>You are proposing a black/white dichotomy where I proposed a partnership. Let the corporations provide the services, let the government write the rules of the

>You are proposing a black/white dichotomy where I proposed a partnership. Let the corporations provide the services, let the government write the rules of the playing field. Why would you trust the same government that is already not regulating Facebook to do any better if it has to implement something itself? I'll admit I am proposing a black/white dichotomy in this instance. I don't do that for all markets but I do in this one. To me a free market is best when we really want the market to race to the bottom quickly and there are few externalities or complicating factors. This is very rare. A regulated market is best when there are complicating factors and externalities but we still want to engage in a race to the bottom. This is very common. Removing the market entirely is best when we don't want to race to the bottom. This is rare. Even though it's rare, I cannot think of a better example than Social Media. Facebook and these other companies have utilized mostly free markets to race to the bottom, we've made 95% of the gains already. Now Facebook is exposing it's users to all sorts of nasty costs that society does not want to bear in order to squeeze out profit. This is not being caused by some one-off feature of the market, it is being caused by the central feature of the market, profit motive. The only way to fix these problems are to remove profit motive. That means either nationalization or non-profit status. Here's two quotes from a recent Tim Wu interview that I think speak to what I'm trying to say here: >They're not. But, well, that's the problem. I think there's a sort of intrinsic problem with having for-profit entities with this business model in this position of so much public trust because they're always at the edge because their profitability depends on it. >Well, if Mark Zuckerberg is telling the truth when he says, what I care about is connecting people to their families and friends, that's a very lofty ambition. If that's what he really wants to do, he can do it. But it doesn't mean he'll be the most profitable company in the world. You know, utilities - which is what Facebook is, a social utility - have never been understood as profit centers before. [...] And there's a reason. The social sphere is a little bit different. And maybe we need to accept that it's not a source of major profit to be in people's personal lives. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook-previously-failed-to-keep-privacy-promises-ex-ftc-adviser-says https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook-previously...