In January, the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice jointly announced a request for public comment on how the two agencies could modernize antitrust enforcement against mergers. Just that step alone was transformative. For the past four decades, the general public has not been brought into policy debates about corporate power; in fact, elite economists actively plotted to keep them out, by arbitrarily raising the standards for challenging mergers. Government agencies simply asking ordinary people to explain how monopolies have caused them harm was a paradigm shift.

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Part of it is due to the new leadership at the agencies. But the American Economic Liberties Project, a D.C.-based anti-monopoly organization, has also solicited comments from the public, bringing an obscure process to the grassroots level. That it has taken off suggests a broad-based desire to do something about monopoly power.