4 ms·

This is a red herring fallacy. The government can be more evil than Google and Google can still be evil. Does that mean we should not care that Google is evil

This is a red herring fallacy. The government can be more evil than Google and Google can still be evil. Does that mean we should not care that Google is evil? The government is the only tool we have to fight Google. And while there are lots of problems with our government, we still have the ability to enact change by voting. You can't really do that with Google, even as a shareholder. The founders have supervoting rights, so even if every investor voted against them they don't have to listen.

wonder_er 6y ago
> The government can be more evil than Google and Google can still be evil. Does that mean we should not care that Google is evil? You're conflating two things. 1. The government is more evil than Google. 2. Google may still be evil. therefore... use the more evil thing to fight the less evil thing? I disagree with this assessment. I'd say we should focus on mitigating the _most_ evil thing, using _less evil_ tools. > The government is the only tool we have to fight Google. The missing piece here is - we have plenty of tools to "fight google". Everyone could up and leave, stop using their service, and boom. no more revenue. Google is gone, irrelevant, de-monopolized. The government is indeed the only _coercive_ tool available to fight Google, because the government can make credible threats of violence against the Google leadership. There are plenty of other non-coercive tools we can use to "fight" google, and it's called "competition". For example, notice that we're talking about Google right now, and not Microsoft. This is because Google "fought" Microsoft's monopoly by _making better tools_. I cannot wait to see what company comes along and beats Google at their own game.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  The entire premise of your argument is that there is a free market, but the entire premise of this lawsuit is that Google has a monopoly. Sure, in a perfect world (or really, your idea of a perfect world) that might work. But I'm much more interested in practical solutions than idealistic truisms. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Also by your own logic, unless you believe the US government is the most evil thing in existence, we shouldn't even be focusing on that. So you should go fight whatever you consider to be the greatest evil and keep knocking the top off the totem pole.
- stale2002 6y ago
  > There are plenty of other non-coercive tools we can use to "fight" google, and it's called "competition". Coercion works pretty well though. I don't see why we should not use this effective tool, when we agree that Google is doing a lot of wrong things that should be stopped. If you believe the government is doing other bad things, against other people, fine you can argue that. But that is not particularly relevant, and is just a non-sequitor. I don't see how, in this particular situation, using coercion against Google is bad. Seems like it would be pretty good to me. It can both be true that the government is doing bad things against others, but that in this particular situation, using a monopoly on violence, to use coercion against the Google leadership is a good thing. To argue otherwise is just an irrelevant point, that is not directly related to the immediate situation.

wonder_er 6y ago

> The government can be more evil than Google and Google can still be evil. Does that mean we should not care that Google is evil? You're conflating two things. 1. The government is more evil than Google. 2. Google may still be evil. therefore... use the more evil thing to fight the less evil thing? I disagree with this assessment. I'd say we should focus on mitigating the _most_ evil thing, using _less evil_ tools. > The government is the only tool we have to fight Google. The missing piece here is - we have plenty of tools to "fight google". Everyone could up and leave, stop using their service, and boom. no more revenue. Google is gone, irrelevant, de-monopolized. The government is indeed the only _coercive_ tool available to fight Google, because the government can make credible threats of violence against the Google leadership. There are plenty of other non-coercive tools we can use to "fight" google, and it's called "competition". For example, notice that we're talking about Google right now, and not Microsoft. This is because Google "fought" Microsoft's monopoly by _making better tools_. I cannot wait to see what company comes along and beats Google at their own game.

Judgmentality 6y ago
The entire premise of your argument is that there is a free market, but the entire premise of this lawsuit is that Google has a monopoly. Sure, in a perfect world (or really, your idea of a perfect world) that might work. But I'm much more interested in practical solutions than idealistic truisms. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Also by your own logic, unless you believe the US government is the most evil thing in existence, we shouldn't even be focusing on that. So you should go fight whatever you consider to be the greatest evil and keep knocking the top off the totem pole.
stale2002 6y ago
> There are plenty of other non-coercive tools we can use to "fight" google, and it's called "competition". Coercion works pretty well though. I don't see why we should not use this effective tool, when we agree that Google is doing a lot of wrong things that should be stopped. If you believe the government is doing other bad things, against other people, fine you can argue that. But that is not particularly relevant, and is just a non-sequitor. I don't see how, in this particular situation, using coercion against Google is bad. Seems like it would be pretty good to me. It can both be true that the government is doing bad things against others, but that in this particular situation, using a monopoly on violence, to use coercion against the Google leadership is a good thing. To argue otherwise is just an irrelevant point, that is not directly related to the immediate situation.