the human eye, a black hole is detectable by the extent to which everything around it is morphed to its will.

The same is true of our biggest corporations. The total reach of companies like Amazon, Meta and Google seemingly exceeds human capabilities. Yet, the extent to which our laws, culture and daily lives revolve around these corporate black holes reveals a hard truth: Fair play does not characterize our economy. The best ideas may never come to fruition and the smartest people may never realize their potential — they lack the escape velocity necessary to operate beyond the pull of the black holes.

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Young adults shopping for clothes

Members of Gen Z consume at an unsustainable rate: clothes, makeup, technology and every other imaginable product.

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Mass consumerism and the hypocrisy of Gen Z

Pruthi is a professor of entrepreneurship at San Jose State University, where she is a co-founder and director ofHonorsX, and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project. Kharbanda is a senior at Presentation High School in San Jose, Calif.

California lawmakers recently approved two bills banning grocery and convenience stores statewide from offering customers reusable plastic bags. These bills are the next step in combating plastic waste, but what about the waste from mass consumerism that has come to pervade our lives?

Through the past decades, we have been trained to shop, purchase and consume products to solve our problems. While mending old clothing or refurbishing used goods have become things of the past, new products that are ubiquitously promoted are cramming our stores, screens, mailboxes and nearly every aspect of our lives.

Growing up in the digital age, Gen Z is the prime target for this consumerist culture. Their lives are catered toward finding flaws with what they currently own and buying the next best thing. In the process, our world lays waste, proving the disastrous effects of those spending habits.

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Iceberg hiding money below
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The hidden iceberg: Why corporate treasury spending matters

Freed is president and co-founder of the Center for Political Accountability.

Too much media coverage and other political analyses focus on contributions by corporate political action committees but overlook the serious consequences of political contributions made directly from corporate treasury funds.

In talks with corporate executives, the default too often is almost exclusively on company political engagement through its PAC. This ignores what one political scientist has likened to an iceberg of spending, where disclosure is not required (and hence is “dark money”) or is partial (only by the recipient, not the donor) and totals are much greater than the amounts allowed for PAC spending.

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hand reaching out over an American flag
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Big Philanthropy to the rescue? Think again.

Cain has served in leadership roles at numerous foundations, nonprofits and for-profit corporations. He was a founding partner of American Philanthropic.

As the media and elites across America take up a fight to “save democracy,” Big Philanthropy is casting itself in the role of superhero. Since 2011, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy reports, some $5.7 billion has gone to programs supporting U.S. democracy, with grant announcements that often depict foundations as stepping up to forestall a doomsday.

The Carnegie Corporation, warning of a “fragility of our democracy ... unimaginable just a few years ago,” has pledged to strengthen social cohesion and combat polarization. The MacArthur Foundation is partnering with Carnegie and the Ford and Knight foundations, among others, in the $500 million Press Forward effort to “address the crisis in local news.” As Knight president Alberto Ibargüen put it to the New York Times: “There is a new understanding of the importance of information in the management of community, in the management of democracy in America.”

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