4 ms·

"policymakers' hearty appetite to rein in Big Tech". Rein them in from doing what exactly? Buying companies and making people rich?

xxpor 5y ago
They're making the wrong people rich: Not the good ol boys who support conservative christian causes. They're eating old businesses. This is a threat to the existing donor class in Washington, which has embarked on a project since 1968 to build power through political donations, the courts, and crushing labor.
- bgorman 5y ago
  This is exactly right. Big tech doesn’t have a unionized workforce, and thus do not create solid blue votes- so they will never be favored. Big Tech has been playing with fire warning up to democratic politicians.
- ru552 5y ago
  Why would a Dem controlled President, House, and Senate care to preserve your so called “conservative christian causes”?
  - ncfausti 5y ago
    It requires bipartisanship in the Senate. Why is this the only thing Dems and Republicans can agree on? It's hard for me to not see it as a power play on both sides.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  This is an extremely cynical take on antitrust law. Unjustifiably cynical, at least for now. Granted, America has done such a piss-poor job of actually enforcing antitrust laws already on the books that it's hard not to read into this enforcement now as the end result of someone refusing to play ball.
  - dantheman 5y ago
    Antitrust law has always been cynical and just a tool for those who lost to use favor to get something from those who won. Will the FTC go after the AMA and the healthcare industry? The cable industry granted monopolies by local communities? Go after industries that are hated and bankrupt people? Or will it go after services people love, that are free, or that revolutionize industries?
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Do people actually love these services at present, as opposed to five or ten years ago? The bipartisan move towards antitrust is undergirded by bipartisan grassroots discontent.
      - wutbrodo 5y ago
        There's a weird[1] dynamic where people dislike "big tech" but are wildly favorable towards individual big tech colonies: Google, Amazon, Apple all have favorability ratings in the 80s and 90s, while Facebook, Twitter, and Slack have much lower ratings. Interestingly enough, being a monopoly seems to be correlated with _higher_ favorability. Your assumption about the implications of bipartisan support seems a little Pollyanna-ish about the degree to which politicians represent their constituents on any given issue. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey-2020-trust-privacy-security-facebook-amazon-google-apple https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2... (I couldn't find individual company numbers for 2021) [1] I guess this isn't that weird, given that similar inconsistencies shows up in all sorts of polling.
      - dodobirdlord 5y ago
        > The bipartisan move towards antitrust is undergirded by bipartisan grassroots discontent. Depends on which companies you're talking about. There's widespread discontent about social media companies, but the left and right wing of the political spectrum have opposite and incompatible discontents, so I don't think it's justifiable to call it "bipartisan grassroots discontent". The non-social-media "Big Tech" companies remain extremely popular and well-regarded in surveys of the general public. Google, Amazon, and Netflix were 3 of the top 5 most loved brands of 2020, losing out only to mail carriers (and Google took second place, ahead of UPS). Google and Amazon each have two of the top 10 spots (Google + YouTube, Amazon + Amazon Prime). The idea that there is roiling popular discontent about the activities of Google and Amazon is entirely a media fabrication. https://www.statista.com/statistics/995767/consumers-most-loved-brands-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/995767/consumers-most-lo...
- lawtalkinghuman 5y ago
  > Not the good ol boys who support conservative christian causes. Two words: Peter Thiel.
IX-103 5y ago
You joke, but there are hidden costs to limited competition even if the full effects of the efficiency due to vertical integration and economies of scale is passed to consumers in the form of reduced prices. The efficiency from vertical integration come from global optimizations that aren't possible for separate organizations. The negative side of that is that there is less interest in finding new ways of using each of the components and finding reusing pieces of the infrastructure. While these optimizations are economically positive in the short term they can delay innovation that would otherwise occur. Take a look at Google - they had a cloud before "Cloud computing" was a thing. But when they built it, it was so tightly integrated that it didn't occur to them to sell the Cloud infrastructure (after all, it wasn't the "product", it was the process). It took someone coming in later and building a less tightly coupled system for their applications to realize that it could be a product on it's own. Sand now Google is playing catch up as they have to undo all the shortcuts they developed that only work in their system. It's worse today with all the content moving to walled gardens. Unlike when Google started, content is increasingly being locked away. The only way to search Facebook is to use Facebook search (or get Facebook's permission). At the very least these tech giants should be forced to offer the same APIs they use themselves. Expose the natural gaps within the integrated stack for others to build off of. That should push things so that interoperability would be at least possible.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  The capacity for a corporation to get away with evil acts is directly proportional to that corps power. This is why I've always liked the idea of revenue-neutral progressive taxes on corporate revenue. Tax economy of scale. Ex. Zero corporate taxes on the first 100k of revenue. For every order of magnitude above this revenue is taxed at ~1% more. $1M in revunue -> 1% $1B in revenue -> 4% $100B in revenue -> 6% Then reduce other corporate taxes to make it revenue neutral. In the most extreme case, the 1% figure or the curve could be tuned so that this is the only tax corporations pay. This would be a massive boon for competition. Small businesses would be easier to start. Businesses may choose to stop growing: if you're making a healthy profit, don't jeopardize your margin in a perpetual struggle to amass the most power, leaving room in the market for competitors to coexist and meaningfully compete on quality. This discourages acquisitions and encourages companies to split: if your economy of scale isn't yielding enough to justify the tax, you could spin off multiple smaller companies that would each be more profitable. The capacity for corporations to do evil is directly proportional to concentration of power. Smaller companies won't be able to afford as many lobbyists and lawyers to subvert regulation, their threats to move their businesses will be less existential for municipalities and they'll get less-sweet sweetheart deals. Being "Too Big to Fail" would be unsustainable and wasteful. The only mergers that would occur would be where the resulting economy of scale exceeds the increased tax burden. It could also vastly simplify tax accounting, which would be a nice bonus.

xxpor 5y ago

They're making the wrong people rich: Not the good ol boys who support conservative christian causes. They're eating old businesses. This is a threat to the existing donor class in Washington, which has embarked on a project since 1968 to build power through political donations, the courts, and crushing labor.

bgorman 5y ago
This is exactly right. Big tech doesn’t have a unionized workforce, and thus do not create solid blue votes- so they will never be favored. Big Tech has been playing with fire warning up to democratic politicians.
ru552 5y ago
Why would a Dem controlled President, House, and Senate care to preserve your so called “conservative christian causes”?
- ncfausti 5y ago
  It requires bipartisanship in the Senate. Why is this the only thing Dems and Republicans can agree on? It's hard for me to not see it as a power play on both sides.
kmeisthax 5y ago
This is an extremely cynical take on antitrust law. Unjustifiably cynical, at least for now. Granted, America has done such a piss-poor job of actually enforcing antitrust laws already on the books that it's hard not to read into this enforcement now as the end result of someone refusing to play ball.
- dantheman 5y ago
  Antitrust law has always been cynical and just a tool for those who lost to use favor to get something from those who won. Will the FTC go after the AMA and the healthcare industry? The cable industry granted monopolies by local communities? Go after industries that are hated and bankrupt people? Or will it go after services people love, that are free, or that revolutionize industries?
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Do people actually love these services at present, as opposed to five or ten years ago? The bipartisan move towards antitrust is undergirded by bipartisan grassroots discontent.
    - wutbrodo 5y ago
      There's a weird[1] dynamic where people dislike "big tech" but are wildly favorable towards individual big tech colonies: Google, Amazon, Apple all have favorability ratings in the 80s and 90s, while Facebook, Twitter, and Slack have much lower ratings. Interestingly enough, being a monopoly seems to be correlated with _higher_ favorability. Your assumption about the implications of bipartisan support seems a little Pollyanna-ish about the degree to which politicians represent their constituents on any given issue. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey-2020-trust-privacy-security-facebook-amazon-google-apple https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2... (I couldn't find individual company numbers for 2021) [1] I guess this isn't that weird, given that similar inconsistencies shows up in all sorts of polling.
    - dodobirdlord 5y ago
      > The bipartisan move towards antitrust is undergirded by bipartisan grassroots discontent. Depends on which companies you're talking about. There's widespread discontent about social media companies, but the left and right wing of the political spectrum have opposite and incompatible discontents, so I don't think it's justifiable to call it "bipartisan grassroots discontent". The non-social-media "Big Tech" companies remain extremely popular and well-regarded in surveys of the general public. Google, Amazon, and Netflix were 3 of the top 5 most loved brands of 2020, losing out only to mail carriers (and Google took second place, ahead of UPS). Google and Amazon each have two of the top 10 spots (Google + YouTube, Amazon + Amazon Prime). The idea that there is roiling popular discontent about the activities of Google and Amazon is entirely a media fabrication. https://www.statista.com/statistics/995767/consumers-most-loved-brands-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/995767/consumers-most-lo...
lawtalkinghuman 5y ago
> Not the good ol boys who support conservative christian causes. Two words: Peter Thiel.

IX-103 5y ago

You joke, but there are hidden costs to limited competition even if the full effects of the efficiency due to vertical integration and economies of scale is passed to consumers in the form of reduced prices. The efficiency from vertical integration come from global optimizations that aren't possible for separate organizations. The negative side of that is that there is less interest in finding new ways of using each of the components and finding reusing pieces of the infrastructure. While these optimizations are economically positive in the short term they can delay innovation that would otherwise occur. Take a look at Google - they had a cloud before "Cloud computing" was a thing. But when they built it, it was so tightly integrated that it didn't occur to them to sell the Cloud infrastructure (after all, it wasn't the "product", it was the process). It took someone coming in later and building a less tightly coupled system for their applications to realize that it could be a product on it's own. Sand now Google is playing catch up as they have to undo all the shortcuts they developed that only work in their system. It's worse today with all the content moving to walled gardens. Unlike when Google started, content is increasingly being locked away. The only way to search Facebook is to use Facebook search (or get Facebook's permission). At the very least these tech giants should be forced to offer the same APIs they use themselves. Expose the natural gaps within the integrated stack for others to build off of. That should push things so that interoperability would be at least possible.

cwkoss 5y ago
The capacity for a corporation to get away with evil acts is directly proportional to that corps power. This is why I've always liked the idea of revenue-neutral progressive taxes on corporate revenue. Tax economy of scale. Ex. Zero corporate taxes on the first 100k of revenue. For every order of magnitude above this revenue is taxed at ~1% more. $1M in revunue -> 1% $1B in revenue -> 4% $100B in revenue -> 6% Then reduce other corporate taxes to make it revenue neutral. In the most extreme case, the 1% figure or the curve could be tuned so that this is the only tax corporations pay. This would be a massive boon for competition. Small businesses would be easier to start. Businesses may choose to stop growing: if you're making a healthy profit, don't jeopardize your margin in a perpetual struggle to amass the most power, leaving room in the market for competitors to coexist and meaningfully compete on quality. This discourages acquisitions and encourages companies to split: if your economy of scale isn't yielding enough to justify the tax, you could spin off multiple smaller companies that would each be more profitable. The capacity for corporations to do evil is directly proportional to concentration of power. Smaller companies won't be able to afford as many lobbyists and lawyers to subvert regulation, their threats to move their businesses will be less existential for municipalities and they'll get less-sweet sweetheart deals. Being "Too Big to Fail" would be unsustainable and wasteful. The only mergers that would occur would be where the resulting economy of scale exceeds the increased tax burden. It could also vastly simplify tax accounting, which would be a nice bonus.