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Facebook just persists on the inertia of the network effect its leveraging. The only thing that will ever stop them is actual updates to anti-trust laws to stay

Facebook just persists on the inertia of the network effect its leveraging. The only thing that will ever stop them is actual updates to anti-trust laws to stay in step with the current state of the industry. It’s bullshit that a single company should get to pick winners and losers in the economy. We get squeamish about allowing our (barely) democratically elected government do that so I don’t understand why proponents of free-markets think it’s fine to let an unaccountable corporate entity exert the same kind of influence.

rainbowmverse 9y ago
>> We get squeamish about allowing our (barely) democratically elected government do that so I don’t understand why proponents of free-markets think it’s fine to let an unaccountable corporate entity exert the same kind of influence. Only a handful of people get to call themselves President, Senator, or Congressperson. Fewer will ever be billionaires, but more can dream because there's no constitutional limit to quantity or term length. They aspire to create the next unaccountable corporate entity.
FussyZeus 9y ago
> It’s bullshit that a single company should get to pick winners and losers in the economy. We get squeamish about allowing our (barely) democratically elected government do that so I don’t understand why proponents of free-markets think it’s fine to let an unaccountable corporate entity exert the same kind of influence. Speaking as an economic conservative, our principles were not designed to handle companies like Facebook with such unholy amounts of influence over media and society. I'm not saying that excuses the lack of action in terms of regulating them, I'm just attempting to explain why it's difficult to get there from here, so to speak.
hnal943 9y ago
> The only thing that will ever stop them is actual updates to anti-trust laws to stay in step with the current state of the industry. It's silly to think that only government intervention could change the status quo. Who do you know under 40 who likes using Facebook? They are susceptible to competition from the market, like everyone else. Ask IBM and GE how quickly ubiquity can evaporate.
- naravara 9y ago
  They’re big enough to buy out any actually threatening competitors. A duopoly or a small oligopoly aren’t much better. As for IBM or GE, buddy it took almost an entire generation for their stranglehold to break down, and in fields with much lower barriers to entry than this.
rationaloutlook 9y ago
You might think you’ve made a very novel point that no free markets supporter has considered or answered before, but you’d be very wrong. Anyone with even cursory knowledge of political philosophy knows this. First of all, the issue with government wielding power in a way that violates NAP is not that it’s a single entity but that it’s wielding power to violate NAP, e.g. violating negative rights, redistributing wealth etc. Since a private entity like Facebook doesn’t do that, it’s not even comparable. And the reason it has so much power (but again it can’t violate your negative liberty like govts do despite that) is that people voluntarily choose to use it so much (even if not willingly). As long as they choose to do so, Facebook gets power and that’s how it should work. I personally think that Facebook isn’t great and we should use less of it and be less reliant on it (which I follow), but I’m not going to support using government’s power to override other people’s choices. A social network with a monthly fee (if people are ok with supporting it voluntarily over a privacy nightmare like Facebook) should be worth a try.

rainbowmverse 9y ago

>> We get squeamish about allowing our (barely) democratically elected government do that so I don’t understand why proponents of free-markets think it’s fine to let an unaccountable corporate entity exert the same kind of influence. Only a handful of people get to call themselves President, Senator, or Congressperson. Fewer will ever be billionaires, but more can dream because there's no constitutional limit to quantity or term length. They aspire to create the next unaccountable corporate entity.

FussyZeus 9y ago

> It’s bullshit that a single company should get to pick winners and losers in the economy. We get squeamish about allowing our (barely) democratically elected government do that so I don’t understand why proponents of free-markets think it’s fine to let an unaccountable corporate entity exert the same kind of influence. Speaking as an economic conservative, our principles were not designed to handle companies like Facebook with such unholy amounts of influence over media and society. I'm not saying that excuses the lack of action in terms of regulating them, I'm just attempting to explain why it's difficult to get there from here, so to speak.

hnal943 9y ago

> The only thing that will ever stop them is actual updates to anti-trust laws to stay in step with the current state of the industry. It's silly to think that only government intervention could change the status quo. Who do you know under 40 who likes using Facebook? They are susceptible to competition from the market, like everyone else. Ask IBM and GE how quickly ubiquity can evaporate.

naravara 9y ago
They’re big enough to buy out any actually threatening competitors. A duopoly or a small oligopoly aren’t much better. As for IBM or GE, buddy it took almost an entire generation for their stranglehold to break down, and in fields with much lower barriers to entry than this.

rationaloutlook 9y ago

You might think you’ve made a very novel point that no free markets supporter has considered or answered before, but you’d be very wrong. Anyone with even cursory knowledge of political philosophy knows this. First of all, the issue with government wielding power in a way that violates NAP is not that it’s a single entity but that it’s wielding power to violate NAP, e.g. violating negative rights, redistributing wealth etc. Since a private entity like Facebook doesn’t do that, it’s not even comparable. And the reason it has so much power (but again it can’t violate your negative liberty like govts do despite that) is that people voluntarily choose to use it so much (even if not willingly). As long as they choose to do so, Facebook gets power and that’s how it should work. I personally think that Facebook isn’t great and we should use less of it and be less reliant on it (which I follow), but I’m not going to support using government’s power to override other people’s choices. A social network with a monthly fee (if people are ok with supporting it voluntarily over a privacy nightmare like Facebook) should be worth a try.