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No. Why do we spend all this time avoiding the truth? We have antitrust laws to dismantle monopolies. This is because monopolies can be dismantled by two thing

No. Why do we spend all this time avoiding the truth? We have antitrust laws to dismantle monopolies. This is because monopolies can be dismantled by two things: 1. The coercive power of the state. 2. A sudden realization among those who run and benefit from the monopoly that selfless love for their fellow human beings is enough reason to stop predatory rent-seeking. In other words, only love or power. We spend a lot of time not talking about the two main forces that guide human life. Not reason. Not reformed open source software development. Love and power. I often suspect this reluctance to involve the coercive power of the state comes from a libertarian streak in the tech world. But I am a weird anarchist kind of guy so maybe I am mistaken on this.

deleted 3y ago
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SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
As the article touches on, we spend the time because people want to address companies like Facebook, which are not obviously monopolies in the normal legal sense. They don't overcharge users, they have strong competitors, etc. But they're still a huge tech company with outsized influence on both society and software development industry.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  I’d argue they are a monopoly in the traditonal sense too. They control the whole stack like standard oil. They probably do overcharge their actual users/customers (the advertisers, not you, the product they sell access to). The more you read about places like standard oil the more they reflect these modern companies.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> This is because monopolies can be dismantled by two things: > 1. The coercive power of the state. > 2. A sudden realization among those who run and benefit from the monopoly that selfless love for their fellow human beings is enough reason to stop predatory rent-seeking. You're missing the third option: Someone else finds a way to break their lock on the market. In many cases this happens indirectly. If you had a monopoly on local media before the internet, you don't have one after the internet. But that doesn't mean you can't do it with a purpose. In many cases this requires an act of altruism. To break the monopoly, somebody has to spend non-trivial resources to reproduce the ability to do something that currently only the monopolist can, without hope of turning a profit from it. People can do this if they choose to. And the work required to do it can be distributed throughout a community.
- lumb63 3y ago
  It’s humorous to me that we discuss “monopolies” over what are ultimately very discretionary sectors. Compare to the trusts of the 20th century, which were monopolizing oil or steel for example. These are (or were) the commodities required to power commerce via shipping and transportation. A single entity having pricing power over such essential commodities threatens the robustness of the world economy. Today we complain about the monopolistic power of, e.g. Google, who does not actually have a monopoly on search (there are many other providers), and the ability to search the entire internet isn’t really that necessary, or Apple’s mobile marketplace, where they again do not have a monopoly (people choose to develop for Apple devices, and part of choosing to sell something somewhere is agreeing to the market’s terms - as has been the case for all of time), and this is mostly to power manipulative microtransactions for kids on games. These are entirely different ballparks.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    The thing you're missing is the "you're not the customer, you're the product." The customer is the app developer or the advertiser -- the startup Apple is extracting 30% from, or the small business which just wants to get its name out but Google systematically excludes small websites from organic search results and requires you to pay a huge chunk of your revenue to be seen. If your prospective customers have iPhones, you need Apple's permission or you're out of business. If your prospective customers use Google search, you pay them for advertising or you're invisible. You don't get to choose which phone or search engine they use, and they rarely if ever use more than one -- unlike retail stores where it's common for the same customer to shop at dozens of different stores. If Walmart won't carry your products in their stores, you can sell them through Target and Amazon and a zillion other retailers. The same customers can get it from another store. If Apple won't carry your app, those customers have no other viable means to get it from you. This isn't just "manipulative microtransactions for kids on games" -- it's the reason you can't use cryptocurrency or any competing payment network for in-app purchases. Are payments not an important industry for which we care about competition? Apple basically murdered Tumblr by giving them an impossible choice between banning adult content (causing them to lose too much of their user base) or being banned from iPhones (causing them to lose too much of their user base). Regardless of how you feel about adult content, they have the power to do this over anything. Should they be able to destroy your social network or force you to censor if they don't like your politics? How does this not matter?

deleted 3y ago

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SpicyLemonZest 3y ago

As the article touches on, we spend the time because people want to address companies like Facebook, which are not obviously monopolies in the normal legal sense. They don't overcharge users, they have strong competitors, etc. But they're still a huge tech company with outsized influence on both society and software development industry.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
I’d argue they are a monopoly in the traditonal sense too. They control the whole stack like standard oil. They probably do overcharge their actual users/customers (the advertisers, not you, the product they sell access to). The more you read about places like standard oil the more they reflect these modern companies.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> This is because monopolies can be dismantled by two things: > 1. The coercive power of the state. > 2. A sudden realization among those who run and benefit from the monopoly that selfless love for their fellow human beings is enough reason to stop predatory rent-seeking. You're missing the third option: Someone else finds a way to break their lock on the market. In many cases this happens indirectly. If you had a monopoly on local media before the internet, you don't have one after the internet. But that doesn't mean you can't do it with a purpose. In many cases this requires an act of altruism. To break the monopoly, somebody has to spend non-trivial resources to reproduce the ability to do something that currently only the monopolist can, without hope of turning a profit from it. People can do this if they choose to. And the work required to do it can be distributed throughout a community.

lumb63 3y ago
It’s humorous to me that we discuss “monopolies” over what are ultimately very discretionary sectors. Compare to the trusts of the 20th century, which were monopolizing oil or steel for example. These are (or were) the commodities required to power commerce via shipping and transportation. A single entity having pricing power over such essential commodities threatens the robustness of the world economy. Today we complain about the monopolistic power of, e.g. Google, who does not actually have a monopoly on search (there are many other providers), and the ability to search the entire internet isn’t really that necessary, or Apple’s mobile marketplace, where they again do not have a monopoly (people choose to develop for Apple devices, and part of choosing to sell something somewhere is agreeing to the market’s terms - as has been the case for all of time), and this is mostly to power manipulative microtransactions for kids on games. These are entirely different ballparks.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  The thing you're missing is the "you're not the customer, you're the product." The customer is the app developer or the advertiser -- the startup Apple is extracting 30% from, or the small business which just wants to get its name out but Google systematically excludes small websites from organic search results and requires you to pay a huge chunk of your revenue to be seen. If your prospective customers have iPhones, you need Apple's permission or you're out of business. If your prospective customers use Google search, you pay them for advertising or you're invisible. You don't get to choose which phone or search engine they use, and they rarely if ever use more than one -- unlike retail stores where it's common for the same customer to shop at dozens of different stores. If Walmart won't carry your products in their stores, you can sell them through Target and Amazon and a zillion other retailers. The same customers can get it from another store. If Apple won't carry your app, those customers have no other viable means to get it from you. This isn't just "manipulative microtransactions for kids on games" -- it's the reason you can't use cryptocurrency or any competing payment network for in-app purchases. Are payments not an important industry for which we care about competition? Apple basically murdered Tumblr by giving them an impossible choice between banning adult content (causing them to lose too much of their user base) or being banned from iPhones (causing them to lose too much of their user base). Regardless of how you feel about adult content, they have the power to do this over anything. Should they be able to destroy your social network or force you to censor if they don't like your politics? How does this not matter?