Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide

Type: Reports
Date: 17 January 2024
Campaigns: Food, General, Pharma

The World Economic Forum says it is committed to improving the state of the world, but our new report in collaboration with the Balanced Economy Project, SOMO and LobbyControl into the world’s wealthiest billionaires and biggest companies disputes this.

Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide, released to coincide with the Davos gathering, reveals how the world’s biggest companies, including top WEF partners, are using monopoly power to effectively rip off consumers, while exploiting workers and citizens, and suffocating smaller businesses.

Monopoly power, we argue, fuels inequality and division, undermines democracy, worsens the climate crisis, manipulates people in insidious ways, and fundamentally alters how we communicate and interact with each other. Of the world’s top 20 biggest firms, at least 14 are partners of the World Economic Forum (WEF), meaning they sponsor the event and are involved in shaping the debates at the annual meeting in Davos, which in turn have wider ramifications for society.

These partners are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Eli Lilly, Visa, Novo Nordisk, Walmart, ExxonMobil, JP Morgan Chase, Johnson and Johnson, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Saudi Basic Industries (SABIC), of which Saudi Aramco owns 70% of shares. Behind these companies are many of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful monopolist billionaires.

Our new report focuses on how these individuals and their companies have built positions of market and strategic dominance where they’ve become too big to fail, too big to trust, and ‘too big to care’.

This is more than just a report, in fact:

1. Our main report Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide
2. Media briefing – a shortened version of the main report – also In French
3. Case Study: Big Pharma and Monopoly Power
4. Case Study: Big Agriculture and Monopoly power
5. Case Study: Finance and Monopoly Power
6. Case Study: Big Tech and Monopoly Power
7. Case Study: How monopolists dominate retail
8. Case Study: Monopoly Power in our Energy markets