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The fundamental flaw in this argument is that it does not account for every corporation that came before tech. What about RCA, GE, Westinghouse? What about US
by zer00eyz 3y ago
The fundamental flaw in this argument is that it does not account for every corporation that came before tech.
What about RCA, GE, Westinghouse? What about US Steel, what about Standard Oil, what about AT&T. IBM, Intel have already started to fall. What makes this crop of companies any different than all the ones that has come before them.
Nothing.
The singer sewing machine came out at 125 bucks per unit. The annual salary in America was 500 bucks a year. Now, a sewing machine is 100 bucks and the average salary is what? The cost of a car is still the same as a model T, with more features and safety. Aside from software bloat, and maybe ML how have computers improved in the last decade. Power has gone down but they aren't really doing more.
- sdenton4 3y agoDid you not read the article? The premise is that the current tech giants are effectively only wanting to set up situations where they can extract rents. This is different from making sewing machines in a competitive market, or even in a monopoly. I think the argument has problems for other reasons - there's still lots of innovation going on, for example - but I think there is a line to be drawn between current vc preferences and historical capitalist or monopoly behavior.
- datavirtue 3y agoThe people can write whatever laws they want. We are also slowly sliding toward innovating with the overall system. Wealth can be redistributed with the flick of a wrist.
- zer00eyz 3y agoI did read the article. Rent only happens when cost is high and supply is constrained. Look at housing. Rent seeking isnt sustainable as compute gets cheaper and cheaper. Access is knowledge, sewing, second hand cars: access is portion of knowledge.
- xg15 3y agoCompanies are increasingly using lock-in strategies too keep their users in their own walled gardens. Apple and Google can collect rent from the entire app economy solely for the privilege of being listed in app stores (while at the same time controlling the rules of that economy and being able to advantage their own offerings). Amazon can do the same with the Amazon marketplace. There is lots of rent seeking going on.
- nobut8 3y ago[dead]
- zer00eyz 3y agoThis just dropped covering OLD IBM's "bundling stratigy", great overview from a great channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXS6lTYSgCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXS6lTYSgCw Again, what is NEW about what google/apple are doing vs what IBM did? Nothing really. And for as much as the HN crowed likes to hint at the word monopoly, they are a duolopy, and this isnt the same thing (by a far margin)... for as much as they might look close from a consumer perspective.
- snapplebobapple 3y agoumm... a monopoly is literally a rent seeker, that's what a monopoly is good for. If you aren't rent seeking you wasted a ton of time and money on becoming a monopoly for no reason. The only thing new here is that the marxists have found a new way to miss the point.
- nytesky 3y agoATT was broken up by antitrust.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoAnd Standard Oil
- zer00eyz 3y agoATT under anti trust scrutiny creates UNIX. ATT throws unix out the car window, at speed, to any one and every one who will take it because they did NOT want any more heat. A lot of stuff escaped Bell Labs because of anti trust. The old att rotary phone is part of the impression of how durable goods can be (that thing was a tank). The final breakup of att leads to baby bells, and we have seen how that experiment went... Could we have co-op or regional public utility for internet/cable/phone today? Yes we could, but I dont think we would have gotten to this place with out AT&T's rise and fall. It and IBM are the examples of squandered dominance of technology.