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The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices in the first place, so while they may appear to be a 'benevolent dictator,' they wil
by b_b 8y ago
The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices in the first place, so while they may appear to be a 'benevolent dictator,' they will quickly turn for the worse.
- fixermark 8y agoIt seems to be an open question whether letting a corp play benevolent dictator for some timeframe, at least, is a useful thing.
- brightball 8y agoBasically it works until they have a reason to defend themselves.
- chargingmylaser 8y agoBell Labs was a monopoly (at least for a time period) and yielded countless high-impact, transformative innovations that a company with fewer resources (probably) would not have been able to develop. I think (although I could be wrong) most would agree they were a net benefit to society.
- abandonliberty 8y agoIn our local post-monopoly phone provider, 30 years ago dispatchers would call the local strip club bartender to reach their technicians. They were all on a first name basis. It was much better to work for these companies back then. Now, everything is super efficient and all that extra value the technicians generate go straight to executives and shareholders.
- nine_k 8y agoBell Labs was not a monopoly: it did not prevent operation of other research labs. E.g. the highly successful Xeroc PARC co-existed with them for a decade or two. Bell the telecom company was a monopoly that financed Bell Labs. Bell Labs did not go down in flames when Bell was partitioned in 1982, and continued providing the world with great achievements.
- chargingmylaser 8y agoTotally true; I glossed over the distinction between Bell and Bell Labs -- I suppose this might be analogous (with the full understanding that the analogy is incomplete) to separating Google[x] and Google. However, is it not the case that Bell Labs was able to undertake such ambitious research projects because it was backed by a monopoly? Also, while Xerox PARC was also a legendary research institution in its day, I don't put it at the scale of Bell Labs, which touched a much broader array of fields. To quantify this distinction, compare the research budgets in 2018 dollars: - Xerox PARC: ~$450 million (http://articles.latimes.com/2001/dec/12/business/fi-parc12 http://articles.latimes.com/2001/dec/12/business/fi-parc12) - Bell Labs: $6 billion (https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/08/comparing-research-budgets-of-1970s.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/08/comparing-research-bud...) These sources might be imperfect.
- stuckinarut 8y agoGee, that sounds familiar. I guess it's totally different because google only uses their duopoly position in ads to finance everything else.
- Pica_soO 8y agoYou can sit on great ideas like the phone, because they threaten your gramophon buisness model?
- stuckinarut 8y agoI don't think it can be considered an open question if we're all just waiting for the inevitable disaster. The problem is we're just being slowly boiled so nothing has been done to stop the complete perversion of democracy and slide into a corporate oligarchy.
- fixermark 8y agoComplete perversion of democracy?
- deklerk 8y ago> The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices Is that true? That doesn't match the definition of any antitrust regulation I'm aware of. AFAIK antitrust regulation is intended to enforce _fairness_, not _innovation_. Often the two go hand in hand, of course, but I think it's worth not conflating the two.
- nine_k 8y agoHmm, fairness? "Level playing field", maybe. The idea of anti-trust regulation is to break up companies that cornered a market, that is, (mostly) prevented competition on it. Breaking them up serves to make more, smaller companies (out of the split giant) that would start to compete again. Anti-trust laws can be seen as pro-market laws that try to prevent long periods of monopolized markets without waiting for a naturally occurring disruption, instead providing a mandated disruption. Whether it's _efficient_, and whether it works as intended, can be discussed.
- deklerk 8y agoI used "fairness" because it appears in most definitions of the anti trust regulation. A "level playing field" is 100% not the point of antitrust laws. Sidenote: I don't believe any "playing field" in business is "level". I think something for folks to keep in mind is that much of the US antitrust laws were made back in the early 1900s to combat _literal_ monopolies, objective collusion between companies to harm consumers, and so on. We're talking price fixing here. > Anti-trust laws can be seen as pro-market laws that try to prevent long periods of monopolized markets without waiting for a naturally occurring disruption, instead providing a mandated disruption. This sentence is dangerous: it is very close to saying that any long-term, successful company should be "disrupted". Interpreted differently it could be read that startups should have some inherent right to evenly compete with large companies (by fining or splitting up large companies to be "beatable" by startups). Again, that is not all the point of anti trust laws. I won't argue whether there should be laws like that (as you can tell, I think not), but the anti trust regulation in the USA is definitely squarely aimed at _actual_ monopolies and collusion.