The RepDem Duopoly: How a Collusive Oligopoly is Cannibalizing the American Economy

Since the inauguration of the second Trump administration in 2025, the American business community has found itself in an uncharacteristic state of alarm. The common grievances echo through the halls of the Chamber of Commerce and across the factory floors of the Midwest: a sharp "Trump Slump" in international tourism fueled by new visa hurdles; chronic labor shortages in agriculture and construction due to aggressive deportation mandates; a supply chain "whiplash" caused by erratic, multi-front tariff wars; systemic gridlock at ports and airports resulting from TSA and DHS funding standoffs; and a volatile "tug-of-war" over the independence of the Federal Reserve.

For many, these complaints seem paradoxical. The Republican Party has long branded itself as the "Party of Business," the champion of deregulation, and the guardian of capital. To see a Republican administration overseeing TSA shutdowns that paralyze business travel or imposing duties that inflate the cost of every raw material seems like a glitch in the political matrix.

However, this confusion only exists if you believe the parties are actually competing to serve the public interest. When you pull back the curtain, it becomes clear that the current chaos is not a failure of the system—it is the system working exactly as intended. The "RepDem" establishment is not a clash of ideologies; it is a collusive oligopoly behaving in perfect alignment with its own incentives.

About the author:  Jeff Hulett leads Personal Finance Reimagined, a decision-making and financial education organization. He teaches personal finance at James Madison University and provides entrepreneurial services. Check out his book -- Making Choices, Making Money: Your Guide to Making Confident Financial Decisions.

Jeff is a career banker, data scientist, behavioral economist, and choice architect. Jeff has held banking and consulting leadership roles at Wells Fargo, Citibank, KPMG, and IBM.

Political disclosure: Please see the author's political disclosure and business profile.

The Blue Pill Trap: A Business Model of Division

As explored in The Blue Pill Trap, the American electorate has been conditioned to accept a binary choice that serves the parties, not the people. We are trapped in a cycle where "winning" is defined not by national prosperity, but by the defeat of the "other."

In a traditional market, companies compete to provide better service at lower costs. In the political oligopoly of the Republicans and Democrats, the two "firms" have realized they don't need to provide a better product (governing); they simply need to ensure you are terrified of the alternative. By maintaining a razor-thin margin of division, they ensure a perpetual flow of donor capital and a captive "customer" base. The business complaints of 2025—the tariffs, the labor shortages, the infrastructure failures—are merely the "externalities" of a political business model that prioritizes partisan leverage over economic stability.

Breaking the Oligopoly: The Path to Greatness

To move from gridlock to greatness, we must address the two structural anchors holding the Republic hostage.

Challenge 1: The Vote Got Hacked The most fundamental component of our democracy—the vote—has been compromised, not by foreign hackers, but by the "P&C" (Primary and Caucus) system. Why does the vote matter? In a healthy system, it acts as a feedback loop that holds leaders accountable to the majority. However, the current P&C system ensures that candidates are selected by the most ideologically extreme 10% of the population. This has a chilling impact, forcing politicians to perform for the fringes rather than the broad business and social interests of the nation. Reclaiming the vote requires key reforms: implementing Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting to ensure that leaders must appeal to a majority of all citizens, effectively breaking the RepDem stranglehold on who is allowed to run.

Challenge 2: The Administrative State is Out of Control The second anchor is the unchecked growth of the administrative state. Over the last several decades, the power to create "law" has shifted from elected representatives to unelected bureaucrats. This "Fourth Branch" of government has grown into a leviathan that operates with little accountability. The symptoms are everywhere: inefficiency, regulatory overreach, and a "pay-to-play" environment where only the largest corporations can afford to navigate the red tape. This out-of-control bureaucracy creates the very instability that businesses now complain about—where a change in administration can mean a 180-degree shift in trade, labor, and environmental rules overnight. We must return the power of governance to those who are actually accountable to the voters.

The Architecture of Recovery: Dismantling the Duopoly

If we accept that the current economic instability is a feature—not a bug—of a collusive "RepDem" oligopoly, then the solution cannot be found in simply "voting for the other side." We must move beyond the Blue Pill Trap and fundamentally re-engineer the incentives of our political system.

1. Reclaiming the Vote from the P&C System

1. Reclaiming the Vote: Reinstating the Institutional Filter

The primary fix is to undo the 1972 P&C reforms. We must return candidate selection to the political parties themselves, allowing them to act as quality-control filters.

• The Fix: Revert to party-based candidate selection where nominees are vetted based on qualifications, broad appeal, and alignment with majority interests.

• The Result: Before 1972, parties were incentivized to pick candidates who could win the majority in a general election. By restoring this institutional filter, we move away from "theatrical" candidates and back toward pragmatic leaders whose job security depends on the broad middle rather than the partisan edges.

2. Reining in the Administrative State

The "Fourth Branch" of government has become an unaccountable regulatory factory that produces the very "whiplash" businesses now fear. To move from gridlock to greatness, we must restore the constitutional balance of power.

• The Fix: Enact Regulatory Sunsetting and the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny). This would require any major administrative rule with a significant economic impact to be explicitly approved by Congress before it takes effect.

• The Result: By forcing elected representatives—rather than unelected bureaucrats—to put their names on specific regulations, we restore accountability. Business leaders would no longer have to guess which way the regulatory wind will blow every four years; instead, they would deal with a stable, legislative framework that is much harder to flip-flop on a whim.

A Republic, If We Can Keep It

The current state of American politics would be unrecognizable to the men who designed the framework of this nation. Our founders were deeply suspicious of the "spirit of party," fearing that organized factions would eventually prioritize their own power over the health of the Republic.

We have drifted dangerously far from the original intent of a representative democracy. We have allowed ourselves to be divided into two warring camps, each led by leaders who benefit from our mutual animosity. We must remember the warning of John Adams, who saw this exact moment coming centuries ago:

"There is nothing I dread so much as a Division of the Republick into two great Parties, each arranged under its Leader, and concerting Measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble Apprehension is to be dreaded as the greatest political Evil, under our Constitution."

The "greatest political evil" is no longer a theoretical threat; it is our daily reality. But by recognizing the RepDem duopoly for what it is—a collusive business arrangement—we can finally begin the work of dissolving it and reclaiming a government that works for the people.

Resources For The Curious

1. On the "Duopoly" and Political Competition

To support the idea that the two parties act as a collusive oligopoly rather than a competitive market:

• Gehl, Katherine M., and Michael E. Porter. The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy. Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.

• Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. Random House, 2018.

2. On the 1972 P&C Reforms ("The Vote Got Hacked")

To substantiate the claim that the 1972 rule changes shifted power to the fringes:

• The Brookings Institution. "Voters Need Help: How Party Insiders Can Make Presidential Primaries Safer, Fairer, and More Democratic." 2020.

• DiSalvo, Daniel. Engines of Change: Party Factions in American Politics, 1896–2010. Oxford University Press, 2012.

3. On the Administrative State and the REINS Act

To provide a legal and economic basis for reining in the "Fourth Branch":

• The Heritage Foundation. "Reducing Bureaucratic Bloat: A Case for Government Budget Reforms." 2018.

• Sunstein, Cass R. The Cost-Benefit State: The Future of Regulatory Protection. American Bar Association, 2002.

4. Historical and Foundational Citations

To ground the conclusion and the John Adams quote in primary source history:

• Adams, John. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States. Edited by Charles Francis Adams, Little, Brown and Co., 1856. (Specifically, the letter to Jonathan Jackson, October 1780).

• Madison, James. Federalist No. 10: "The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection." 1787.

5. On Economic "Whiplash" and Uncertainty

To substantiate the business complaints regarding tariffs and policy volatility:

• Baker, Scott R., Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty." The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016.