Market Power and Consumer Protection: Governing Digital Ecosystems in a Net Positive World
In the late 19th century, John D. Rockefeller built an empire that demonstrated both industrial brilliance and the dangers of unchecked market dominance. Through Standard Oil, Rockefeller controlled nearly 90 percent of America’s refining capacity. By owning the pipelines, refineries, and distribution networks, he set prices at will, dictated terms to competitors, and reshaped the energy landscape. Regulators eventually responded, dismantling his monopoly in 1911 through antitrust action. Rockefeller’s empire was visible and measurable. One could track barrels of oil, map pipelines, and calculate market share with precision.
Today’s most powerful enterprises no longer traffic in barrels or steel rails. They traffic in data, platforms, and algorithms. Their infrastructure is invisible, distributed, and woven into daily life. Their influence is harder to quantify, and far more pervasive. Where Rockefeller’s market power was dismantled with court orders and steel wrenches, today’s digital giants cannot be disassembled so neatly. Their value lies in networks, data flows, and algorithmic ecosystems that do not obey the logic of industrial-age antitrust tools.
Paul Polman and Andrew Winston, in Net Positive, call for businesses to become forces for good: to give more to society than they take, and to create long-term value rather than extract short-term gain. Yet the gravitational pull of market power remains. Enterprises seek dominance, not merely to outcompete rivals but because dominant positions allow them to capture value far beyond what can be directly measured.
This raises urgent questions for policymakers:
- What does it mean for consumer rights when dominance is systemic rather than transactional?
- How does privacy erode when “consent” becomes a formality in markets with no real alternatives?
- What role should regulators play in overseeing enterprises whose power is global, algorithmic, and deeply embedded in modern life?
From Industrial Trusts to Digital Ecosystems
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil built power through physical control of refineries, pipelines, storage, and transport. Regulators responded with structural remedies by breaking companies apart, imposing price caps, and restricting mergers.
Digital power behaves differently.
- Data-Driven Dominance: Tech platforms accumulate massive amounts of user data, refining algorithms that make services smarter and more indispensable.
- Ecosystem Lock-In: Platforms such as Google, Meta, Amazon, Tencent, or Apple are not just products; they are marketplaces, payment rails, and identity layers. Opting out is rarely an option.
- Invisible Influence: Rather than raising visible prices, digital giants distort markets in subtler ways by shaping what consumers see, how they behave, and even how entire industries evolve.
Breaking up a search engine or a social platform does not necessarily restore competition when its value lies in its network rather than its physical assets.
Are Market Powers Inherently Bad?
Market power, by itself, is not harmful. In many cases, it is the natural reward for innovation, efficiency, and superior service. Rockefeller’s efficiencies lowered the price of kerosene (kerosene was the most valuable petroleum product) even as Standard Oil dominated the industry. Similarly, today’s digital platforms provide global connectivity, reduce transaction costs, and enable entirely new industries to emerge.
The real question is not whether power exists but how it is exercised. Constructive market power invests in infrastructure, drives innovation, and delivers broad benefits. Destructive market power extracts value without accountability, undermines consumer rights, and blocks fair competition.
The lesson from Net Positive is that enterprises must give more than they take. Market leaders can become stewards of ecosystems, not just their beneficiaries by creating value for society while remaining profitable. Regulators should avoid blunt punishment of scale and focus instead on ensuring that power is exercised responsibly, transparently, and sustainably.
Consumer Rights in the Age of Systemic Power
Traditional consumer protection assumes that if buyers are well informed and competition is strong, markets will self-correct. But systemic digital dominance undermines these assumptions.
- Transparency breaks down: Consumers cannot meaningfully track how their data is collected, combined, or sold.
- Consent becomes illusory: Agreeing to terms is rarely a real choice if declining access means exclusion from essential services.
- Harms are collective, not individual: When dominant platforms mishandle data or amplify harmful content, millions are affected – not only the individual users.
Privacy and Consent Under Strain
Consent has long been the cornerstone of privacy regulation. In principle, consumers decide how their personal information is used. In practice, this principle collapses under modern digital realities.
- Privacy policies are excessively long and incomprehensible.
- Interfaces are designed to steer people toward maximum data sharing.
- Even when individuals opt out, dominant platforms can infer sensitive information from behavioral patterns and social networks.
Privacy is no longer merely a personal right. It has become a collective asset and a public good that demands systemic protection. This calls for privacy-by-design standards, automated consent tools, and accountability mechanisms embedded directly into digital infrastructure.
Lessons from Rockefeller: The Evolution of Regulatory Thinking
Rockefeller’s dominance triggered a regulatory response rooted in antitrust law by breaking up monopolies to restore competition. But this approach, appropriate for industrial markets, is insufficient for digital ecosystems.
- Market share is difficult to define. What is the “market” for a platform like Google or WeChat — advertising, messaging, payments, cloud services, or all of the above?
- Power is non-linear. Network effects make dominance self-reinforcing, so simply reducing market share does not restore competitive balance.
- Global reach exceeds national jurisdiction. No single regulator can police enterprises operating seamlessly across borders.
Simply put, yesterday’s trust-busting tools cannot govern today’s trust-based ecosystems.
What Regulators Must Do
Modern oversight should focus less on dismantling companies and more on governing ecosystems. This requires:
- Integrated Regulation: Competition authorities, data protection agencies, and consumer commissions must collaborate rather than act in isolation.
- Real-Time Monitoring: Algorithmic systems evolve faster than traditional enforcement cycles. Regulators need continuous audit capabilities to detect systemic risks before they manifest.
- Technical Standards: Privacy-by-default settings, algorithmic transparency protocols, and data portability requirements should be mandated by law, not left to voluntary commitments.
- Investment-Conscious Governance: Regulations must protect consumers without discouraging investment in digital infrastructure and innovation.
- International Coordination: Because dominant enterprises operate across jurisdictions, oversight must be globally aligned.
The goal is not to break market power but to channel it to ensure that scale is aligned with responsibility.
Toward a Net Positive Digital Economy
Market power is not inherently harmful. Rockefeller’s efficiencies lowered oil prices even as his dominance invited scrutiny. Similarly, today’s digital enterprises drive innovation, reduce transaction costs, and enable global connectivity at unprecedented scale. But unchecked power corrodes trust, erodes privacy, and weakens the bargaining position of individuals and smaller firms.
To align digital market power with public good, policymakers must:
- Reframe consent as enforceable control through interoperable privacy frameworks.
- Treat privacy as a public good, safeguarded by systemic oversight.
- Move from reactive enforcement to anticipatory regulation, adapting governance to emerging risks.
- Align corporate scale with responsibility, embedding the Net Positive ethos into law and governance.
Governing Power, Not Just Markets
The industrial age showed that concentrated power could distort prices and markets. The digital age reveals that power can distort information, behavior, and rights themselves. Where Rockefeller’s pipelines required antitrust remedies, today’s digital pipelines require ecosystem governance, algorithmic accountability, and global cooperation.
If the 20th century was about breaking up monopolies, the 21st century is about governing digital ecosystems. In a truly net positive economy, market power is not feared because it is harnessed responsibly, transparently, and for the collective good.
