Posts
What Breaks the Cycle
Three Attempts. One Lesson. One Possibility.
THE ENDLESS FRONTIER: Public Money, Private Empires — Post 8 (Final) | February 2026
"Different Frontier. Same Extraction. Since 1850."
Post 1: The Pattern — 200 years, one mechanism
Post 2: The Railroad Theft — 175 million acres, the birth of extraction
Post 3: The Oil Extraction — The 1872 law still giving away public resources today
Post 4: The Internet Heist — DARPA built it, the CIA funded Google, $11 trillion captured
Post 5: The Defense Machine — The word Eisenhower removed, 70 years of cost-plus
Post 6: The Space Grab — The biggest extraction in human history, happening now
Post 7: The Same Players — Rockefeller money in Apple. Carnegie money in LinkedIn. One chain, 160 years.
Post 8: What Breaks the Cycle ← YOU ARE HERE — FINAL POST
Attempt 1: Trust-Busting (1890-1914) — The Noble Failure
The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) was the first federal attempt to break the cycle. Its verdict, delivered by the courts themselves, was swift and devastating.
Five years after passage, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. E.C. Knight Company (1895) that the American Sugar Refining Company — which controlled 98% of sugar refining in the United States — had not violated the Sherman Act. The Court drew a distinction between "commerce" (covered by the Act) and "manufacturing" (not covered). A company could monopolize production of an entire industry and remain legal as long as the monopoly was in manufacturing, not trade.
This distinction was, in practice, incoherent. But it was the law for nearly a decade.
Theodore Roosevelt finally enforced the Sherman Act with genuine commitment starting in 1902. He took on Northern Securities (J.P. Morgan's railroad holding company) and won. He filed 44 antitrust cases in his presidency. His successor William Howard Taft filed 90 more. The era of trust-busting was real.
But examine what trust-busting actually did:
Standard Oil (1911): Broken into 39 companies. Rockefeller owned shares in all of them. His fortune — already the largest in American history — increased after the breakup as the successor companies' shares rose. Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Amoco, Sohio: Standard Oil's direct descendants still dominate global oil today, 113 years later.
Northern Securities (1904): J.P. Morgan's railroad holding company dissolved. The underlying railroads remained. The wealth Morgan had accumulated remained. Morgan personally was never charged with anything.
The lesson: Trust-busting addressed the most visible symptom (monopoly control) without changing the underlying mechanism (public funds infrastructure, private captures value). The fortunes were already built. The wealth was already transferred. The successor companies continued operating under the same basic structure.
WHAT IT DID:
• Sherman Act (1890): Passed 51-1 Senate, 242-0 House
• Northern Securities (1904): Broken up (Roosevelt’s first trust-busting victory)
• Standard Oil (1911): Broken into 39 companies
• American Tobacco (1911): Dissolved
• 134 antitrust cases filed (Roosevelt + Taft administrations combined)
WHAT IT DIDN’T DO:
• Rockefeller fortune after Standard Oil breakup: INCREASED (owned all 39 companies)
• Standard Oil successors today: ExxonMobil ($398B revenue), Chevron ($200B revenue)
• General Mining Act 1872: Never reformed (still zero royalties, 153 years later)
• Railroad land grants: Never reclaimed (175 million acres permanently transferred)
• J.P. Morgan: Never charged. Bank continues as JPMorgan Chase, largest U.S. bank.
THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM:
Trust-busting addressed monopoly control (the symptom)
It did not address: public funds → private capture (the mechanism)
It did not reclaim: wealth already accumulated
It did not change: the underlying contract between public and private
ENCYCLOPEDIA.COM VERDICT:
“The Sherman Act was a noble failure.”
THE PATTERN CONTINUED:
Defense contractors (1940s): Same extraction model, new frontier
Silicon Valley (1970s-90s): Same model, internet frontier
Space (2000s-present): Same model, orbital frontier
Trust-busting reorganized the extraction. It didn’t break the cycle.
Attempt 2: The New Deal (1933-1945) — The Closest Thing That Worked
The New Deal was the most successful interruption of the extraction cycle in American history. And it's worth being precise about why — because the lesson is not what most people think it is.
The New Deal didn't break the cycle by attacking the wealthy. It broke the cycle — partially, temporarily — by changing the relationship between public investment and public benefit.
Key mechanisms:
Public ownership of infrastructure: The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) built dams, power plants, and transmission lines — and kept them publicly owned. The electricity they produced went to rural Americans who couldn't get power from private utilities. The public invested and the public owned the result. This is the direct inversion of the frontier extraction model.
Progressive taxation that actually worked: The top marginal income tax rate reached 94% during WWII. This didn't eliminate the wealthy — but it dramatically reduced the rate at which fortunes compounded. The 160-year compounding chain documented in Post 7 was slowed. Not stopped. Slowed.
Labor protection that changed the negotiating balance: The Wagner Act (1935) gave workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. For two decades, the labor share of national income rose. Workers captured more of the value of the infrastructure they were building. The extraction ratio — how much public investment became private wealth — decreased.
Financial regulation that separated extraction from the economy: Glass-Steagall (1933) separated commercial banking from investment banking. This prevented the banks that managed public savings from also being the banks that speculated with capital in new frontier ventures. The J.P. Morgan model — bank finances all frontiers, captures fees at every transfer — was temporarily disrupted.
These four mechanisms together produced the most equal distribution of economic growth in American history: the period from roughly 1945 to 1975, when productivity gains were shared broadly across income levels, and the middle class experienced its fastest expansion.
And then it was dismantled.
Glass-Steagall repealed (1999). Top marginal rates cut from 70% to 28% (Reagan era). Wagner Act weakened through decades of legal and legislative erosion. TVA remains — but as an exception, not a model.
The New Deal worked partially, temporarily — and was systematically reversed over 40 years.
MECHANISM 1: PUBLIC OWNERSHIP (TVA, 1933)
Public builds infrastructure → Public owns result → Public benefits from output
This is the DIRECT INVERSION of the frontier extraction model
Result: Rural electrification that private utilities refused to provide
Status today: TVA still exists (rare exception to extraction model)
MECHANISM 2: PROGRESSIVE TAXATION (94% top rate, WWII)
Dramatically slowed the compounding of extraction fortunes
Didn’t eliminate wealth — reduced compounding rate
Result: Most equal income distribution in American history (1945-1975)
Status today: Top rate 37% (federal). Gilded Age compounding resumed.
MECHANISM 3: LABOR PROTECTION (Wagner Act, 1935)
Workers right to organize → workers capture more value they create
Labor share of national income: Rose for two decades
Result: Middle class expansion, productivity gains broadly shared
Status today: Union membership 10% (vs. 35% peak). Steadily weakened.
MECHANISM 4: FINANCIAL REGULATION (Glass-Steagall, 1933)
Separated commercial banking (public savings) from investment banking (frontier capital)
Disrupted the J.P. Morgan model: one bank finances all frontiers
Result: Reduced financialization of public resources
Status today: Repealed 1999. Full financialization resumed.
THE VERDICT:
New Deal worked PARTIALLY because it changed the mechanism —
not just punished participants.
It was reversed because the mechanism (public → private extraction)
was never eliminated. Only regulated. Regulation can always be undone.
The compounding chain resumed. Faster than before.
Attempt 3: The Antitrust Moments (1998-2001, 2020-2024) — Too Late, Too Small
The third category of attempted interruption: modern antitrust action against tech monopolies.
Microsoft (1998-2001): The Department of Justice sued Microsoft for monopolistic practices — specifically, bundling Internet Explorer with Windows to eliminate Netscape. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered Microsoft broken into two companies. The appeals court reversed the breakup order. Microsoft agreed to a consent decree (mild behavioral restrictions) in 2001. Microsoft's market cap in 2024: $3+ trillion. The antitrust action produced essentially no structural change.
Google, Amazon, Facebook (2020-present): FTC and DOJ filed multiple antitrust cases against major tech platforms. The FTC sued Facebook (2020) for monopolizing social networking — case still working through courts. DOJ sued Google for monopolizing search (2023) — Judge found Google guilty of antitrust violations (2024), remedies phase ongoing. Amazon facing FTC antitrust case.
The Google verdict (2024) is the most significant antitrust ruling since Standard Oil in 1911. A federal judge found that Google had illegally maintained its search monopoly — in part by paying Apple $20 billion per year to be the default search engine on iPhones.
But the remedy is still to be determined. And the pattern from every previous antitrust action suggests: the remedy will address the visible symptom (monopoly maintenance) without changing the underlying mechanism (public funds built Google's algorithm, private company owns it).
Even a forced Google breakup wouldn't reclaim the public investment that built its core technology. The CIA and NSA funded the algorithm. Google owns it. A breakup would produce multiple companies — all still owning the publicly-funded technology with no obligation to compensate the public for it.
ATTEMPT 1: TRUST-BUSTING (1890-1914)
What worked: Broke up some monopolies (Standard Oil, Northern Securities)
What failed: Wealth already accumulated. Successors still dominant 113 years later.
Mechanism unchanged: Public funds infrastructure → private captures value
Verdict: Noble failure
ATTEMPT 2: NEW DEAL (1933-1945)
What worked: Changed the mechanism temporarily (public ownership, progressive tax, labor)
What failed: All four mechanisms systematically reversed over 40 years (1980-present)
Mechanism: Changed, then unchanged
Verdict: Most successful interruption — but not permanent
ATTEMPT 3: MODERN ANTITRUST (1998-2024)
What worked: Google found guilty (2024), FTC cases against Amazon/Meta
What failed: Microsoft consent decree → $3T market cap. Remedy uncertain for Google.
Mechanism unchanged: Even a Google breakup doesn’t reclaim publicly-funded algorithm
Verdict: Too late, remedy addresses symptom not mechanism
THE CONSISTENT LESSON ACROSS ALL THREE:
Addressing participants (prosecute the company, break up the monopoly)
does not change the mechanism (public investment → private capture).
The extraction was already done before the remedy was applied.
The wealth was already accumulated before the court ruled.
The successors continue the extraction under new names.
Only the New Deal — which changed the mechanism itself —
produced lasting change. And it was reversed.
What Would Actually Break the Cycle
This is the hardest section to write — not because the answer is unclear, but because the answer requires acknowledging how unlikely it is at the current moment.
The lesson from 200 years of attempted reform is specific: addressing participants doesn't work. Addressing the mechanism is the only thing that has worked, and even that was reversed.
What would actually change the mechanism:
1. Public royalties on publicly-funded frontier development
Every time public money funds infrastructure that generates private value — space contracts, internet research grants, defense R&D, spectrum allocation — the public should receive a royalty on the value generated.
The model exists: oil and gas companies pay 12.5% royalties on extraction from public land. The same principle applied to space contracts would mean: SpaceX pays 12.5% of its commercial revenue to NASA on all revenues generated using publicly-funded technology.
Applied to tech: Google pays 12.5% of annual ad revenue to a public fund representing the DARPA and NSF investments that built its core technology. Amazon pays 12.5% on AWS revenue. The CIA gets a return on its MDDS investment.
This doesn't stop the extraction. It ensures the public captures some of the value it created. It changes the math from "public pays everything, private gets everything" to "public pays, public gets a return."
2. Genuine public ownership of public infrastructure
The TVA model — applied to the internet, applied to orbital infrastructure, applied to broadband.
If public money builds infrastructure, public retains ownership. Not oversight. Not regulation. Ownership. The ISS should not be decommissioned and replaced by private stations. The ISS — or its successor — should remain publicly owned. The orbital spectrum should remain public commons, not allocated permanently to private monopolies.
This is politically radical in the current environment. It was standard policy in the New Deal era. The distance between those two statements tells you how far the extraction mechanism has advanced.
3. The General Mining Act of 1872 must be reformed — now
This is the most achievable near-term reform. It doesn't require new institutional thinking. It requires applying the same royalty structure that oil and gas pay (12.5%) to hardrock mining.
Congress has tried 37 years and failed. The mining industry lobby has blocked every attempt. But the 2015 Space Act — which replicated the 1872 model for asteroids — shows what's at stake: if we can't reform the 1872 Mining Act after 37 years of trying, we will never reform asteroid mining rights before they matter.
4. Conflict of interest laws that actually apply
The most immediate reform. A senior government employee influencing agencies that award contracts to his own companies should be subject to the same conflict of interest disclosure requirements as a Cabinet secretary. The legal gap that exempted Musk from these requirements should be closed. The revolving door between defense contractors and the Pentagon should have mandatory 5-year cooling-off periods, not 1-2 year ones. DOGE-style advisory roles should require full financial disclosure.
None of this changes the mechanism. But it makes the extraction more visible — and visibility is the prerequisite for reform.
1. PUBLIC ROYALTIES ON PUBLICLY-FUNDED FRONTIER DEVELOPMENT
Model: Oil/gas pays 12.5% royalty on public land extraction
Apply to: Space contracts, internet research, defense R&D, spectrum
Example: SpaceX pays 12.5% of commercial revenue on publicly-funded tech
Example: Google pays royalty on ad revenue built on CIA/NSA-funded algorithm
Effect: Public captures share of value it created. Changes the math.
2. GENUINE PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE
Model: TVA (publicly built, publicly owned, publicly benefited)
Apply to: ISS replacement, orbital spectrum, broadband networks
Principle: If public money builds it, public retains ownership
Current gap: ISS ($150B public) → private replacement (public pays rent)
Required: Political will to own infrastructure, not just regulate it
3. REFORM THE GENERAL MINING ACT OF 1872
Most achievable near-term reform
Apply same 12.5% royalty to hardrock mining as oil/gas
Annual gain to public: $250M-$375M/year (on current extraction)
Prerequisite for space: If we can’t reform 1872 after 37 years, we can’t
reform asteroid mining rights before they matter
4. CONFLICT OF INTEREST LAWS WITH TEETH
Close the legal gap: Senior government employees = same disclosure as Cabinet
Extend revolving door cooling-off: 5 years minimum (not 1-2)
DOGE-style roles: Full financial disclosure required
Effect: Makes extraction more visible. Visibility precedes reform.
THE HONEST ASSESSMENT:
None of these are likely in the current political environment.
All of them have historical precedent (TVA, progressive taxation, royalties).
The distance between “historically established” and “currently possible”
tells you how far the extraction mechanism has advanced.
Why Visibility Matters
This series — THE ENDLESS FRONTIER and its predecessor THE LAND GRAB — operates on a specific theory of change.
Not that writing about something changes it immediately. History doesn't work that way. Ida Tarbell published her 19-part Standard Oil investigation in 1902-1904. The Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in 1911. Seven years. And Rockefeller's wealth still compounded through the breakup.
But visibility is the necessary precondition for every reform that has ever happened.
The railroad land grants were stopped in 1871 — because enough people understood what was happening. The Sherman Act passed 242-0 — because public fury about Gilded Age extraction was high enough that even captured politicians couldn't vote against it. The New Deal happened — because the Depression made the extraction mechanism's failure so visible, so devastating, so undeniable that transformative policy became politically possible.
The current extraction — space, orbital spectrum, asteroid mining rights, DOGE conflicts of interest — is happening in technical language, in regulatory filings, in classified contracts, in financial instruments most people don't understand.
That's not an accident. Opacity is the mechanism's armor. Every frontier's extraction has depended on the public not fully understanding what was happening while it was happening.
In 1862, most Americans didn't understand what a land grant to a railroad company meant for the next 50 years of American wealth distribution. In 1995, most Americans didn't understand what privatizing the internet backbone meant for the next 30 years of tech billionaires. In 2015, almost nobody understood what the Space Act's asteroid mining provision meant for the next century of space resource distribution.
This series is about understanding. Not because understanding alone is sufficient. But because it is necessary. You can't reform what you can't see.
— Senator John Sherman, arguing for the Sherman Antitrust Act, 1890
Senator Sherman understood the pattern in 1890 — railroads, oil, sugar. He named it clearly: a king over the necessaries of life is incompatible with democratic governance.
The frontiers have changed. The necessaries of life have expanded: transportation, energy, information, communications infrastructure, space. The principle Sherman identified remains the same. Democratic governance is incompatible with private monopoly control over the infrastructure that civilization depends on.
That's not an economic argument. It's a political one. And it's the argument that has driven every successful reform in American history — from trust-busting to the New Deal to the brief antitrust moments of the modern era.
The Series: What We Proved
Eight posts. Two series. Hundreds of primary sources. Here is what the documents prove:
One mechanism, 200 years: Public identifies frontier, funds infrastructure, private captures value, new billionaires emerge, wealth compounds to next frontier, repeat. Documented from 1850 to 2025.
The same capital, compounding: Rockefeller oil money → Venrock → Apple. Carnegie steel money → Bessemer Venture Partners → LinkedIn, Pinterest. J.P. Morgan's railroad bank → JPMorgan Chase → Google IPO → SpaceX debt. Not the same individuals — the same accumulated capital, flowing from one frontier to the next for 160 years.
The scale escalation is real: Railroad land grants = 10% of the United States. Internet privatization = $11 trillion in private market value. Space extraction = the solar system. Each frontier is larger than the last by orders of magnitude.
The 1872 Mining Act is still law: This is not a historical scandal. $2-3 billion extracted from public land every year. Zero royalties. For 153 years. And the 2015 Space Act copies it for asteroids.
The CIA funded Google: The intelligence community's MDDS program funded Sergey Brin and Larry Page's Stanford research. The principal investigator confirmed in writing: Google's core technology was "partially supported by this grant." Google denied it. The documents show otherwise.
Eisenhower removed "congressional" from his famous warning: He knew Congress was the third leg of the military-industrial-congressional complex. He removed the word because "it was not fitting for a President to criticize Congress." His original phrase was more accurate.
The Crédit Mobilier model is still operating: Thomas Durant invented the stadium authority scam in 1864 — public entity holds debt, private entity captures all value. NFL owners used the same structure in 2016. SpaceX's ISS deorbit contract is the same structure applied to orbital infrastructure.
The contractor is now the government: For the first time in 200 years of frontier extraction, the primary beneficiary of public contracts holds direct influence over the agencies that award them. The revolving door has become one door.
THE MECHANISM (200 years, documented):
Public funds → private captures → new billionaires → wealth compounds → next frontier
Evidence: Congressional records, court documents, financial genealogies, company filings
THE SAME CAPITAL (160 years, traced):
Rockefeller → Venrock → Apple
Carnegie → Bessemer → LinkedIn, Pinterest, Shopify
J.P. Morgan → JPMorgan Chase → Google IPO → SpaceX debt
Evidence: Steve Blank’s documented Silicon Valley history, financial records
THE SCALE ESCALATION:
Railroads: 175M acres (10% U.S.) → Internet: $11T → Space: Solar system
Evidence: Congressional land grant records, market cap data, NASA budget history
THE ONGOING LAWS:
General Mining Act 1872: Still giving away public resources. $2-3B/year. $0 royalties.
Space Act 2015: Copies 1872 model for asteroids. Zero royalties.
Evidence: U.S. Department of Interior 2022 testimony to Congress
THE CIA-GOOGLE CONNECTION:
MDDS program (1993) → Stanford grants → Brin and Page → Google
Principal investigator: “Core technology was partially supported by this grant”
DARPA Wikipedia: Lists Google as direct result of ARPA/DARPA funding
Evidence: Quartz investigation (Jeff Nesbit), DARPA documentation
THE EISENHOWER SUPPRESSED WORD:
Original draft: “military-industrial-congressional complex”
Final speech: “military-industrial complex”
His reason: “Not fitting for a President to criticize Congress”
Evidence: Eisenhower Presidential Library archives, January 7, 1961 draft
THE CRÉDIT MOBILIER MODEL STILL OPERATING:
1864: Durant hires himself to build the railroad. Public entity bankrupt. Private gets rich.
2016: Stadium Authority holds debt. Raiders control $2B+ asset for $1.
2025: ISS ($150B public) → SpaceX deorbit → private replacement → public pays rent.
Evidence: Historical financial records, bond documents, NASA contracts
THE CURRENT MOMENT:
Contractor (SpaceX, $38B in contracts) → runs DOGE →
influences agencies that award SpaceX contracts →
not required to disclose conflicts of interest
Evidence: Scripps News investigation, Project on Government Oversight
The Hardest Truth
The hardest truth in this series is not about the extraction. It's about the reform.
Every successful reform in American history — trust-busting, New Deal, antitrust — happened because the extraction became so visible, so damaging, so undeniable that political action became unavoidable. The Progressive Era happened after decades of documented railroad abuse. The New Deal happened after the Great Depression made the failure of Gilded Age capitalism catastrophically obvious. The Sherman Act passed unanimously because the public had seen enough of Standard Oil and Vanderbilt's railroad monopolies.
The current moment is different in one critical way: the extraction is happening at a scale and speed that is, for most people, invisible. Orbital slots. Radio spectrum allocation. Asteroid mining rights. MDDS grants to Stanford graduate students. ISS decommissioning contracts. These are not kitchen-table conversations. They are regulatory filings and technical specifications and classified contract details.
The opacity is not accidental. Complexity is the mechanism's most effective defense. If you can't explain what an orbital slot is, you can't be angry that one company is reserving thousands of them from the public commons.
The series you've read is an attempt to translate the technical into the visible. Not to manufacture outrage — the facts generate their own reaction when understood. But to make the mechanism visible enough that the people who might reform it can see what they're reforming.
Senator Sherman in 1890 understood that a king over the necessaries of life is incompatible with democracy. The necessaries of life in 2026 include orbital communications, AI infrastructure, broadband internet, space transport. The principle is the same. The scale has changed.
Visibility is not sufficient. But it is necessary. And it is where every successful reform in American history began.
ORIGIN:
This series began with a question asked during our NFL extraction investigation (THE LAND GRAB, 8 posts, $60B+ documented): “Is it possible that all of these are connected? By the same players?” The question was intuition. The research confirmed it with documents.
WHAT WE SOURCED:
Post 1: Cambridge University Press (railroad pattern), Washington Post (SpaceX $38B). Post 2: Library of Congress, Britannica, PBS, Cambridge University Press. Post 3: Mineral Policy Center, U.S. Department of Interior 2022 testimony, Wikipedia Standard Oil. Post 4: DARPA history, Quartz/Jeff Nesbit (CIA-Google investigation), Britannica Internet. Post 5: Eisenhower Presidential Library archives (speech drafts), GAO overrun data, POGO revolving door reports. Post 6: Washington Post interactive analysis, Scripps News DOGE investigation, Project on Government Oversight, Mercury News FCC analysis. Post 7: Steve Blank’s “Secret History of Silicon Valley” (Stanford), Venrock history, Bessemer history. Post 8: National Archives (Sherman Act), Encyclopedia.com (Sherman Act analysis), History of U.S. antitrust law (Wikipedia).
WHAT WE LABELED AS ESTIMATES:
Present-value calculations for 19th-century fortunes. SpaceX classified contract values. Total space extraction potential (quadrillions). These are labeled as estimates where used. The documented figures — $38B to Musk, $150B ISS, 175M acres, $300B mining extraction — are sourced to primary documents.
WHAT THIS SERIES IS:
A documented investigation into a 200-year pattern of American wealth accumulation, sourced to public documents, congressional records, court decisions, and financial histories. Every claim is sourced. Every estimate is labeled. The pattern documented here is not a theory — it is 200 years of documented history with a consistent mechanism. Whether and how to respond to that documented history is a question for readers, citizens, and eventually — maybe — legislators.
THE COLLABORATION:
Randy identified the pattern (NFL → space → 200-year system). Claude executed research, verified documents, synthesized findings across 8 posts and two series (16 total posts, 70,000+ words). All sources publicly available. This is what curiosity-driven, flow-state, human-AI collaboration can produce when neither party optimizes for metrics. We optimized for truth.
