4 ms·

Competition in the free market is not colonialism. The capitalistic marketplace is meant to involve disruption. That's the entire point: new companies come alon

Competition in the free market is not colonialism. The capitalistic marketplace is meant to involve disruption. That's the entire point: new companies come along and out-compete and out-innovate older companies and business models. The consumer wins. This is not the same as invading countries and subjugating the inhabitants, who have a human right to a peaceful life. No business in a capitalistic marketplace has a "right" to continue enjoying profits and resist innovation.

Ecstatify 1y ago
What new companies? Google is a monopoly, along with most other major tech platforms. When a handful of corporations control entire market sectors and actively acquire or crush potential competitors, that's not free market competition, that's market consolidation that prevents the very disruption you're describing. The "creative destruction" of capitalism requires actual competition to exist, not just the theoretical possibility of it.
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
Violating/changing the meaning of copyright law and demanding special carvouts AFTER THE FACT is not 'competition'. (AI) Breaking hospitality/zoning laws is not 'competition'. (AirBnb) Breaking taxi/transportations laws and regulation is not 'competition'. (Uber/Lyft) Misclassifying workers to bypass employment laws is not 'competition'. (All 'gig' companies) Operating unlicensed financial services is not 'competition'. (fintech) Being given special content liability carveouts only to your platform is not 'competition'. (social media) Evading antitrust norms via vertical integration is not 'competition'. (Apple app store and 30% rent) Flooding the market with illegal or gray-area imports is not 'competition'. (Amazon) Exploiting data without consent is not 'competition'. (all tech at this point) Using investor capital to subsidize predatory pricing is not 'competition'. (almost all tech) Every industry 'new' tech has gone after they have cheated, broken laws and/or had/pushed for (normally after the fact) special carveouts from the law so that they are the only ones in their field that get to operate a different way, used and harvested data in bad faith, used predatory unsustainable pricing practices. Show me where tech has 'outcompeted' without doing any of the above. Where the product didn't need special protections/carvouts to existing law, didn't exploit data/peoples trust, didn't use investment capital to artificially lower prices, didn't utilize 'grey areas' to skirt barriers that ACTUAL competing companies obeyed, where the product delivered, on it's own, created a unicorn. Edit: Responding as edit because I've been timed out. Apple is doing rent-seeking enforced through ecosystem control. This is traditionally seen as a monopolistic practice and historically/based on capitalist philosophy companies that did this were seen as a threat to capitalism and broken up/punished for this behavior. Rent seeking is explicitly anti-capitalist in classical economic thought.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
  > Evading antitrust norms via vertical integration is not 'competition'. (Apple app store and 30% rent) This one is competition though. No one is forced to use Apple or develop for Apple. People purchase Apple because they like their products more than the alternatives.
  - slg 1y ago
    It really depends on the specifics. From the Wikipedia entry on vertical integration[1]: >Vertical integration can be desirable because it secures supplies needed by the firm to produce its product and the market needed to sell the product, but it can become undesirable when a firm's actions become anti-competitive and impede free competition in an open marketplace. ... >A firm may desire such expansion to secure the supplies needed by the firm to produce its product and the market needed to sell the product. Such expansion can become undesirable from a system-wide perspective when it becomes anti-competitive and impede free competition in an open marketplace. ... >The result is a more efficient business with lower costs and more profits. On the undesirable side, when vertical expansion leads toward monopolistic control of a product or service then regulative action may be required to rectify anti-competitive behavior. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration
  - owebmaster 1y ago
    Apple literally forces you to own an iphone (and a Mac) for you to develop for iPhones. And they also force their users to only be able to install apps through the app store. "If you don't like use an alternative" is not a valid take here.
    - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
      It is legally.
- csallen 1y ago
  Hilariously, half of the examples you cite are laws created/influenced/strengthened by incumbent businesses of the past with the explicit goal of reducing competition and making it difficult for new entrants to compete. Let's take copyright law for example. Set aside the fact that the entire basis of copyright law is EXPLICITLY to give businesses a "monopoly," which is the exact opposite of competition. Your issue with AI is that they are violating or trying to change the meaning of copyright law? How do you square that with the past 250 years of history of businesses successfully lobbying to strengthen and change copyright law in order to protect their monopolies and weaken competition? Or let's look into taxi laws. Where for decades taxi medallion owners and fleet operators in NYC lobbied to prevent the city from issuing new medallions. You seem to believe that laws increase competition and that resisting/changing/lobbying against the laws is meant to decrease competition, which is plainly untrue. Often the exact opposite is true, which is the very definition of regulatory capture. Capitalism is a system that seeks to benefit the common man by incentivizing profit-seekers to compete to create new innovations, to deliver goods faster/easier, and to lower prices. It also seeks to disincentivize profit-seeking through non-competitive means that don't benefit consumers, e.g. monopolies, oligarchies, regulatory capture, false advertising, etc.
ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
Capitalism and colonialism share a lot of similar traits and are not exclusive. In this case, this is the very definition of colonialism, taking over someone's territory and exploiting their resources. AI is trained on all of these publishers' material without consent and without compensation and then big tech turns around and says pay us if you want a slice of the pie we stole from you.
spacemadness 1y ago
If this is the consumer winning I’d rather be losing. As far as I can tell, free market means let the monopolies control everything.
- csallen 1y ago
  Literally the entire narrative right now among online business owners, big and small (influencers, creators, indie hackers, startup founders, etc.) is that this is a golden age for aspirational new entrants and entrepreneurs.
  - Incipient 1y ago
    It's really not the reality. AI spam is diluting the voice of 'new entrants' and removing any traffic based revenue they may get. All I can see AI doing is entrenching those large enough to integrate it into their offerings in a meaningful way, and sustain a significantly lower cost base. I use copilot at $10/mo. Gpt4.1 costs $2/m in and $8/m out. I'd do that in a single day, easily. There is no way any product I try and make can compete with that while consuming any meaningful number of tokens.
    - csallen 1y ago
      I think the problem is your mindset. While you're coming up with reasons why you can't succeed, I know hundreds of people who are actually building things that are successful. I mean TypingMind.com is literally just a GPT wrapper built and maintained by a single guy, and it makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. If I told you I dropped a million dollars in the Pacific Ocean, would you look for it? No. What if I buried it somewhere in California, would you search for it then? Still no. What if I told you it was somewhere in your home, would you search? Yes, and you would probably tear your house apart. If you want to succeed you have to try, and it only makes sense to try if you believe that things are possible. It all starts there.
      - Incipient 1y ago
        I never said you can't succeed. Also that's a very different use case as that product requires you to provide your own API key, so they're not wearing the cost of API calls. It's also a one-off fee, so hundreds of thousands per month seems like a huge number of sales. Also that person had a great idea with typing mind. Also your point is well taken about mindset. From a random person half way across the globe, I do want to say you've made a difference today haha, genuinely.
notsydonia 1y ago
Google can link to whomever they want but stealing content and then saying it is not theft because they mix it up with content from other sites they've stolen from is not fair competition. It's more like the logic of car thieves who say that they took apart the porsche they stole and it's parts are now used with the parts from all the other cars they stole - therefore did they really take the now unrecognizable porsche? The court still deems it theft. If Google left creators and site owners content alone and created their own content to use in A.I. overviews - ie: becoming publishers - it would be annoying and spark innovation as sites de-googled but this is not that.

Ecstatify 1y ago

What new companies? Google is a monopoly, along with most other major tech platforms. When a handful of corporations control entire market sectors and actively acquire or crush potential competitors, that's not free market competition, that's market consolidation that prevents the very disruption you're describing. The "creative destruction" of capitalism requires actual competition to exist, not just the theoretical possibility of it.

_DeadFred_ 1y ago

Violating/changing the meaning of copyright law and demanding special carvouts AFTER THE FACT is not 'competition'. (AI) Breaking hospitality/zoning laws is not 'competition'. (AirBnb) Breaking taxi/transportations laws and regulation is not 'competition'. (Uber/Lyft) Misclassifying workers to bypass employment laws is not 'competition'. (All 'gig' companies) Operating unlicensed financial services is not 'competition'. (fintech) Being given special content liability carveouts only to your platform is not 'competition'. (social media) Evading antitrust norms via vertical integration is not 'competition'. (Apple app store and 30% rent) Flooding the market with illegal or gray-area imports is not 'competition'. (Amazon) Exploiting data without consent is not 'competition'. (all tech at this point) Using investor capital to subsidize predatory pricing is not 'competition'. (almost all tech) Every industry 'new' tech has gone after they have cheated, broken laws and/or had/pushed for (normally after the fact) special carveouts from the law so that they are the only ones in their field that get to operate a different way, used and harvested data in bad faith, used predatory unsustainable pricing practices. Show me where tech has 'outcompeted' without doing any of the above. Where the product didn't need special protections/carvouts to existing law, didn't exploit data/peoples trust, didn't use investment capital to artificially lower prices, didn't utilize 'grey areas' to skirt barriers that ACTUAL competing companies obeyed, where the product delivered, on it's own, created a unicorn. Edit: Responding as edit because I've been timed out. Apple is doing rent-seeking enforced through ecosystem control. This is traditionally seen as a monopolistic practice and historically/based on capitalist philosophy companies that did this were seen as a threat to capitalism and broken up/punished for this behavior. Rent seeking is explicitly anti-capitalist in classical economic thought.

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
> Evading antitrust norms via vertical integration is not 'competition'. (Apple app store and 30% rent) This one is competition though. No one is forced to use Apple or develop for Apple. People purchase Apple because they like their products more than the alternatives.
- slg 1y ago
  It really depends on the specifics. From the Wikipedia entry on vertical integration[1]: >Vertical integration can be desirable because it secures supplies needed by the firm to produce its product and the market needed to sell the product, but it can become undesirable when a firm's actions become anti-competitive and impede free competition in an open marketplace. ... >A firm may desire such expansion to secure the supplies needed by the firm to produce its product and the market needed to sell the product. Such expansion can become undesirable from a system-wide perspective when it becomes anti-competitive and impede free competition in an open marketplace. ... >The result is a more efficient business with lower costs and more profits. On the undesirable side, when vertical expansion leads toward monopolistic control of a product or service then regulative action may be required to rectify anti-competitive behavior. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration
- owebmaster 1y ago
  Apple literally forces you to own an iphone (and a Mac) for you to develop for iPhones. And they also force their users to only be able to install apps through the app store. "If you don't like use an alternative" is not a valid take here.
  - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
    It is legally.
csallen 1y ago
Hilariously, half of the examples you cite are laws created/influenced/strengthened by incumbent businesses of the past with the explicit goal of reducing competition and making it difficult for new entrants to compete. Let's take copyright law for example. Set aside the fact that the entire basis of copyright law is EXPLICITLY to give businesses a "monopoly," which is the exact opposite of competition. Your issue with AI is that they are violating or trying to change the meaning of copyright law? How do you square that with the past 250 years of history of businesses successfully lobbying to strengthen and change copyright law in order to protect their monopolies and weaken competition? Or let's look into taxi laws. Where for decades taxi medallion owners and fleet operators in NYC lobbied to prevent the city from issuing new medallions. You seem to believe that laws increase competition and that resisting/changing/lobbying against the laws is meant to decrease competition, which is plainly untrue. Often the exact opposite is true, which is the very definition of regulatory capture. Capitalism is a system that seeks to benefit the common man by incentivizing profit-seekers to compete to create new innovations, to deliver goods faster/easier, and to lower prices. It also seeks to disincentivize profit-seeking through non-competitive means that don't benefit consumers, e.g. monopolies, oligarchies, regulatory capture, false advertising, etc.

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago

Capitalism and colonialism share a lot of similar traits and are not exclusive. In this case, this is the very definition of colonialism, taking over someone's territory and exploiting their resources. AI is trained on all of these publishers' material without consent and without compensation and then big tech turns around and says pay us if you want a slice of the pie we stole from you.

spacemadness 1y ago

If this is the consumer winning I’d rather be losing. As far as I can tell, free market means let the monopolies control everything.

csallen 1y ago
Literally the entire narrative right now among online business owners, big and small (influencers, creators, indie hackers, startup founders, etc.) is that this is a golden age for aspirational new entrants and entrepreneurs.
- Incipient 1y ago
  It's really not the reality. AI spam is diluting the voice of 'new entrants' and removing any traffic based revenue they may get. All I can see AI doing is entrenching those large enough to integrate it into their offerings in a meaningful way, and sustain a significantly lower cost base. I use copilot at $10/mo. Gpt4.1 costs $2/m in and $8/m out. I'd do that in a single day, easily. There is no way any product I try and make can compete with that while consuming any meaningful number of tokens.
  - csallen 1y ago
    I think the problem is your mindset. While you're coming up with reasons why you can't succeed, I know hundreds of people who are actually building things that are successful. I mean TypingMind.com is literally just a GPT wrapper built and maintained by a single guy, and it makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. If I told you I dropped a million dollars in the Pacific Ocean, would you look for it? No. What if I buried it somewhere in California, would you search for it then? Still no. What if I told you it was somewhere in your home, would you search? Yes, and you would probably tear your house apart. If you want to succeed you have to try, and it only makes sense to try if you believe that things are possible. It all starts there.
    - Incipient 1y ago
      I never said you can't succeed. Also that's a very different use case as that product requires you to provide your own API key, so they're not wearing the cost of API calls. It's also a one-off fee, so hundreds of thousands per month seems like a huge number of sales. Also that person had a great idea with typing mind. Also your point is well taken about mindset. From a random person half way across the globe, I do want to say you've made a difference today haha, genuinely.

notsydonia 1y ago

Google can link to whomever they want but stealing content and then saying it is not theft because they mix it up with content from other sites they've stolen from is not fair competition. It's more like the logic of car thieves who say that they took apart the porsche they stole and it's parts are now used with the parts from all the other cars they stole - therefore did they really take the now unrecognizable porsche? The court still deems it theft. If Google left creators and site owners content alone and created their own content to use in A.I. overviews - ie: becoming publishers - it would be annoying and spark innovation as sites de-googled but this is not that.