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Monopolies prevent startups from reaching critical mass. Google and the rest of big tech are like the Jupiter of the tech world. It clears the orbit of anythin

Monopolies prevent startups from reaching critical mass. Google and the rest of big tech are like the Jupiter of the tech world. It clears the orbit of anything else that could form. Big tech is so big that it can jump into new markets with ease, kill incumbents, snuff out new players, and perpetually tax non-innovation. We're twenty years behind on antitrust and breakups. It's time we had a forest fire to make way for new growth.

alabastervlog 2y ago
More than 50 years behind. We shifted policy to barely enforcing anti-trust in the ‘70s, under growing Chicago school (spits) influence among elected officials, “think tanks” (lobbying groups), and courts. That’s why everything’s so insanely consolidated now. Practically every market has a handful of massive players all of which would currently be under serious threat of break-up under the old approach to enforcement. It’s all monopoly.
darth_avocado 2y ago
I wholeheartedly support antitrust enforcement. My comment was mostly about VC firms having very specific opinions on what should happen.
scarface_74 2y ago
Let’s not pretend that YC and other VCs are noble. They get rich and pawn their money losing investments to the “bigger fool” https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-combinator-companies-a-mixed-bag-of-success-and-struggle-58e9a4006f01 https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance... > In aggregate, the average return across these YC companies is -49%, with a median return of -46%. To put this into perspective, over the same period, the S&P 500 yielded a positive return of 58% And for the rest of the companies, they aren’t trying to compete with BigTech, they are trying to get acquired by them. Out of the literally thousands of companies that YC has invested in, only about two dozen have gone public
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  VC firms, not specifically YC, also tend to encourage monopolization when it comes to startups they are invested in. Have we not seen unicorns gobble up other smaller startups all the time?
  - echelon 2y ago
    You can compete with a unicorn. You can't compete with a trillion dollar company with a cash hoard larger than every unicorn.
    - jeroenhd 2y ago
      Which is how AirBnB ruined tourist industries worldwide, caused rents to soar, people to get displaced from their cities of birth, and why they're touted as a "disruptor" in this very brief. The end game for these unicorns is to become the cash hoard that they intended to compete with.
- echelon 2y ago
  > Let’s not pretend that YC and other VCs are noble. I'm fine with that. Let them make money at the expense of big tech. Breaking up big tech benefits financial/venture capital, but it also benefits labor capital as well. More opportunity for more startups to succeed, more competition for engineering talent, less market distorting wage collusion. Big tech already won. It's benefactors already reap the benefits. Break them up and a new generation of engineers can grow wealthy on the field they contribute their labor to. Right now the proceeds of tech go to hedge funds and pension funds. It's venture capital and entrepreneurs that take risks. They're the ones that should see upside. Unfortunately, big tech monopolies put a ceiling on this.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    They do see upside - by being acquired by BigTech. So if Google wasn’t a “monopoly” you think a startup could make a better search engine? Be more popular than Android - Microsoft tried both and failed because people prefer Google products. It wasn’t for the lack of money. And engineers are getting wealthy - by working for BigTech. Even an entry level developer at BigTech makes more than 90% of workers.

alabastervlog 2y ago

More than 50 years behind. We shifted policy to barely enforcing anti-trust in the ‘70s, under growing Chicago school (spits) influence among elected officials, “think tanks” (lobbying groups), and courts. That’s why everything’s so insanely consolidated now. Practically every market has a handful of massive players all of which would currently be under serious threat of break-up under the old approach to enforcement. It’s all monopoly.

darth_avocado 2y ago

I wholeheartedly support antitrust enforcement. My comment was mostly about VC firms having very specific opinions on what should happen.

scarface_74 2y ago

Let’s not pretend that YC and other VCs are noble. They get rich and pawn their money losing investments to the “bigger fool” https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-combinator-companies-a-mixed-bag-of-success-and-struggle-58e9a4006f01 https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance... > In aggregate, the average return across these YC companies is -49%, with a median return of -46%. To put this into perspective, over the same period, the S&P 500 yielded a positive return of 58% And for the rest of the companies, they aren’t trying to compete with BigTech, they are trying to get acquired by them. Out of the literally thousands of companies that YC has invested in, only about two dozen have gone public

darth_avocado 2y ago
VC firms, not specifically YC, also tend to encourage monopolization when it comes to startups they are invested in. Have we not seen unicorns gobble up other smaller startups all the time?
- echelon 2y ago
  You can compete with a unicorn. You can't compete with a trillion dollar company with a cash hoard larger than every unicorn.
  - jeroenhd 2y ago
    Which is how AirBnB ruined tourist industries worldwide, caused rents to soar, people to get displaced from their cities of birth, and why they're touted as a "disruptor" in this very brief. The end game for these unicorns is to become the cash hoard that they intended to compete with.
echelon 2y ago
> Let’s not pretend that YC and other VCs are noble. I'm fine with that. Let them make money at the expense of big tech. Breaking up big tech benefits financial/venture capital, but it also benefits labor capital as well. More opportunity for more startups to succeed, more competition for engineering talent, less market distorting wage collusion. Big tech already won. It's benefactors already reap the benefits. Break them up and a new generation of engineers can grow wealthy on the field they contribute their labor to. Right now the proceeds of tech go to hedge funds and pension funds. It's venture capital and entrepreneurs that take risks. They're the ones that should see upside. Unfortunately, big tech monopolies put a ceiling on this.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  They do see upside - by being acquired by BigTech. So if Google wasn’t a “monopoly” you think a startup could make a better search engine? Be more popular than Android - Microsoft tried both and failed because people prefer Google products. It wasn’t for the lack of money. And engineers are getting wealthy - by working for BigTech. Even an entry level developer at BigTech makes more than 90% of workers.