5 ms·

I'd like to see the reaction from libertarian types who always insist that regulation just entrenches large incumbents and makes competitors emerging tougher. (

I'd like to see the reaction from libertarian types who always insist that regulation just entrenches large incumbents and makes competitors emerging tougher. (Ben Thompson of Stratechery has been banging this drum forever). If large companies actually want privacy regulation because it slows down emerging rivals- why did Google 'slow down' European privacy rules here? This seems to disprove Thompson's argument

mountainriver 5y ago
Because it makes them so much money?
Enginerrrd 5y ago
The narrative here seems not so hard to predict. Large incumbents may still have revenue which is negatively impacted by the regulation at the same time that the regulation raises the barrier to entry for smaller competitors. They're not mutually exclusive concepts.
- hash872 5y ago
  Sure, but this NYT times piece that says Google specifically tried to 'slow down' European privacy rules disproves Thompson's argument that they want privacy to impede competition. It's pretty binary- if they wanted privacy regulations they wouldn't have slowed them down, if they slowed them down then clearly they don't want privacy regulations. I don't see what other conclusion could be drawn
  - asvitkine 5y ago
    One reason to slow it down could be that the company needed more time for implementation work to get compliant. At Google's scale, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a factor.
- Lord_Baltimore 5y ago
  Yes, a pebble in the shoe of Google but could be a mountain in the way of smaller company.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    The cost of GDPR is mostly related to technical debt, not company size. A small company with little debt will not face any issues with GDPR. Google just bet on they themselves having much less technical debt than the other giants.
cblconfederate 5y ago
I m a european, GDPR did not change anything substantially. Instead people have to click a few hundreds "I accept" boxes per day and whatever was left of european advertising has completely vanished now. The EU did not have a plan to change advertising, instead you got a rather inane law for the web , spearheaded by the german green left, that did nothing to correct the course of the advertising industry. The EU after gdpr should have required google to break up in europe, to force it to become one of the players. Instead we get politicians flexing and patting themselves on the back for the large fines they are able to impose on US tech, while the EU continues to render itself internet-irrelevant. The brussels microcosm is an overpaid crowd that s not good for business
christophilus 5y ago
I’m a libertarian type, but I think any company that is large enough to sway government policy is a danger to society and should be broken up until their influence is indistinguishable from noise. No idea how to effectively execute that idea, though.
- CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
  My thinking is that companies can grow that large due to the capital assets under their command. Taking some inspiration from geo-libertarian thinking the key would be to figure out if, and how, those capital assets can be made into a commons rather than privately owned.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Sadly, the breaking up companies does very little to the political influence of the people who own them, other than giving them a lot of different names to speak in the same voice. You break up companies, I think, in order to make room for innovative competitors, and to make corruption more difficult by making the lines of communication lengthier (and forcing them to stretch between companies.) When it comes to politics, industries aren't afraid to "unionize" amongst themselves and speak with a pretty singular voice. Most of their interests will always be identical. Those massive accumulations of power aren't actually located in supercorporations or ideal groups of competing companies making up an industry, but in individuals. The problem is that there's such an wealth/income disparity that small groups of people are going to be more powerful than larger groups of people by orders of magnitude, and that they're naturally going to use that power to increase that disparity. Their ideal world has the people who have accumulated the most ruling the rest through a system of benevolence and patronage. That's what libertarianism is. edit: The breakup of Standard Oil made Rockefeller far more wealthy and influential than he was pre-breakup.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > the political influence of the people who own them We have this concept called progressive taxation that's supposed to help with that. (Not it's actually used in practice, but it is a known thing.)

mountainriver 5y ago

Because it makes them so much money?

Enginerrrd 5y ago

The narrative here seems not so hard to predict. Large incumbents may still have revenue which is negatively impacted by the regulation at the same time that the regulation raises the barrier to entry for smaller competitors. They're not mutually exclusive concepts.

hash872 5y ago
Sure, but this NYT times piece that says Google specifically tried to 'slow down' European privacy rules disproves Thompson's argument that they want privacy to impede competition. It's pretty binary- if they wanted privacy regulations they wouldn't have slowed them down, if they slowed them down then clearly they don't want privacy regulations. I don't see what other conclusion could be drawn
- asvitkine 5y ago
  One reason to slow it down could be that the company needed more time for implementation work to get compliant. At Google's scale, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a factor.
Lord_Baltimore 5y ago
Yes, a pebble in the shoe of Google but could be a mountain in the way of smaller company.
- Jensson 5y ago
  The cost of GDPR is mostly related to technical debt, not company size. A small company with little debt will not face any issues with GDPR. Google just bet on they themselves having much less technical debt than the other giants.

cblconfederate 5y ago

I m a european, GDPR did not change anything substantially. Instead people have to click a few hundreds "I accept" boxes per day and whatever was left of european advertising has completely vanished now. The EU did not have a plan to change advertising, instead you got a rather inane law for the web , spearheaded by the german green left, that did nothing to correct the course of the advertising industry. The EU after gdpr should have required google to break up in europe, to force it to become one of the players. Instead we get politicians flexing and patting themselves on the back for the large fines they are able to impose on US tech, while the EU continues to render itself internet-irrelevant. The brussels microcosm is an overpaid crowd that s not good for business

christophilus 5y ago

I’m a libertarian type, but I think any company that is large enough to sway government policy is a danger to society and should be broken up until their influence is indistinguishable from noise. No idea how to effectively execute that idea, though.

CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
My thinking is that companies can grow that large due to the capital assets under their command. Taking some inspiration from geo-libertarian thinking the key would be to figure out if, and how, those capital assets can be made into a commons rather than privately owned.
pessimizer 5y ago
Sadly, the breaking up companies does very little to the political influence of the people who own them, other than giving them a lot of different names to speak in the same voice. You break up companies, I think, in order to make room for innovative competitors, and to make corruption more difficult by making the lines of communication lengthier (and forcing them to stretch between companies.) When it comes to politics, industries aren't afraid to "unionize" amongst themselves and speak with a pretty singular voice. Most of their interests will always be identical. Those massive accumulations of power aren't actually located in supercorporations or ideal groups of competing companies making up an industry, but in individuals. The problem is that there's such an wealth/income disparity that small groups of people are going to be more powerful than larger groups of people by orders of magnitude, and that they're naturally going to use that power to increase that disparity. Their ideal world has the people who have accumulated the most ruling the rest through a system of benevolence and patronage. That's what libertarianism is. edit: The breakup of Standard Oil made Rockefeller far more wealthy and influential than he was pre-breakup.
- a1369209993 5y ago
  > the political influence of the people who own them We have this concept called progressive taxation that's supposed to help with that. (Not it's actually used in practice, but it is a known thing.)