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I agree they should be regulated. The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock

I agree they should be regulated. The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. If you were to analyze Facebook as if it were a country, the wealth gap among employees would be atrocious - The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total value that they produced. If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations. What's worse is that the social aspects will also be mirrored. We will gradually lose freedom of speech, in the same way that employees of large corporations don't have the freedom to say what they really think to their bosses. Many who have worked for a big corporation will know how suppressing the environment can be. I'm really glad that I live in a time when there are still alternatives.

Kenji 9y ago
I think your comparison of companies with states is really far fetched. An employment contract is completely different from citizenship. The freedom of speech comparison is particularly odd, obviously if you are a trouble maker in your company, they rightfully conclude that your value to them decreases.
- gramstrong 9y ago
  Agreed. People can talk freely. People can also be dismissed freely. Freedom of speech, freedom of market.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. That's weird, I thought they were all building robots to serve the wealthy by replacing everyone's jobs?
devuo 9y ago
And yet, only very large companies are able to make a certain class of investments in infrastructure and services — that push technology and society forward as a whole — that small to mid companies due to lack of capacity never could, and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would Governments (US and Soviet) went to the moon. The Internet would not exist without massive military (i.e. government) sponsoring. But yes, when I am looking at our governments right now, it's hard to find something as progressive as this, except that marijuana is on the rise, Macron has a 50:50 women government and invited scientists from the US to France. The other governments seem to be racing full speed in reverse for me.
  - skookumchuck 9y ago
    > The Internet would not exist without massive military (i.e. government) sponsoring. Yes, it would be called FidoNET instead.
- lisper 9y ago
  That's true, but it's not clear which way the causality runs. If wealth were more evenly distributed, ordinary people could pool their resources to make the same investments. They can't do that now because they have no disposable income to invest.
  - virmundi 9y ago
    At that point the pool is mirroring a large corp. while it's still in the small so to speak, it has the same ends and reaction to the same stimulus
    - lisper 9y ago
      With the major difference that the ultimate decision-making power would be more widely distributed.
      - virmundi 9y ago
        Maybe. Depends if they set themselves up as a co-op. They could instead essentially start as a highly focused VC. At that point the control will probably rest in the hands of the board and management.
friedman23 9y ago
do you have any evidence that your suggestions will actually improve the consumer experience or are you just suggesting killing businesses because of a gut feeling and some anti corporate sentiment? >If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations. None of these companies can be said to be monopolies. > We will gradually lose freedom of speech, in the same way that employees of large corporations don't have the freedom to say what they really think to their bosses. This is the slipperiest slope I've ever seen.
- weirdstuff 9y ago
  To my mind, something as subjective as consumer experience is difficult to objectively measure. I'm not sure what would count as valid evidence.
  - wayn3 9y ago
    i believe that happy customers would count as valid evidence. when i use google or amazon, im usually pretty happy with the service they provide. when i have to stand at a walmart cashier for half an hour while the lady has to yell for the manager because she needs to issue a $1.20 refund, im not as happy. when I have to go to the library of alexandria to find a piece of infomration that im looking for but then they tell me that it burned down 2000 odd years ago, im not as happy.
    - weirdstuff 9y ago
      Right, but how to measure that? For example, do we know a company's customers are happy because the company has grown to be large? Like Comcast. Comcast has a lot of customers, maybe they're happy ones? Otherwise how did Comcast grow to that size? (See what I'm hinting at?) There are different interpretations of Comcast's success at customer growth and retention.
      - wayn3 9y ago
        its because comcast is a monopoly. google was not a monopoly when it became popular. it was the idiot 12th search engine that nobody needed. i get what youre saying, but its pretty obvious why a company gets big. its either holding some form of monopoly or people want it. there are not many other options to be honest. you dont become the most popular car manufacturer by producing a bullshit product that people neither need nor want. besides, why is comcast even a negative example? why did you pick that? its because you KNOW FOR A FACT that everyone hates comcast. even I know that. and i have nothing to do with america. people hate comcast. that may as well be a dictionary example sentence for the word "hate". how do we know that everyone hates comcast? because people say so every single day. just measure that. if you want to know whether a company is loved or hated, just ask their customers.
nickpp 9y ago
And yet to protect your precious rights and freedoms from the greedy and evil corporations, you turn to the government - the biggest monopoly there is...
- RubyPinch 9y ago
  Can we vote on the governance of facebook and google like we do with the government? (where every person's vote is equal) if so, where can I register to freely vote edit: since it doesn't seem clear, my comment is sarcastic
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    Sure, it's called the stock market. You buy a share and you get a vote.
    - pikzen 9y ago
      Every country that has a functioning democracy has realised that money is not speech. Every sensible person also realizes that this is not a solution. Have more money than someone else? Well, tough shit, your vote shouldn't be worth more. Stocks work the opposite way.
      - jimmywanger 9y ago
        > Every country that has a functioning democracy that money is not speech. You missed a verb. And in case you missed it, every democracy has elections, and in that case, money is equivalent to speech. Good luck in getting airtime/a platform without paying money. > Have more money than someone else? Well, tough shit, your vote shouldn't be worth more. In a company, that's absolutely not the case. Taken to the logical extreme, should I have the same say in the operations of Exxon, even though I have no financial interest in them, rather than a shareholder with 3% of the stock?
        pikzen 9y ago
unityByFreedom 9y ago
The way to compete with big companies is to make new ones, and create an environment that fosters new ones, like making affordable healthcare. There is no reason for breaking up Google or Facebook. Their only monopoly is over advertising, and most people don't care about that. Advertising isn't a thing people crave. If anything, break up the ISPs like Comcast!!
gramstrong 9y ago
You've made a lot of claims. Do you have any evidence to support these: - Facebook's 1% owning 99% of its wealth - The economy of nation states mirrors that of its corporations (and not the other way around) - Social environments of corporations somehow influence the general public There are many reasons why mega-corporations are bad, and I personally don't think these are them.
slice_of_life 9y ago
I can't take it anymore! I have to speak out. >The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total value that they produced. What is up with all this egalitarian nonsense? There is an obsession with equality that I just don't get. Where is all the envy coming from(because that's what it is)? This is an affront on capitalism which has served to lift so many out of poverty. It is unacceptable in my books.
- pikzen 9y ago
  >What is up with all this egalitarian nonsense? Just the wish to have a society that is able to evolve, to have all of us go forward as a species instead of concentrating the power in the hands of few. >There is an obsession with equality that I just don't get. That's called being a bit of a sociopath, but it gets better. >This is an affront on capitalism which has served to lift so many out of poverty. Good! Capitalism did a lot of good. Now it's time we go past it, because it is not appropriate anymore.
  - yellow_postit 9y ago
    What do you recommend to replace capitalism. I've seen a lot of the other attempts and they have not been pretty.
    - pikzen 9y ago
      A complete model? I don't have any. I have bits and pieces of things. And so do you. So does your neighbor, so does the CEO of Microsoft, so does the government worker in his office, so does the guy sleeping in the street. Get people together. Have them talk and debate. Making a new model is the work of a society. Not one person. I do not believe communism is the solution, I do not believe capitalism or neoliberalism are the solution.
    - izacus 9y ago
      Which version of capitalism and which attempts? The form of capitalism inside USA isn't the same as Scandinavia, China or Africa practice it.
qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
The masses are feeding it because they don't know better. Yet they want regulators out of their way. We can't win!
TulliusCicero 9y ago
Disclaimer: I work at Google > The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. [citation needed] A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze, where do you think the money for this stuff all comes from? Of course, if you're one of the uber technerds that thinks that Google is unabashedly evil and Linux is going to take over the desktop any day now, that probably sounds great to you. I just think the average consumer would have a different take on it.
- weirdstuff 9y ago
  > Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze, where do you think the money for this stuff all comes from? This needs a citation, as well. This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had the playing field been more level. My unsubstantiated opinion is that many talented folks are/have been dissuaded from trying their hand at anything that may go up against Google, et. al., unless their looking for an aquihire. (And we know how Google treats those after a few years.) And there's another argument to be made: that Google's habit of purchasing competition stifles the innovation since it's nipping it in the bud. (I majored in Econ in uni.)
  - friedman23 9y ago
    Congrats on your degree in econ. You would think that someone with a degree in econ would believe it wise to first establish what the negative externalities are and what externalities regulating away the existence of large business would produce before defending the idea of doing so. We already know that with the existence of Google we get free products like search, mail, video, etc. Do you have evidence that when we destroy google that we will still retain all of these benefits?
2_listerine_pls 9y ago
Also, an increasing amount of people does not tolerate critizism against their beloved Zuckerberg, Bill gates, etc... : How you dare criticize him when he is bringing free internet to Africa?
HiroshiSan 9y ago
This sounds like something James Taggart would say.
oneshot908 9y ago
IMO breaking up Google or Amazon makes as much sense as breaking up a tumor in the body without removing any of its cells and declaring victory. Go ahead, make some arbitrary cuts between Amazon, Lab 126 and AWS. Or go split Google into Android, Search and Cloud. That's a huge buying opportunity in both cases IMO. But if you really want to talk about a current monopoly in the valley, look no further than NVIDIA's 100% ownership of the DL/ML processor space. Even then, I consider the election of Donald Trump and the existence of his base a far greater threat to freedom than the worst of Google, Amazon, and Facebook combined. All of these companies could be disrupted just like Google disrupted Microsoft 20 years ago and Facebook half-disrupted Google. And I have worked for multiple big corporations, I have found their culture in general to be far less "suppressing" than the startups I worked at once money got tight. You wanna join the evil 1% in the valley? That's relatively easy. Learn how to code and ship working systems, especially big data and machine learning systems. That ability alone is worth high six-figures income to Google and Facebook (cue people insisting that's not the case because they don't make that kind of money). If you establish a reputation, you can then double or quadruple upon that. Public evidence below or just who do you think is buying all those $3-5M houses in Palo Alto and SF? http://www.businessinsider.com/a-google-programmer-blew-off-a-500000-salary-at-startup--because-hes-already-making-3-million-every-year-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/a-google-programmer-blew-off-...
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  The thing is, there's a lot of us who don't want to join the 1% in the valley. We don't want to join these parasitic companies which are turning the industry into a boring clone-the-other-big-co greedfest. So for a lot of us, just work hard and join the crowd isn't really a solution. Not to mention, if you find Trump a true threat, please realize he is a threat made possible through the echo chambers of SV tech, which is either so incompetent as to not anticipate it or too greedy to stop it.
  - oneshot908 9y ago
    So GTFO of Silicon Valley then? The place is feeding on itself at this point IMO and I'm just about ready to leave myself because happiness > $$$$$$$ past a point. See also my libertarian friends who live in SF, constantly kvetching about the politics, but who all refuse to live somewhere else. Meanwhile, Austin's nice and it's still affordable on a moderate six-figure income. Not to mention the relatively undiscovered gem of Portland and its fantastic food truck culture. Then there's the option of going abroad. It's a big world out there. Don't limit your options. Overall point: don't fight the herd, you will lose, go start your own instead. Finally, I don't blame Facebook or Google for Trump in any way whatsoever. I blame the overarching intellectual incuriosity of most of the American people for that one, independent of party affiliation. Biased evidence: I grew up denied access to advanced math and science courses because I was pegged as someone with ADHD and potentially mildly retarded by the same sort of idiots who elected Emperor Orange. This was because I displayed near OCD w/r to writing code from the age of 6 and little interest in anything not relevant to that task. That inclination was discouraged by my school system all the way to college whereupon it suddenly became useful and the rest is profitable history.
sausman 9y ago
> The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. I would tend to agree. What's troubling to me is central banks pouring money into the big tech companies. How are small companies supposed to compete with a printing press? Even if a world with lots of smaller companies serves consumers better, consumers' votes don't matter when central banks can steal their votes via a printing press and give money to the big tech companies. http://www.reuters.com/article/swiss-snb-stocks-idUSL8N1B7383 http://www.reuters.com/article/swiss-snb-stocks-idUSL8N1B738... http://www.businessinsider.com/1-trillion-in-central-bank-asset-buying-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/1-trillion-in-central-bank-as...
Buge 9y ago
I don't understand what you mean by analyzing facebook as a country. You're saying facebook employees are citizens of the country? And their salaries vary so much? According to this[1] facebook employees make $277k. And this[2] says facebook has 17048 employees. Multiply those, and we get $4.7B of compensation. This[3] claims Mark Zuckerberg made $5M in a year. So he made about 0.1% of facebook's salary expenses. Not 99% like you are claiming. Or are you referring to existing shares that people own going up in value? It's obvious that if someone owns more shares than someone else, and all shares go up in value, the person with more shares makes more profit. Are you saying it is unethical for someone to own more shares that someone else? And if you are referring to shares, you should be talking about shareholders, not employees. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-total-compensation-salary-+-bonuses-per-year-at-big-tech-companies-Facebook-Google-Apple-etc-for-software-engineers-with-3-4-years-of-experience https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-total-compensation... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-facebook-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo... [3] http://www1.salary.com/Mark-Zuckerberg-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-FACEBOOK-INC.html http://www1.salary.com/Mark-Zuckerberg-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Op...
nwah1 9y ago
Having worked at big companies and small companies, my experience was that working at a large company was easier. People could almost forget that you exist. That never would happen in a small company. So I suspect that the whole post-war Michael Moore ideal economy with big companies, big unions, and stable jobs was based on this dream of people not noticing your incompetence. I suspect that is also why government jobs are prized. So big corporations may be terrible for all sorts of reasons... invasion of privacy, lack of consumer choice, inefficiency, etc... but dehumanizing workplace environment is not really one of them... at least not in a relativistic sense. Small companies can be much more totalitarian. I've heard the same point made in reference to the difference between local governments and federal governments. Local governments can be all the more tyrannical precisely because everyone knows everyone: https://thinkprogress.org/freedom-and-the-weak-state-c9a31f50f5bd https://thinkprogress.org/freedom-and-the-weak-state-c9a31f5...
known 9y ago
Govt should regulate market capitalization of corporations;

Kenji 9y ago

I think your comparison of companies with states is really far fetched. An employment contract is completely different from citizenship. The freedom of speech comparison is particularly odd, obviously if you are a trouble maker in your company, they rightfully conclude that your value to them decreases.

gramstrong 9y ago
Agreed. People can talk freely. People can also be dismissed freely. Freedom of speech, freedom of market.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

>These big companies turn regular people into corporate livestock to serve the wealthy. That's weird, I thought they were all building robots to serve the wealthy by replacing everyone's jobs?

devuo 9y ago

And yet, only very large companies are able to make a certain class of investments in infrastructure and services — that push technology and society forward as a whole — that small to mid companies due to lack of capacity never could, and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would.

mschuster91 9y ago
> and governments due to lack of vision and political will never would Governments (US and Soviet) went to the moon. The Internet would not exist without massive military (i.e. government) sponsoring. But yes, when I am looking at our governments right now, it's hard to find something as progressive as this, except that marijuana is on the rise, Macron has a 50:50 women government and invited scientists from the US to France. The other governments seem to be racing full speed in reverse for me.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  > The Internet would not exist without massive military (i.e. government) sponsoring. Yes, it would be called FidoNET instead.
lisper 9y ago
That's true, but it's not clear which way the causality runs. If wealth were more evenly distributed, ordinary people could pool their resources to make the same investments. They can't do that now because they have no disposable income to invest.
- virmundi 9y ago
  At that point the pool is mirroring a large corp. while it's still in the small so to speak, it has the same ends and reaction to the same stimulus
  - lisper 9y ago
    With the major difference that the ultimate decision-making power would be more widely distributed.
    - virmundi 9y ago
      Maybe. Depends if they set themselves up as a co-op. They could instead essentially start as a highly focused VC. At that point the control will probably rest in the hands of the board and management.

friedman23 9y ago

do you have any evidence that your suggestions will actually improve the consumer experience or are you just suggesting killing businesses because of a gut feeling and some anti corporate sentiment? >If we let monopolies take over, then the economy of the world will start to mirror the economies within these large corporations. None of these companies can be said to be monopolies. > We will gradually lose freedom of speech, in the same way that employees of large corporations don't have the freedom to say what they really think to their bosses. This is the slipperiest slope I've ever seen.

weirdstuff 9y ago
To my mind, something as subjective as consumer experience is difficult to objectively measure. I'm not sure what would count as valid evidence.
- wayn3 9y ago
  i believe that happy customers would count as valid evidence. when i use google or amazon, im usually pretty happy with the service they provide. when i have to stand at a walmart cashier for half an hour while the lady has to yell for the manager because she needs to issue a $1.20 refund, im not as happy. when I have to go to the library of alexandria to find a piece of infomration that im looking for but then they tell me that it burned down 2000 odd years ago, im not as happy.
  - weirdstuff 9y ago
    Right, but how to measure that? For example, do we know a company's customers are happy because the company has grown to be large? Like Comcast. Comcast has a lot of customers, maybe they're happy ones? Otherwise how did Comcast grow to that size? (See what I'm hinting at?) There are different interpretations of Comcast's success at customer growth and retention.
    - wayn3 9y ago
      its because comcast is a monopoly. google was not a monopoly when it became popular. it was the idiot 12th search engine that nobody needed. i get what youre saying, but its pretty obvious why a company gets big. its either holding some form of monopoly or people want it. there are not many other options to be honest. you dont become the most popular car manufacturer by producing a bullshit product that people neither need nor want. besides, why is comcast even a negative example? why did you pick that? its because you KNOW FOR A FACT that everyone hates comcast. even I know that. and i have nothing to do with america. people hate comcast. that may as well be a dictionary example sentence for the word "hate". how do we know that everyone hates comcast? because people say so every single day. just measure that. if you want to know whether a company is loved or hated, just ask their customers.

nickpp 9y ago

And yet to protect your precious rights and freedoms from the greedy and evil corporations, you turn to the government - the biggest monopoly there is...

RubyPinch 9y ago
Can we vote on the governance of facebook and google like we do with the government? (where every person's vote is equal) if so, where can I register to freely vote edit: since it doesn't seem clear, my comment is sarcastic
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  Sure, it's called the stock market. You buy a share and you get a vote.
  - pikzen 9y ago
    Every country that has a functioning democracy has realised that money is not speech. Every sensible person also realizes that this is not a solution. Have more money than someone else? Well, tough shit, your vote shouldn't be worth more. Stocks work the opposite way.
    - jimmywanger 9y ago
      > Every country that has a functioning democracy that money is not speech. You missed a verb. And in case you missed it, every democracy has elections, and in that case, money is equivalent to speech. Good luck in getting airtime/a platform without paying money. > Have more money than someone else? Well, tough shit, your vote shouldn't be worth more. In a company, that's absolutely not the case. Taken to the logical extreme, should I have the same say in the operations of Exxon, even though I have no financial interest in them, rather than a shareholder with 3% of the stock?
      - pikzen 9y ago

unityByFreedom 9y ago

The way to compete with big companies is to make new ones, and create an environment that fosters new ones, like making affordable healthcare. There is no reason for breaking up Google or Facebook. Their only monopoly is over advertising, and most people don't care about that. Advertising isn't a thing people crave. If anything, break up the ISPs like Comcast!!

gramstrong 9y ago

You've made a lot of claims. Do you have any evidence to support these: - Facebook's 1% owning 99% of its wealth - The economy of nation states mirrors that of its corporations (and not the other way around) - Social environments of corporations somehow influence the general public There are many reasons why mega-corporations are bad, and I personally don't think these are them.

slice_of_life 9y ago

I can't take it anymore! I have to speak out. >The top 1% would own maybe 99% of the wealth of the country and everyone else would earn a minuscule fraction of the total value that they produced. What is up with all this egalitarian nonsense? There is an obsession with equality that I just don't get. Where is all the envy coming from(because that's what it is)? This is an affront on capitalism which has served to lift so many out of poverty. It is unacceptable in my books.

pikzen 9y ago
>What is up with all this egalitarian nonsense? Just the wish to have a society that is able to evolve, to have all of us go forward as a species instead of concentrating the power in the hands of few. >There is an obsession with equality that I just don't get. That's called being a bit of a sociopath, but it gets better. >This is an affront on capitalism which has served to lift so many out of poverty. Good! Capitalism did a lot of good. Now it's time we go past it, because it is not appropriate anymore.
- yellow_postit 9y ago
  What do you recommend to replace capitalism. I've seen a lot of the other attempts and they have not been pretty.
  - pikzen 9y ago
    A complete model? I don't have any. I have bits and pieces of things. And so do you. So does your neighbor, so does the CEO of Microsoft, so does the government worker in his office, so does the guy sleeping in the street. Get people together. Have them talk and debate. Making a new model is the work of a society. Not one person. I do not believe communism is the solution, I do not believe capitalism or neoliberalism are the solution.
  - izacus 9y ago
    Which version of capitalism and which attempts? The form of capitalism inside USA isn't the same as Scandinavia, China or Africa practice it.

qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago

The masses are feeding it because they don't know better. Yet they want regulators out of their way. We can't win!

TulliusCicero 9y ago

Disclaimer: I work at Google > The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. [citation needed] A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze, where do you think the money for this stuff all comes from? Of course, if you're one of the uber technerds that thinks that Google is unabashedly evil and Linux is going to take over the desktop any day now, that probably sounds great to you. I just think the average consumer would have a different take on it.

weirdstuff 9y ago
> Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, youtube, drive, waze, where do you think the money for this stuff all comes from? This needs a citation, as well. This is assuming Google hasn't starved out potential competitors who would have provided the same service, or better service, had the playing field been more level. My unsubstantiated opinion is that many talented folks are/have been dissuaded from trying their hand at anything that may go up against Google, et. al., unless their looking for an aquihire. (And we know how Google treats those after a few years.) And there's another argument to be made: that Google's habit of purchasing competition stifles the innovation since it's nipping it in the bud. (I majored in Econ in uni.)
- friedman23 9y ago
  Congrats on your degree in econ. You would think that someone with a degree in econ would believe it wise to first establish what the negative externalities are and what externalities regulating away the existence of large business would produce before defending the idea of doing so. We already know that with the existence of Google we get free products like search, mail, video, etc. Do you have evidence that when we destroy google that we will still retain all of these benefits?

2_listerine_pls 9y ago

Also, an increasing amount of people does not tolerate critizism against their beloved Zuckerberg, Bill gates, etc... : How you dare criticize him when he is bringing free internet to Africa?

HiroshiSan 9y ago

This sounds like something James Taggart would say.

oneshot908 9y ago

IMO breaking up Google or Amazon makes as much sense as breaking up a tumor in the body without removing any of its cells and declaring victory. Go ahead, make some arbitrary cuts between Amazon, Lab 126 and AWS. Or go split Google into Android, Search and Cloud. That's a huge buying opportunity in both cases IMO. But if you really want to talk about a current monopoly in the valley, look no further than NVIDIA's 100% ownership of the DL/ML processor space. Even then, I consider the election of Donald Trump and the existence of his base a far greater threat to freedom than the worst of Google, Amazon, and Facebook combined. All of these companies could be disrupted just like Google disrupted Microsoft 20 years ago and Facebook half-disrupted Google. And I have worked for multiple big corporations, I have found their culture in general to be far less "suppressing" than the startups I worked at once money got tight. You wanna join the evil 1% in the valley? That's relatively easy. Learn how to code and ship working systems, especially big data and machine learning systems. That ability alone is worth high six-figures income to Google and Facebook (cue people insisting that's not the case because they don't make that kind of money). If you establish a reputation, you can then double or quadruple upon that. Public evidence below or just who do you think is buying all those $3-5M houses in Palo Alto and SF? http://www.businessinsider.com/a-google-programmer-blew-off-a-500000-salary-at-startup--because-hes-already-making-3-million-every-year-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/a-google-programmer-blew-off-...

aaron-lebo 9y ago
The thing is, there's a lot of us who don't want to join the 1% in the valley. We don't want to join these parasitic companies which are turning the industry into a boring clone-the-other-big-co greedfest. So for a lot of us, just work hard and join the crowd isn't really a solution. Not to mention, if you find Trump a true threat, please realize he is a threat made possible through the echo chambers of SV tech, which is either so incompetent as to not anticipate it or too greedy to stop it.
- oneshot908 9y ago
  So GTFO of Silicon Valley then? The place is feeding on itself at this point IMO and I'm just about ready to leave myself because happiness > $$$$$$$ past a point. See also my libertarian friends who live in SF, constantly kvetching about the politics, but who all refuse to live somewhere else. Meanwhile, Austin's nice and it's still affordable on a moderate six-figure income. Not to mention the relatively undiscovered gem of Portland and its fantastic food truck culture. Then there's the option of going abroad. It's a big world out there. Don't limit your options. Overall point: don't fight the herd, you will lose, go start your own instead. Finally, I don't blame Facebook or Google for Trump in any way whatsoever. I blame the overarching intellectual incuriosity of most of the American people for that one, independent of party affiliation. Biased evidence: I grew up denied access to advanced math and science courses because I was pegged as someone with ADHD and potentially mildly retarded by the same sort of idiots who elected Emperor Orange. This was because I displayed near OCD w/r to writing code from the age of 6 and little interest in anything not relevant to that task. That inclination was discouraged by my school system all the way to college whereupon it suddenly became useful and the rest is profitable history.

sausman 9y ago

> The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. I would tend to agree. What's troubling to me is central banks pouring money into the big tech companies. How are small companies supposed to compete with a printing press? Even if a world with lots of smaller companies serves consumers better, consumers' votes don't matter when central banks can steal their votes via a printing press and give money to the big tech companies. http://www.reuters.com/article/swiss-snb-stocks-idUSL8N1B7383 http://www.reuters.com/article/swiss-snb-stocks-idUSL8N1B738... http://www.businessinsider.com/1-trillion-in-central-bank-asset-buying-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/1-trillion-in-central-bank-as...

Buge 9y ago

I don't understand what you mean by analyzing facebook as a country. You're saying facebook employees are citizens of the country? And their salaries vary so much? According to this[1] facebook employees make $277k. And this[2] says facebook has 17048 employees. Multiply those, and we get $4.7B of compensation. This[3] claims Mark Zuckerberg made $5M in a year. So he made about 0.1% of facebook's salary expenses. Not 99% like you are claiming. Or are you referring to existing shares that people own going up in value? It's obvious that if someone owns more shares than someone else, and all shares go up in value, the person with more shares makes more profit. Are you saying it is unethical for someone to own more shares that someone else? And if you are referring to shares, you should be talking about shareholders, not employees. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-total-compensation-salary-+-bonuses-per-year-at-big-tech-companies-Facebook-Google-Apple-etc-for-software-engineers-with-3-4-years-of-experience https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-total-compensation... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-facebook-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo... [3] http://www1.salary.com/Mark-Zuckerberg-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-FACEBOOK-INC.html http://www1.salary.com/Mark-Zuckerberg-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Op...

nwah1 9y ago

Having worked at big companies and small companies, my experience was that working at a large company was easier. People could almost forget that you exist. That never would happen in a small company. So I suspect that the whole post-war Michael Moore ideal economy with big companies, big unions, and stable jobs was based on this dream of people not noticing your incompetence. I suspect that is also why government jobs are prized. So big corporations may be terrible for all sorts of reasons... invasion of privacy, lack of consumer choice, inefficiency, etc... but dehumanizing workplace environment is not really one of them... at least not in a relativistic sense. Small companies can be much more totalitarian. I've heard the same point made in reference to the difference between local governments and federal governments. Local governments can be all the more tyrannical precisely because everyone knows everyone: https://thinkprogress.org/freedom-and-the-weak-state-c9a31f50f5bd https://thinkprogress.org/freedom-and-the-weak-state-c9a31f5...

known 9y ago

Govt should regulate market capitalization of corporations;