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Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, break them all up. And for the love of crap, stop approving billion dollar mergers.
by exabrial 3y ago
Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, break them all up. And for the love of crap, stop approving billion dollar mergers.
- jbombadil 3y agoThis. Also add most major telcos, ISPs and airlines to the list as well. We love capitalism. It’s basis is competition. Let’s get us some of that.
- user3939382 3y agoAnd media companies...
- hn_version_0023 3y agoEspecially the media companies! They put artificial limits on the range of acceptable thoughts, acting as both a muzzle and a noose around the neck of the public.
- scarface_74 3y agoYes because there is absolutely no way for you to get your thoughts to people worldwide without depending on big media…
- user3939382 3y agoParler Strawman in any case, having a technical option doesn’t negate massive horrible effects on the public.
- scarface_74 3y agoSo it’s a straw man that anyone can’t just set up a blog or do podcast and publish their ideas?
- user3939382 3y agoIt’s a strawman because GP wasn’t commenting on whether or not there is a technical way of reaching the public, but rather that media consolidation hurts the public. Those are orthogonal issues.
- scarface_74 3y agoIt’s not orthogonal, consolidation of media is only important if it keeps people’s messages from getting distributed broadly. Is that really a problem in 2023? The “media” - ie ways to reach people is less consolidated now than any time in history.
- user3939382 3y agoI can invent a new protocol and app right now thats 100x easier to publish on and access. No one is using yet, is the harm of propaganda stories in corporate media lessened in any way by the fact of that tools availability? No
- scarface_74 3y agoYou don’t have to event an app. You can set up a web server in your own home to get your views across. In fact, you don’t have to do that. You’re getting your views across right now.
- user3939382 3y agoYes, that doesn’t mean the corporate media doesn’t have a huge amount of influence due to their consolidation. Technical ability to communicate is not the only factor in power of reach. I’m not sure how else to explain it.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd yet, without any media support, civil rights leaders were able to effect change in the 60s. Maybe people these days are just lazy?
- ansmithz42 3y agoOh but remember: "Bigger is better!" and "Economies of scale"/s
- efficax 3y agoand the big 4 banks, and walmart, and a bunch of other industries. we're in a monopoly age.
- hn_version_0023 3y agoWhy don’t we target the 6 (or however many) companies that own 95% of everything in the media? Unless they’re reined-in, progress will be elusive; their megaphone must be silenced!
- Qwertious 3y agoCapitalism is based on competition, but the rules of said competition are largely written by the winners of said competition - this isn't a perversion of capitalism, this is capitalism as it has always functioned in reality. Like, oil companies get significant political sway over our policy on climate change, which is why over the last 40 years, the biggest sources of emissions reduction were the 2008 GFC and the 2020 lockdowns. The #1 reason why Comcast hasn't been ousted by local community fiber networks is because Comcast politically lobbied to make it illegal. This is normal. The solution is to cut the moneyed interests out of politics as harshly as possible, because otherwise we'll always require the permission of junk-food companies before we limit how much sodium is permitted in kid's food.
- WillAdams 3y agoLobbying needs to be rate-limited to match what individuals can say. Level the playing field by making the largest possible political contribution equal to a multiple of the minimum wage which one could reasonably expect someone earning that to donate in a given year, then require that each contribution be made using a check or money order mailed with a hand-written note in a first-class envelope.
- theptip 3y agoI object a lot less if the trustbusters don’t stop with tech and apply their hammer equally to other industries, agree with telcos/ISPs (I’m not sure how uncompetitive airlines are, they seem really low margin). I haven’t really seen evidence that Khan is interested in going after non-tech companies though. (Would love any pointers to the contrary.)
- AnonymousPlanet 3y agoYou have to add Microsoft to this list unless you live in complete denial about the massive monopoly that they have in office IT. And they are actually the first that should be broken up, splitting the office suite from everything else.
- trinsic2 3y agoMicrosoft should be the first one to be split up. Their dominant position is more pervasive than any other market because the operating system people use in their computers is the gateway to get too these other services. The second should be Apple for the same reasons. Then Amazon.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoI fail to see why apple should be split. Nobody forces people to buy macs, very few do, and as for iPhones, there are alternatives and apple doesn’t have a monopoly over the phone industry. You can very well use icloud on other OSes too.
- rafaelmn 3y agoApple doesn't even hide the tax. The shit they get to pull with safari is beyond IE level - they straight up don't allow alternative browsers (beyond WebKit) on 50% of mobile market.
- SSLy 3y agoNot for long (* insert EU flag here *)
- slikrick 3y agoyou can't use 99% of apple services on Android. no apple maps, no find my, no iMessage, no apple calendar, no reminders. nobody forces people to use windows either, but yet a company having 60% of the global phone market is pretty comparable considering that's literally probably more phones than people actively using windows daily
- userabchn 3y agoMake corporation tax progressive, resulting in it being easier for small companies to compete with big ones, without requiring the government to decide what is and what isn't a monopoly.
- RandomLensman 3y agoHighly fragmented markets are also bad for price discovery - so how do we know what size to have?
- klysm 3y agoWe are so incredibly far from highly fragmented I don’t think that’s even worth thinking about at this stage
- RandomLensman 3y agoIf you don't think about it, could create a weird set of local/product/etc. monopoly like things instead. Not thinking about isn't an option because it ignores the incentives if you force limit sizes.
- klysm 3y agoYes definitely agree a hard limit on sizes doesn’t make sense, but I just think it’s not going to be a problem any time soon with the current state of affairs in the US economy.
- RandomLensman 3y agoI honestly think that this is underestimating how good companies can get in optimization their positions. The smaller companies would inherit these abilities from their "parents".
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoI read an economics paper a while back that said you need at least four players to get a competitive market. I’m not sure how you would translate that to limits on the size of a company though as every sector would be different.
- RandomLensman 3y agoI think we need to seriously think about market design at some point. Relying on more actors alone is not a great strategy.
- nickff 3y agoWhy? You seem to be expressing outrage, anger, or frustration, but you're not giving the rest of us anything to think about.
- esarbe 3y agoAll of them enjoy market domination in their respective areas of expertise. Their size makes them effective monopolies and their behavior has many times ruled anti-competitive. Competition between them is insufficient and they have been convicted of organizing in monopolistic manners before. For consumers and the market as a whole it is more healthy if they are broken up into smaller companies.
- thfuran 3y agoEven if they weren't near monopolies in their respective fields, I think we should be wary of permitting the sort of concentration of power that arises from the existence of trillion dollar corporations.
- scarface_74 3y agoDo exactly how do you plan to beak them up? How would you divide them up?
- Aerbil313 3y agoGovernments' and companies incentives are highly different. I live in Turkey where not every service is corporate like it is in the US. I can see in practice that a competitor service offered by government happens to be that real competition which drags the prices down.
- scarface_74 3y agoSo has the Turkish government created a cell phone? A search engine? A popular e-commerce store?
- Aerbil313 3y agoOnly an ecommerce store of that list, but many other things. Though the store doesn't really matter because competition is already rampant in the ecommerce space. I wrote a letter to our Presidency asking about these other things you mentioned last week.
- scarface_74 3y agoSo would the Turkish government be happy to let you sell something that was pro Kurd?
- marcod 3y agoTo me it does feel much worse if one company is singled out. But, yes, bring back the Sherman Antitrust Act with good enforcement. Personally, I think much of this is in large parts the fault of one party that likes to systematically defund government institutions, so they can say "see big government doesn't work!"