Over the past twenty years, the United States has experienced what Dr. Thomas Philippon calls "The Great Reversal," or a slow drift away from the free market competition which defined the American economy for the last century, towards an increasingly oligopolistic consolidation of market power. What does this mean? For the average American, prices have increased, wages remain stagnant, quality has declined, and the variety of goods has diminished. The reason? The growing political power of incumbent firms, who use their established economic power to influence the political process in their favor, towards high barriers to entry and decreased antitrust scrutiny, through lobbying and the financing of campaigns. Or have they? "The Great Reversal," and hypotheses like it, are far from a consensus... This Thesis is a meta study of the literature surrounding domestic competition in the United States and the impact that the lobbying activity of industry leaders has on said competition. Analyzing over 20 papers covering economics, political science, and political economy, this Thesis argues that domestic competition in the United States has indeed declined over the past two decades and that the growing political power of firms, rather than "unique" technological or structural changes in the economy, has caused this drift away from free markets. Using this analysis, this Thesis further suggests a few solutions to "The Great Reversal" and restoring competition in the American economy.

This article argues that the current economic design of the US not-for-profit arts sector, specifically theatre, fails to support the long-term wellness of the cultural worker and the cultural commons. As a solution, we propose a global, commons-based alternative economy and complementary currency called Culture Coin that creates new wealth, abundance, and virtuous social behaviors by matching unmet needs with underutilized resources that our current economy fails to circulate. The current design of our arts economy results in generative artists being disproportionately poorer, unjust disparities in how resources are distributed, and social behaviors in the nonprofit sector that mimic for profit, commercial enterprises. The arts sector has an over-dependence on uncompensated or undercompensated “sweat equity” and volatile philanthropic funding. We detail the value and characteristics of a commons framework for entrepreneurial activity and describe internet-enabled peer production as a way to build cultural commons as well as the most effective way to collectively co-create and deploy the Culture Coin project.