6 ms·

Hasn't breaking up monopolies been a central tenet of ensuring a free market since forever? Suddenly you defend monopolies. Interesting, isn't it?

FDSGSG 6y ago
There is no hosting monopoly, there is no payment processing monopoly, there is no domain registration monopoly, there is no SSL CA monopoly.
- SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
  It's sufficient to push undesirables to services which are more expensive, more inconvenient, unreliable, and so on. Relegate them to their internet ghetto. However, there clearly is a small number of players in mobile platforms, cloud, and payment, and they act in a unified way. It has been sufficient.
  - FDSGSG 6y ago
    >mobile platforms Sure, there are in fact only a small number of players in this space. >cloud There are vast amounts of hosting providers. A quick google suggests over 300k, but that sounds somewhat unlikely. >payment There are a thousands of banks in the world, most of Europe manages just fine using bank transfers for payments without involving external payment processors. >It's sufficient to push undesirables to services which are more expensive, more inconvenient, unreliable, and so on. Relegate them to their internet ghetto. Is this really a problem? That's just the inherent nature of being undesirable.
- dmantis 6y ago
  Payment processings are monopolies. More precisely, oligopolies. See how easily Mastercard and Visa drop PornHub payments after the news paper article. It's not a court order or even a trial. There is mainly zero way of doing business without fully government controlled banking entry-points. Yes, there are cryptocurrencies available, so if we can fully legalize it and promise that we don't touch anyone's private transactions (as well as businesses officially accepting crypto) - that would be an argument. For better understanding how bad it is: it's non trivial to even accept worldwide payments for small business/individual in the internet if you are, say, from Ukraine, Russia, China or lots of other countries not processed by stripe/paypal for some political or legal reasons. Apart from that, there is a "free" market of two payment processors in the internet and two card processors =)
  - FDSGSG 6y ago
    This is bizarre. You offer cryptocurrencies as the alternative for Mastercard and Visa. How about bank transfers? It's perfectly normal in Europe to pay for your ecommerce purchases with a bank transfer directly to the merchants account. There are thousands of banks out there, there's no monopoly or oligopoly at play.

FDSGSG 6y ago

There is no hosting monopoly, there is no payment processing monopoly, there is no domain registration monopoly, there is no SSL CA monopoly.

SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
It's sufficient to push undesirables to services which are more expensive, more inconvenient, unreliable, and so on. Relegate them to their internet ghetto. However, there clearly is a small number of players in mobile platforms, cloud, and payment, and they act in a unified way. It has been sufficient.
- FDSGSG 6y ago
  >mobile platforms Sure, there are in fact only a small number of players in this space. >cloud There are vast amounts of hosting providers. A quick google suggests over 300k, but that sounds somewhat unlikely. >payment There are a thousands of banks in the world, most of Europe manages just fine using bank transfers for payments without involving external payment processors. >It's sufficient to push undesirables to services which are more expensive, more inconvenient, unreliable, and so on. Relegate them to their internet ghetto. Is this really a problem? That's just the inherent nature of being undesirable.
dmantis 6y ago
Payment processings are monopolies. More precisely, oligopolies. See how easily Mastercard and Visa drop PornHub payments after the news paper article. It's not a court order or even a trial. There is mainly zero way of doing business without fully government controlled banking entry-points. Yes, there are cryptocurrencies available, so if we can fully legalize it and promise that we don't touch anyone's private transactions (as well as businesses officially accepting crypto) - that would be an argument. For better understanding how bad it is: it's non trivial to even accept worldwide payments for small business/individual in the internet if you are, say, from Ukraine, Russia, China or lots of other countries not processed by stripe/paypal for some political or legal reasons. Apart from that, there is a "free" market of two payment processors in the internet and two card processors =)
- FDSGSG 6y ago
  This is bizarre. You offer cryptocurrencies as the alternative for Mastercard and Visa. How about bank transfers? It's perfectly normal in Europe to pay for your ecommerce purchases with a bank transfer directly to the merchants account. There are thousands of banks out there, there's no monopoly or oligopoly at play.