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I agree. Somehow we should discourage large companies and create a system that favors more smaller companies. I really don't see the value in having huge compan

I agree. Somehow we should discourage large companies and create a system that favors more smaller companies. I really don't see the value in having huge companies like Apple or Amazon that need to absorb more and more businesses to keep growing. They hinder innovation, trample over smaller companies but have the power to shape countries' policies to their advantage. In the past there was a size limit to managing a company but unfortunately technology allows for more and more central control so the trend to ever bigger companies will probably continue.

noir_lord 6y ago
Cyberpunk called this back in the 70's, 80's - Corporations come to rule the world and states become less and less relevant. I sometimes feel like we live in that world already just without the cool neon/fashions. Drones, militarisation of the police, massive corporations that are basically immune to governments on a basic level.
- topkai22 6y ago
  I think a fair amount of cyberpunk also had an eye to the past, with the East India company and others like it serving as reference points to the mega corps of the “future” The East India company is gone, the railroads and US steel aren’t what they once were. And this age shall pass too.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Just like how the breakup of bell liberated us from oppressive telecoms monopolizing our neighborhoods, and fostered competitive innovation in this field, right? It doesn't matter how many companies there are in an industry if the functional consequences on your life by that industry as a whole are the exact same if they were a single monolith. If it quacks like a duck... You say the railroads are a bygone era, just drive through San Marino to see what railroad money has bought and continues to buy to this very day. This wealth did not evaporate, it has only grown.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  > just without the cool neon/fashions. We have EL wire and plenty of awesome cyberpunk fashion is available on places like Etsy. I fully support making cyberpunk fashion a thing. If I have to live in a dystopia, I at least want to look good doing it.
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  All that, but no Smartwheel skateboards yet.
  - asdff 6y ago
    There are electric skateboards and that crazy onewheel thing. I've seen a very cyberpunk ebike rider in my neighborhood. No shirt, full gas mask, rides straight up the steepest hills and will stare you down until you look away first.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  >I sometimes feel like we live in that world already just without the cool neon/fashions. I honestly think we'll see a cyberpunk renaissance (in terms of aesthetic) starting later this year and definitely in 2021. Not just because a game like Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out, but because of things like the Cybertruck (https://www.tesla.com/cybertruck https://www.tesla.com/cybertruck) - it looks outlandish now, but I believe the designers knew what they were doing and understand trends and aesthetics better than most non-professionals. Then there are upcoming massive Hollywood releases like the Matrix 4 coming in 2021, as well as a reboot of Videodrome and Akira, plus games like Watchdogs: Legion etc. More mainstream culture is also embracing cyberpunk at the moment. Take the rapper Lil Nas X - https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/45887/1/lil-nas-x-panini-music-video-watch https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/45887/1/lil-nas-x... or the musician Grimes - https://www.pcgamer.com/grimes-reveals-how-her-cyberpunk-2077-character-became-a-solid-chrome-cyborg/ https://www.pcgamer.com/grimes-reveals-how-her-cyberpunk-207... Hell, this is a bag from Louis Vuitton that just screams "cyberpunk": https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18617427/louis-vuitton-royole-cruise-2020-canvas-of-the-future-flexible-display-handbag https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18617427/louis-vuitton-ro...
mrkstu 6y ago
To be fair, Apple generally buys small companies and adds their capabilities to their toolbelt, rather than growing its size through acquisition and Amazon is similar. Now if you mean LINES of business, then yes, they both regularly expand into new lines of business and then dominate them, either in skimming the profit (ala Apple) or just altogether (Amazon.)
kansface 6y ago
> Somehow we should discourage large companies and create a system that favors more smaller companies Regulation is strongly, negatively correlated to competition within any industry.
- Ididntdothis 6y ago
  There are many ways governments already encourage or discourage certain behaviors, be it taxes, IP laws or other regulation. Right now they are written for the winners (big companies) but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Let's really dig into this. Monopolies are bad, but I wouldn't clamp down on the size of companies per se. There is a much more clever thing to do: Managers wanting to seem self-important, and speculation-prone owners, are too obsessed with growth and seek to maximize revenue. Even maximizing profit is still meh, because that still creates some incentive for growth. What we really want companies to maximize is profit / revenue, or profit / employee. In other words, productivity for productivity's sake. BTW, co-ops are generally great, and already have the incentive to maximize profit / employee. Perfect! But how do we get non-employee owned companies to do the same? Tax them based off of revenue rather than profit. Then they will only grow if they don't need to burn productivity in the process. Yes, capital expenditures no longer have the nice side benefit of reducing profit, but the incentive for productivity makes up for it. Also, it's fair because stupid things like income tax are effective taxing revenue rather than profit, and finally it's also way simpler to levy / harder to evade.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  I am all for increased productivity but there are two big issues there even putting aside fallacies about efficency and growth being bad. One is that it promotes a skewed specialization on the high margin while neglecting the lower margins which may be important and essentially by definition are in high demand if they got big enough for that economy or scale in the first place. It is largely inequitable as it discourages the low end from showing up at all. Two is that it inherently misvalues resources based upon what it sees as revenue vs not. It echoes the Soviet mistakes in thinking of their workers as serfs with free labor and new tools as expensive because they cost revenue. Said revenue would continue down the chain as one's gains are another's losses that need to rise virally down every logistical step leading to needless repetition to "start from scratch" with vertical intergration.
phil21 6y ago
> Somehow we should discourage large companies and create a system that favors more smaller companies. At risk of a very low-information me-too comment... Yes, this. I'm finding it very hard to place myself on the "political spectrum" to even label what my beliefs are or find allies to join forces with. If you could sum up my (economic at least) political thoughts on the matter it would be "whatever system results in lots of small merchants competing in a market that does not allow for huge monopolies to exist". I want thousands of 100 person companies competing, not one giant Google. How realistic that is, is of course a very open-ended question - and certainly some problems exist with the theory when you need to get "scale" projects done that require large organizations of people. I still have no idea what political or economic system that is, but I believe that's the balance where we optimize both for economic security as well as the human need for agency. For now, I simply try to vote anti-monopoly as much as I can, but in recent decades that doesn't mean much as no one is even talking about breaking up these giant telecoms/media companies/etc.
- Ididntdothis 6y ago
  This will probably be very unpopular but I think progressive taxation of companies would work. This would be disruptive for a while but I think over time smaller companies would thrive in such an environment.

noir_lord 6y ago

Cyberpunk called this back in the 70's, 80's - Corporations come to rule the world and states become less and less relevant. I sometimes feel like we live in that world already just without the cool neon/fashions. Drones, militarisation of the police, massive corporations that are basically immune to governments on a basic level.

topkai22 6y ago
I think a fair amount of cyberpunk also had an eye to the past, with the East India company and others like it serving as reference points to the mega corps of the “future” The East India company is gone, the railroads and US steel aren’t what they once were. And this age shall pass too.
- asdff 6y ago
  Just like how the breakup of bell liberated us from oppressive telecoms monopolizing our neighborhoods, and fostered competitive innovation in this field, right? It doesn't matter how many companies there are in an industry if the functional consequences on your life by that industry as a whole are the exact same if they were a single monolith. If it quacks like a duck... You say the railroads are a bygone era, just drive through San Marino to see what railroad money has bought and continues to buy to this very day. This wealth did not evaporate, it has only grown.
vorpalhex 6y ago
> just without the cool neon/fashions. We have EL wire and plenty of awesome cyberpunk fashion is available on places like Etsy. I fully support making cyberpunk fashion a thing. If I have to live in a dystopia, I at least want to look good doing it.
hindsightbias 6y ago
All that, but no Smartwheel skateboards yet.
- asdff 6y ago
  There are electric skateboards and that crazy onewheel thing. I've seen a very cyberpunk ebike rider in my neighborhood. No shirt, full gas mask, rides straight up the steepest hills and will stare you down until you look away first.
alasdair_ 6y ago
>I sometimes feel like we live in that world already just without the cool neon/fashions. I honestly think we'll see a cyberpunk renaissance (in terms of aesthetic) starting later this year and definitely in 2021. Not just because a game like Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out, but because of things like the Cybertruck (https://www.tesla.com/cybertruck https://www.tesla.com/cybertruck) - it looks outlandish now, but I believe the designers knew what they were doing and understand trends and aesthetics better than most non-professionals. Then there are upcoming massive Hollywood releases like the Matrix 4 coming in 2021, as well as a reboot of Videodrome and Akira, plus games like Watchdogs: Legion etc. More mainstream culture is also embracing cyberpunk at the moment. Take the rapper Lil Nas X - https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/45887/1/lil-nas-x-panini-music-video-watch https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/45887/1/lil-nas-x... or the musician Grimes - https://www.pcgamer.com/grimes-reveals-how-her-cyberpunk-2077-character-became-a-solid-chrome-cyborg/ https://www.pcgamer.com/grimes-reveals-how-her-cyberpunk-207... Hell, this is a bag from Louis Vuitton that just screams "cyberpunk": https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18617427/louis-vuitton-royole-cruise-2020-canvas-of-the-future-flexible-display-handbag https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18617427/louis-vuitton-ro...

mrkstu 6y ago

To be fair, Apple generally buys small companies and adds their capabilities to their toolbelt, rather than growing its size through acquisition and Amazon is similar. Now if you mean LINES of business, then yes, they both regularly expand into new lines of business and then dominate them, either in skimming the profit (ala Apple) or just altogether (Amazon.)

kansface 6y ago

> Somehow we should discourage large companies and create a system that favors more smaller companies Regulation is strongly, negatively correlated to competition within any industry.

Ididntdothis 6y ago
There are many ways governments already encourage or discourage certain behaviors, be it taxes, IP laws or other regulation. Right now they are written for the winners (big companies) but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Let's really dig into this. Monopolies are bad, but I wouldn't clamp down on the size of companies per se. There is a much more clever thing to do: Managers wanting to seem self-important, and speculation-prone owners, are too obsessed with growth and seek to maximize revenue. Even maximizing profit is still meh, because that still creates some incentive for growth. What we really want companies to maximize is profit / revenue, or profit / employee. In other words, productivity for productivity's sake. BTW, co-ops are generally great, and already have the incentive to maximize profit / employee. Perfect! But how do we get non-employee owned companies to do the same? Tax them based off of revenue rather than profit. Then they will only grow if they don't need to burn productivity in the process. Yes, capital expenditures no longer have the nice side benefit of reducing profit, but the incentive for productivity makes up for it. Also, it's fair because stupid things like income tax are effective taxing revenue rather than profit, and finally it's also way simpler to levy / harder to evade.

Nasrudith 6y ago
I am all for increased productivity but there are two big issues there even putting aside fallacies about efficency and growth being bad. One is that it promotes a skewed specialization on the high margin while neglecting the lower margins which may be important and essentially by definition are in high demand if they got big enough for that economy or scale in the first place. It is largely inequitable as it discourages the low end from showing up at all. Two is that it inherently misvalues resources based upon what it sees as revenue vs not. It echoes the Soviet mistakes in thinking of their workers as serfs with free labor and new tools as expensive because they cost revenue. Said revenue would continue down the chain as one's gains are another's losses that need to rise virally down every logistical step leading to needless repetition to "start from scratch" with vertical intergration.

phil21 6y ago

> Somehow we should discourage large companies and create a system that favors more smaller companies. At risk of a very low-information me-too comment... Yes, this. I'm finding it very hard to place myself on the "political spectrum" to even label what my beliefs are or find allies to join forces with. If you could sum up my (economic at least) political thoughts on the matter it would be "whatever system results in lots of small merchants competing in a market that does not allow for huge monopolies to exist". I want thousands of 100 person companies competing, not one giant Google. How realistic that is, is of course a very open-ended question - and certainly some problems exist with the theory when you need to get "scale" projects done that require large organizations of people. I still have no idea what political or economic system that is, but I believe that's the balance where we optimize both for economic security as well as the human need for agency. For now, I simply try to vote anti-monopoly as much as I can, but in recent decades that doesn't mean much as no one is even talking about breaking up these giant telecoms/media companies/etc.

Ididntdothis 6y ago
This will probably be very unpopular but I think progressive taxation of companies would work. This would be disruptive for a while but I think over time smaller companies would thrive in such an environment.