6 ms·

I think these 200 IQ tech CEOs have lost their minds and don't realize that their power is like that of an ant next to a lion when compared to the power of the

by qq66 5y ago

I think these 200 IQ tech CEOs have lost their minds and don't realize that their power is like that of an ant next to a lion when compared to the power of the 89 IQ politicians that run governments. Except for Satya Nadella they are all headed for a massive beatdown.

oceanplexian 5y ago
Depends on what region we're talking about. In the EU, it does seem like politicians have the upper hand, but in the US, neither of our two major political parties (Democrat and Republican) have taken any concrete steps to regulate the tech giants despite a bunch of rhetoric. There are several reasons: - A non-trivial number of lawmakers are holding stock investments in tech - Good luck getting re-elected if said regulation affects growth and crashes the economy - Good luck getting re-elected if you get on the wrong side of the largest advertising companies in the world. What are they going to do, run campaign ads in the newspaper?
- littlecranky67 5y ago
  > In the EU, it does seem like politicians have the upper hand, but in the US, neither of our two major political parties (Democrat and Republican) I don't think in the EU the politicians have "the upper hand", they work exactly as in the US. The difference is that all those digital giants pay taxes (and employ people who do so) mostly in the US, so you can't touch em. EU politicians are free to impose restrictions since we don't have this industry on our side of the lawn.
  - jltsiren 5y ago
    Another difference is that most European countries have multi-party systems. One of the key divisions is between the establishment (social democrat, christian democrat, etc.) and the activists (green, liberal left, populist right, conservative nationalist, etc.). While the establishment pays more attention to corporate interests, the activists are often ideologically opposed to them. If the establishment pays too much attention, it may lose seats to the activists. In US politics, the establishment/activist division occurs within parties rather than between them. The first-past-the-post system makes it difficult for the minority faction to gain a significant number of seats, until there is phase shift and the minority suddenly becomes the majority. That's arguably what happened to Republicans, but it's too early to say if the shift has had an effect on their stance towards corporations.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      First past the post system is really hurting UK and US, removing it would reduce divisions and improve society
    - littlecranky67 5y ago
      As a German, I don't buy into that. No matter what party, no one ever touches the automotive industry, as it would be detrimental to your next election results.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Don't forget that the tech sector is now the biggest industry by far in the US. Not cars etc. I don't think any beatdown will be meaningful as politicians are very aware of the impact on the economy.
jonny_eh 5y ago
> Except for Satya Nadella In the case of Microsoft, did they only open up their store to alternate payment systems because they don't have much to lose?
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  If they tried to impose the rules that Apple does, both third party developers would leave their store. Which to be fair has also been a problem for Apple in the Mac App Store.
- sgift 5y ago
  Probably a mix of not having much to loose, trying to gather some good publicity and fear that the regulators would see them as some kind of "repeat offender" and punish them harder than Apple, Google et. al. if they dragged their feet.
- xwdv 5y ago
  Precisely, they wish they had the leverage to enforce revenue splits from alternative payment systems.
ballenf 5y ago
If we assume they considered this angle, I think there's an even more interesting inference to be drawn: that they're only move is to extend and delay and pray that something in the landscape changes. Or, at the least, that they collect their rents for as long as possible. Not to mention that Apple would probably just close The Netherlands appstore before fully implementing the change.
- unilynx 5y ago
  Discriminating between EU countries might get them dragged before the courts even faster.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Companies choose which EU countries they do or don’t want to do business in all the time.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      This would be a political statement combined wuth cutting off millions of existing users with iphones from the appstore (breach of contract).
winternett 5y ago
The subtext to all of the changes mega corps are making is that they are slaves to their investment pipelines and now that profits are not showing growth, they're turning towards even more unreasonable tactics of squeezing money out of exactly what makes them an ecosystem... They're milking their user base, they're milking developers, they're milking everyone to stay on top. Only companies that start to really evaluate how they can free themselves from the pipeline of dependency will survive. It means going back to browser-based apps and services, not in creating apps that need to be deployed through gatekeeping app stores.
- jolux 5y ago
  Apple's profits from hardware are still growing though.
  - lmm 5y ago
    IIRC their profits are growing but sales are shrinking. They're soaking those who do buy harder and harder.
    - jolux 5y ago
      Hmmm, I don't know that their sales are shrinking. They're definitely increasing their margin on the higher-end devices though.
- EGreg 5y ago
  Yes! I have been speaking about this for a long while now. I felt I was a lone voice from among various left-libertarians here and there who criticize capitalism. The model of VCs buying shares and then selling them to Wall St. in an IPO leads to exactly this, across the board: Closed source software Siloed data Limited interoperability Extracting rents That last one is an economic term that requires a power imbalance to occur. Apple is just one of many Big Tech companies and, frankly, it is far more pro-consumer and pro-producer than say, Facebook and Google. The proliferation of ads on YouTube, the increasing attempts at surveillance capitalism, all point to diminishing returns from the ads. The system of funding “public utilities” privately and then dumping it on Wall St is eating itself. When something becomes that big, it should be turned into an open source project, and monetized using utility tokens. Open source, science, wikipedia, in the end unlock way more wealth than their closed counterparts based on the profit motive, private ownership and recouping investment. Take DisneyWorld for example. It is owned by Disney Coep which is owned by shareholders, who want DisneyWorld to extract profits at the expense of both its customers and vendors. Disney Dollars are the utility tokens that customers buy, while the vendors need to unionize to get $15 an hour minimum wage (or get Bernie to help LOL). The wall street shareholders are almost just a parasite class, who are just trying to push the company to give them profits ar the expense of its customers (eg Uber riders) and vendors (eg Uber drivers). There is a reason co-operative housing complexes in the USA don’t need rent control imposed by the city: the tenants ARE the landlord, so the prices of eg Mitchell-Lama housing in NYC is 2-5x smaller than its neighboring landlord-owned building. Private property works for small scales. For larger scales, open source gift economies work way better. Wikipedia is far bigger than Britannica, etc. We need the same approaches for news — and, I would argue, all public discourse. Corporations have co-opted many idealistic movements, including women’s liberation, and freedom of speech. We the people are being told what to argue about — deplatforming — rather than discuss how people got a platform in the first place. Having an unfiltered megaphone to tweet to 5 million people at 3am doesn’t help society, it hurts and divides it. Whether it’s Donald Trump or Elon Musk, the fart tweets don’t add much value to society but they can surely move markets and drive the population nuts, too. Science has peer review in journals, Open Source has review of pull requests, Wikipedia has talk pages, before publishing. And notice how much more balanced wikinews is, than the for-profit corporations that had to become clickbaity outlets that can only afford to report one side of a story, to pander to their readers (yes even the NYTimes and CNN have had to do this, forced by the market competition). Having an audience is a form of capital, which is why Republican arguments about Citizens United make sense: money and “speech” in favor of candidates are both very effective because the “speech” is really a top-down centralized ORGANIZATION where some owners set the agenda and the peons have to parrot it or get fired: Please see the Sinclair script here and the solution for freedom of speech: https://rational.app/ https://rational.app/ Corporatism hijacking women’s liberation movements: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 Corporations and government keeping us all distracted: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362
kobalsky 5y ago
are those 89 IQ politicians incorruptible?

by qq66 5y ago

oceanplexian 5y ago

Depends on what region we're talking about. In the EU, it does seem like politicians have the upper hand, but in the US, neither of our two major political parties (Democrat and Republican) have taken any concrete steps to regulate the tech giants despite a bunch of rhetoric. There are several reasons: - A non-trivial number of lawmakers are holding stock investments in tech - Good luck getting re-elected if said regulation affects growth and crashes the economy - Good luck getting re-elected if you get on the wrong side of the largest advertising companies in the world. What are they going to do, run campaign ads in the newspaper?

littlecranky67 5y ago
> In the EU, it does seem like politicians have the upper hand, but in the US, neither of our two major political parties (Democrat and Republican) I don't think in the EU the politicians have "the upper hand", they work exactly as in the US. The difference is that all those digital giants pay taxes (and employ people who do so) mostly in the US, so you can't touch em. EU politicians are free to impose restrictions since we don't have this industry on our side of the lawn.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  Another difference is that most European countries have multi-party systems. One of the key divisions is between the establishment (social democrat, christian democrat, etc.) and the activists (green, liberal left, populist right, conservative nationalist, etc.). While the establishment pays more attention to corporate interests, the activists are often ideologically opposed to them. If the establishment pays too much attention, it may lose seats to the activists. In US politics, the establishment/activist division occurs within parties rather than between them. The first-past-the-post system makes it difficult for the minority faction to gain a significant number of seats, until there is phase shift and the minority suddenly becomes the majority. That's arguably what happened to Republicans, but it's too early to say if the shift has had an effect on their stance towards corporations.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    First past the post system is really hurting UK and US, removing it would reduce divisions and improve society
  - littlecranky67 5y ago
    As a German, I don't buy into that. No matter what party, no one ever touches the automotive industry, as it would be detrimental to your next election results.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Don't forget that the tech sector is now the biggest industry by far in the US. Not cars etc. I don't think any beatdown will be meaningful as politicians are very aware of the impact on the economy.

jonny_eh 5y ago

> Except for Satya Nadella In the case of Microsoft, did they only open up their store to alternate payment systems because they don't have much to lose?

wlesieutre 5y ago
If they tried to impose the rules that Apple does, both third party developers would leave their store. Which to be fair has also been a problem for Apple in the Mac App Store.
sgift 5y ago
Probably a mix of not having much to loose, trying to gather some good publicity and fear that the regulators would see them as some kind of "repeat offender" and punish them harder than Apple, Google et. al. if they dragged their feet.
xwdv 5y ago
Precisely, they wish they had the leverage to enforce revenue splits from alternative payment systems.

ballenf 5y ago

If we assume they considered this angle, I think there's an even more interesting inference to be drawn: that they're only move is to extend and delay and pray that something in the landscape changes. Or, at the least, that they collect their rents for as long as possible. Not to mention that Apple would probably just close The Netherlands appstore before fully implementing the change.

unilynx 5y ago
Discriminating between EU countries might get them dragged before the courts even faster.
- simonh 5y ago
  Companies choose which EU countries they do or don’t want to do business in all the time.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    This would be a political statement combined wuth cutting off millions of existing users with iphones from the appstore (breach of contract).

winternett 5y ago

The subtext to all of the changes mega corps are making is that they are slaves to their investment pipelines and now that profits are not showing growth, they're turning towards even more unreasonable tactics of squeezing money out of exactly what makes them an ecosystem... They're milking their user base, they're milking developers, they're milking everyone to stay on top. Only companies that start to really evaluate how they can free themselves from the pipeline of dependency will survive. It means going back to browser-based apps and services, not in creating apps that need to be deployed through gatekeeping app stores.

jolux 5y ago
Apple's profits from hardware are still growing though.
- lmm 5y ago
  IIRC their profits are growing but sales are shrinking. They're soaking those who do buy harder and harder.
  - jolux 5y ago
    Hmmm, I don't know that their sales are shrinking. They're definitely increasing their margin on the higher-end devices though.
EGreg 5y ago
Yes! I have been speaking about this for a long while now. I felt I was a lone voice from among various left-libertarians here and there who criticize capitalism. The model of VCs buying shares and then selling them to Wall St. in an IPO leads to exactly this, across the board: Closed source software Siloed data Limited interoperability Extracting rents That last one is an economic term that requires a power imbalance to occur. Apple is just one of many Big Tech companies and, frankly, it is far more pro-consumer and pro-producer than say, Facebook and Google. The proliferation of ads on YouTube, the increasing attempts at surveillance capitalism, all point to diminishing returns from the ads. The system of funding “public utilities” privately and then dumping it on Wall St is eating itself. When something becomes that big, it should be turned into an open source project, and monetized using utility tokens. Open source, science, wikipedia, in the end unlock way more wealth than their closed counterparts based on the profit motive, private ownership and recouping investment. Take DisneyWorld for example. It is owned by Disney Coep which is owned by shareholders, who want DisneyWorld to extract profits at the expense of both its customers and vendors. Disney Dollars are the utility tokens that customers buy, while the vendors need to unionize to get $15 an hour minimum wage (or get Bernie to help LOL). The wall street shareholders are almost just a parasite class, who are just trying to push the company to give them profits ar the expense of its customers (eg Uber riders) and vendors (eg Uber drivers). There is a reason co-operative housing complexes in the USA don’t need rent control imposed by the city: the tenants ARE the landlord, so the prices of eg Mitchell-Lama housing in NYC is 2-5x smaller than its neighboring landlord-owned building. Private property works for small scales. For larger scales, open source gift economies work way better. Wikipedia is far bigger than Britannica, etc. We need the same approaches for news — and, I would argue, all public discourse. Corporations have co-opted many idealistic movements, including women’s liberation, and freedom of speech. We the people are being told what to argue about — deplatforming — rather than discuss how people got a platform in the first place. Having an unfiltered megaphone to tweet to 5 million people at 3am doesn’t help society, it hurts and divides it. Whether it’s Donald Trump or Elon Musk, the fart tweets don’t add much value to society but they can surely move markets and drive the population nuts, too. Science has peer review in journals, Open Source has review of pull requests, Wikipedia has talk pages, before publishing. And notice how much more balanced wikinews is, than the for-profit corporations that had to become clickbaity outlets that can only afford to report one side of a story, to pander to their readers (yes even the NYTimes and CNN have had to do this, forced by the market competition). Having an audience is a form of capital, which is why Republican arguments about Citizens United make sense: money and “speech” in favor of candidates are both very effective because the “speech” is really a top-down centralized ORGANIZATION where some owners set the agenda and the peons have to parrot it or get fired: Please see the Sinclair script here and the solution for freedom of speech: https://rational.app/ https://rational.app/ Corporatism hijacking women’s liberation movements: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 Corporations and government keeping us all distracted: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362

kobalsky 5y ago

are those 89 IQ politicians incorruptible?