5 ms·

Return of the corporate giants

18 points by spooneybarger 17y ago

brc 17y ago
what an utter load of anecdotal crap
hristov 17y ago
This is really a pointless article. The author just repeated a bunch of semi related well publicized memes and there you go. No research, no data, no insight. Are giant companies really returning? God knows. But I would still like to note the little lies and half truths the Economist loves to peddle so much. The first it that deregulation helped the emergence of small companies. Not exactly true. You can cite deregulations that may have helped smaller companies, but a lot of regulations helped small companies too. The most important one is antitrust regulation which severely restricted IBM and resulted in the emergence of the personal computer. Another regulation that really helped small companies were the laws that required telecoms to allow small ISPs to use their equipment. That allowed affordable Internet which really helped popularize the internet. That law was removed later on and that really hurt small companies driving many ISPs out of business. The other huge half truth (or lie by omission) the Economist commits has to do with the whole idea of how it complains that governments are propping up failing companies like General Motors. That is a lie by omission because the Economist does not criticize (and it actually actively supports) the governments propping up much larger failing companies -- the banks. General Motors is peanuts compared to the banks in terms of government resources needed to prop it up. But the Economist complains about General Motors non stop in order to build up its libertarian cred and then brazenly supports much bigger subsidies to the banks.
- maigret 17y ago
  You have a point - visualization data here http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts
ojbyrne 17y ago
I mostly agree with the point of this article, but I also mostly agree with the 2 commenters below. The Economist is generally a pretty shallow publication that has somehow managed to market itself as being deep and incisive. This article is (like almost every article they publish), shallow, content-free, and anecdotal. Much like the other article on the front page, which I also mostly agree with, but think that the reasoning behind it is a joke. Just about every publication on the planet works harder to argue their point, while the Economist assumes this godlike manner, without attribution, substance, or argument.

18 points by spooneybarger 17y ago

brc 17y ago

what an utter load of anecdotal crap

This is really a pointless article. The author just repeated a bunch of semi related well publicized memes and there you go. No research, no data, no insight. Are giant companies really returning? God knows. But I would still like to note the little lies and half truths the Economist loves to peddle so much. The first it that deregulation helped the emergence of small companies. Not exactly true. You can cite deregulations that may have helped smaller companies, but a lot of regulations helped small companies too. The most important one is antitrust regulation which severely restricted IBM and resulted in the emergence of the personal computer. Another regulation that really helped small companies were the laws that required telecoms to allow small ISPs to use their equipment. That allowed affordable Internet which really helped popularize the internet. That law was removed later on and that really hurt small companies driving many ISPs out of business. The other huge half truth (or lie by omission) the Economist commits has to do with the whole idea of how it complains that governments are propping up failing companies like General Motors. That is a lie by omission because the Economist does not criticize (and it actually actively supports) the governments propping up much larger failing companies -- the banks. General Motors is peanuts compared to the banks in terms of government resources needed to prop it up. But the Economist complains about General Motors non stop in order to build up its libertarian cred and then brazenly supports much bigger subsidies to the banks.

maigret 17y ago
You have a point - visualization data here http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts

ojbyrne 17y ago

I mostly agree with the point of this article, but I also mostly agree with the 2 commenters below. The Economist is generally a pretty shallow publication that has somehow managed to market itself as being deep and incisive. This article is (like almost every article they publish), shallow, content-free, and anecdotal. Much like the other article on the front page, which I also mostly agree with, but think that the reasoning behind it is a joke. Just about every publication on the planet works harder to argue their point, while the Economist assumes this godlike manner, without attribution, substance, or argument.