3 ms·

I have no specific bad feelings about IBM, but I don't like the constant drive towards consolidation. It makes us worse off, I feel. Nearly all these big merge

I have no specific bad feelings about IBM, but I don't like the constant drive towards consolidation. It makes us worse off, I feel. Nearly all these big mergers are about cornering markets, reducing competition and avoiding innovations. At best they're about finance shenanigans. It's not as if redhat customers are likely to be excited about this.

Frost1x 7y ago
I agree. I think there's enough evidence at this point in time to show that corporate consolidation after a point is no longer beneficial to our society. After a certain point, it's pretty clear to me that consolidation only benefits a few significantly invested shareholders and no one else. I suspect this is somewhere greater than the "big 4-5" we've become accustomed to accepting in every sector, when economies of scale stop showing significant sizable benefits to consumers and the market at large. Instead, it turns into pure financial strategy to maximize the few most significant investors' ROI which becomes significantly disproportionate to their contribution to society. Antitrust cases are quite slow to react to these circumstances, be it intentional (financial influence in government) and or structural (government intentionally moves slowly).
- dalbasal 7y ago
  Antitrust can't be left in the hands of courts. For one thing, the practices legally defined as "trust" behaviour are, to an extent, specific to time, place and time and industry. Laws made for railroad and raw material trusts are not really applicable to operating systems or social media. A second reason is that practices evolve around legal limitations. Monopolies can stay on one side of the legal letter, and that evolves over time. To actually deal with trusts requires legislation specifically tailored to the monopolistic tendencies of (for example) the 2019 tech sector. Maybe "data share" needs to be a concept like market share is/was.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Where is this evidence you are talking about? This acquisition has the potential of IBM using RH to disrupt the cancer of putting everything on AWS/GCE/Azure by pushing open source-based models. If there is one thing that’s obvious, it’s that people in this thread have very little imagination of the benefits of teamwork and conjoined efforts. The only thing this is evidence of is the shocking ignorance about businesses.
  - dalbasal 7y ago
    In the future, considering that it hasn't happened yet.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      What are you talking about? GP said there is already “enough evidence”.

Frost1x 7y ago

I agree. I think there's enough evidence at this point in time to show that corporate consolidation after a point is no longer beneficial to our society. After a certain point, it's pretty clear to me that consolidation only benefits a few significantly invested shareholders and no one else. I suspect this is somewhere greater than the "big 4-5" we've become accustomed to accepting in every sector, when economies of scale stop showing significant sizable benefits to consumers and the market at large. Instead, it turns into pure financial strategy to maximize the few most significant investors' ROI which becomes significantly disproportionate to their contribution to society. Antitrust cases are quite slow to react to these circumstances, be it intentional (financial influence in government) and or structural (government intentionally moves slowly).

dalbasal 7y ago
Antitrust can't be left in the hands of courts. For one thing, the practices legally defined as "trust" behaviour are, to an extent, specific to time, place and time and industry. Laws made for railroad and raw material trusts are not really applicable to operating systems or social media. A second reason is that practices evolve around legal limitations. Monopolies can stay on one side of the legal letter, and that evolves over time. To actually deal with trusts requires legislation specifically tailored to the monopolistic tendencies of (for example) the 2019 tech sector. Maybe "data share" needs to be a concept like market share is/was.
kortilla 7y ago
Where is this evidence you are talking about? This acquisition has the potential of IBM using RH to disrupt the cancer of putting everything on AWS/GCE/Azure by pushing open source-based models. If there is one thing that’s obvious, it’s that people in this thread have very little imagination of the benefits of teamwork and conjoined efforts. The only thing this is evidence of is the shocking ignorance about businesses.
- dalbasal 7y ago
  In the future, considering that it hasn't happened yet.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    What are you talking about? GP said there is already “enough evidence”.