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Sure, it's a modern conglomerate. That's nothing new. Conglomerates have been around for literally a hundred-plus years. What's fascinating is that the tradi
by BaseballPhysics 5y ago
Sure, it's a modern conglomerate. That's nothing new. Conglomerates have been around for literally a hundred-plus years.
What's fascinating is that the traditional industrial conglomerate has been declining for decades now, with the most notable recent breakup being GE. Meanwhile, tech companies are going the other way:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/11/23/1057446470/the-conglomerate-paradox-as-ge-splinters-facebook-becomes-meta https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/11/23/1057446470/the...
I think it's a wide open question as to whether the conglomerate is, in fact, an economically efficient entity, or if in the long run, Amazon, too, will break up.
I'd argue the only reason modern tech conglomerates exist and succeed is because antitrust regulators have failed to recognize the impact they've had in destroying a competition.
As a result, these modern conglomerates aren't making money via the standard argument: increased efficiencies, market diversification, etc. Rather, they're profitable because they're leveraging their horizontal and vertical integration to monopolize whole industries.
If world governments return to a more forceful anti-trust regime, I suspect we'll find these tech conglomerates will die off just like their ancestor industrial conglomerates have been.