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It’s amazing how well connected industries like big oil and big Ag seem to operate with impunity while the nascent bad boys are put under the investigation spot

by r00fus 7y ago

It’s amazing how well connected industries like big oil and big Ag seem to operate with impunity while the nascent bad boys are put under the investigation spotlight. Perhaps Big Tech hasn’t hired enough lobbyists.

joes223 7y ago
This may be the old money vs new money confrontation.
paganel 7y ago
Big tech companies haven’t been “the nascent bad boys” for a while now, at one point there were 4 such tech companies being worth between 800 billion and 1 trillion dollars, the last time when that was the case for oil companies Rockefeller was still the wealthiest man on this planet (and banking groups never got that much of a valuation). That is to say that those tech groups are well established behemoths, when you’re actively influencing elections (to say nothing of regular people’s day-to-day life) you may as well be.
Monroe13 7y ago
Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook are regularly in the top 10 in annual corporate lobbying spend. They disclosed more than $45 million in lobbying spending last year alone. DC is crawling with tech lobbyists. Ag’s spending is peanuts in comparison. https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYear=2018 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYe...
apatters 7y ago
I strongly encourage anyone who has an interest or opinion about this topic (Big Tech monopolies and antitrust action) to subscribe to Matt Stoller's newsletter, Big: The History and Politics of Monopoly Power. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/ It's the most informative resource I've come across on the topic. Among many things you will learn about: - The definition of "market power" and why it matters - The details of US, EU and international antitrust laws - Why most of the Big Techs are almost certainly in violation of these laws today - Antitrust enforcement actions that are in the pipeline and what their repercussions may be There are some important principles which are not widely understood and Matt's newsletter goes into them. For example, once you reach a certain level of success, it becomes illegal to keep doing some of the stuff that your company has always done. These principles often come as a surprise to people but they are grounded in a long intellectual and legal history that goes as far back as Adam Smith.
logicchains 7y ago
Big Oil and Big Ag aren't an existential threat to the business model of the traditional news media, and the traditional news media still have a lot of power to influence opinions. An experiment: try counting the number of positive news articles about Google/Facebook you see and compare it to the number of negative ones.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  The down votes are concerning. Regardless of your opinion on FAANGXYZ there are other industries which aren't being talked about enough (banks, oil companies, etc..), and we all know why. Talk about tech, yes, but we don't need a sustained smear campaign like we've been getting the past 3 years.
  - blub 7y ago
    US big tech have been able so far to lobby (read buy) themselves out of any regulatory corrections. Only the EU has fined these behemoths and there's a large contingent of people that start crying discrimination whenever that happens. We need to keep this topic under public scrutiny until these companies stop abusing their dominance. And it's not a smear campaign if the criticism is true.
  - Monroe13 7y ago
    But keep in mind the 3 year smear campaign followed a multi-year media love fest for Big Tech. The Tech industry has spent billions on PR. That spending propped up a massive media infrastructure — how many reporters cover the tech beat? How many of those reporters exist because their publication host events and conferences, run advertorials, print “Special Features”, etc. paid for in large part by the tech industry? — and the industry naively thought they had the leverage to control the narrative. They were wrong and now the massive infrastructure they built to help them market their products has turned on them. The amount of noise being generated is a function of the size of the “problem” but it’s also a function of the size of the media-industrial complex built by the industry. Ag and Oil are also under scrutiny but you shouldn’t be surprised they get less attention. They haven’t spent nearly as much over the last decade twirling shiny objects to distract from poor business practices.

by r00fus 7y ago

joes223 7y ago

This may be the old money vs new money confrontation.

paganel 7y ago

Big tech companies haven’t been “the nascent bad boys” for a while now, at one point there were 4 such tech companies being worth between 800 billion and 1 trillion dollars, the last time when that was the case for oil companies Rockefeller was still the wealthiest man on this planet (and banking groups never got that much of a valuation). That is to say that those tech groups are well established behemoths, when you’re actively influencing elections (to say nothing of regular people’s day-to-day life) you may as well be.

Monroe13 7y ago

Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook are regularly in the top 10 in annual corporate lobbying spend. They disclosed more than $45 million in lobbying spending last year alone. DC is crawling with tech lobbyists. Ag’s spending is peanuts in comparison. https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYear=2018 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYe...

apatters 7y ago

I strongly encourage anyone who has an interest or opinion about this topic (Big Tech monopolies and antitrust action) to subscribe to Matt Stoller's newsletter, Big: The History and Politics of Monopoly Power. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/ It's the most informative resource I've come across on the topic. Among many things you will learn about: - The definition of "market power" and why it matters - The details of US, EU and international antitrust laws - Why most of the Big Techs are almost certainly in violation of these laws today - Antitrust enforcement actions that are in the pipeline and what their repercussions may be There are some important principles which are not widely understood and Matt's newsletter goes into them. For example, once you reach a certain level of success, it becomes illegal to keep doing some of the stuff that your company has always done. These principles often come as a surprise to people but they are grounded in a long intellectual and legal history that goes as far back as Adam Smith.

logicchains 7y ago

Big Oil and Big Ag aren't an existential threat to the business model of the traditional news media, and the traditional news media still have a lot of power to influence opinions. An experiment: try counting the number of positive news articles about Google/Facebook you see and compare it to the number of negative ones.

cameronbrown 7y ago
The down votes are concerning. Regardless of your opinion on FAANGXYZ there are other industries which aren't being talked about enough (banks, oil companies, etc..), and we all know why. Talk about tech, yes, but we don't need a sustained smear campaign like we've been getting the past 3 years.
- blub 7y ago
  US big tech have been able so far to lobby (read buy) themselves out of any regulatory corrections. Only the EU has fined these behemoths and there's a large contingent of people that start crying discrimination whenever that happens. We need to keep this topic under public scrutiny until these companies stop abusing their dominance. And it's not a smear campaign if the criticism is true.
- Monroe13 7y ago
  But keep in mind the 3 year smear campaign followed a multi-year media love fest for Big Tech. The Tech industry has spent billions on PR. That spending propped up a massive media infrastructure — how many reporters cover the tech beat? How many of those reporters exist because their publication host events and conferences, run advertorials, print “Special Features”, etc. paid for in large part by the tech industry? — and the industry naively thought they had the leverage to control the narrative. They were wrong and now the massive infrastructure they built to help them market their products has turned on them. The amount of noise being generated is a function of the size of the “problem” but it’s also a function of the size of the media-industrial complex built by the industry. Ag and Oil are also under scrutiny but you shouldn’t be surprised they get less attention. They haven’t spent nearly as much over the last decade twirling shiny objects to distract from poor business practices.