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Should we break up the big tech companies?

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Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#21

Post by flavio81 »

harry8 wrote: post #5
skinnymuch wrote: post #2

Microsoft doesn't get any special mention :p. Makes sense to leave Microsoft out in 2017, but Apple doesn't really have a monopoly ripe for abuse either in the same way of Google, FB, Amazon. If Apple is included because of its size, then Microsoft still does more revenue and profit than most of the tech companies. And its market cap will be higher than Amazon and FB for a few more years.

Apple could be included because of their astoundingly revolting behaviour. Microsoft never pulled a "You write a program that runs on windows we'll take 30% of your revenue off the top or we block your sales" stunt. Literally the only thing that has ever made apple less awful than microsoft is their lack of success. I would miss them no more than microsoft if they died in a bankruptcy event redolent with the kind of…

You are right. Some Apple policies are downright disgusting.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#22

Post by jhbadger »

bbctol wrote: post #9
DomreiRoam wrote: post #4

You can make the point that even in a market economy, the internal economy of a company is communist: it is centrally controlled/planned and not market base. Outside, big companies can distort the market because of they weight and there ability to use international difference (price transfer, little effective tax paid, lobbying). So I think, if you believe in the invisible hand and that a fair market is good for ever…

Well, the internal structure of a company is almost always autocratic , but not every dictatorship is a communist one, and very few companies are even nominally communist.

Internally almost all are. While there might be some internal rivalry between groups in a company, they generally don't have an internal market for goods and services but simply work together for a common goal -- that's communism in a nutshell.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#23

Post by eli_gottlieb »

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #20
marchenko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

J. Bradford DeLong had a piece on the potential for corporations to resemble command economies many years ago; it would be interesting to see a more recent perspective on the topic http://web.archive.org/web/20090430185843/http://j-bradford-...

Thanks for the link! This passage stuck out at me: "But we were all told a decade ago, when the Soviet Union collapsed, that hierarchical organizations simply did not work as modes of organizing economic life--that you needed a market in order to achieve anything better than low-productivity, bureaucracy-ridden economic stagnation. What, then, are all these large corporations--ATT and IBM, General Motors and Toyota,…

Bureaucratic state-socialists used to brag that the growth of large trusts and joint-stock corporations was capitalism building the infrastructure for socialism.

I agree with them in the respect they meant it, but nowadays we know that's kind of a bad thing: building up a massive bureaucratic apparatus is a bad thing.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#24

Post by GeekyBear »

harry8 wrote: post #5
skinnymuch wrote: post #2

Microsoft doesn't get any special mention :p. Makes sense to leave Microsoft out in 2017, but Apple doesn't really have a monopoly ripe for abuse either in the same way of Google, FB, Amazon. If Apple is included because of its size, then Microsoft still does more revenue and profit than most of the tech companies. And its market cap will be higher than Amazon and FB for a few more years.

Apple could be included because of their astoundingly revolting behaviour. Microsoft never pulled a "You write a program that runs on windows we'll take 30% of your revenue off the top or we block your sales" stunt. Literally the only thing that has ever made apple less awful than microsoft is their lack of success. I would miss them no more than microsoft if they died in a bankruptcy event redolent with the kind of…

Apple has never pulled a "You write a program for OS X and we'll take 30% of your revenue or block your sales" either.

However, the last I knew, indie XBox game developers paid the same 30% cut to Microsoft to be allowed to sell their product on the XBox.

Has that changed since then?

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

advael wrote: post #17
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #11

Yes, and not just tech companies. We should break up all mega-corporations.

I'm actually curious about how the current situation arose. We clearly have some historical trust-busting (e.g. Bell, as the article points out), but the concentration of market share in a ton of industries is pretty obviously too high, and basically nothing seems to get done about it in at least the last decade. It leads me to believe that much broader criteria and lower thresholds should be applied when assessing m…

[deleted]

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#27

Post by clock_tower »

DomreiRoam wrote: post #4

You can make the point that even in a market economy, the internal economy of a company is communist: it is centrally controlled/planned and not market base. Outside, big companies can distort the market because of they weight and there ability to use international difference (price transfer, little effective tax paid, lobbying). So I think, if you believe in the invisible hand and that a fair market is good for ever…

The failure mode of a big company is the same as that of a communist country, too: elite disconnect with real conditions, then stagnation, then bankruptcy, then horrible effects for the places that were dependent on it. Look at Seattle in the '80s, Moscow in the '90s, or Rochester, NY after Kodak fell.

The German model, where the employees' union is guaranteed a seat on the board of directors, is probably a healthier way of structuring a BigCo; often the workers can see which way the wind is blowing when the executives can't. _Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?_ is the book to read here.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#28

Post by gorkonsine »

harry8 wrote: post #5
skinnymuch wrote: post #2

Microsoft doesn't get any special mention :p. Makes sense to leave Microsoft out in 2017, but Apple doesn't really have a monopoly ripe for abuse either in the same way of Google, FB, Amazon. If Apple is included because of its size, then Microsoft still does more revenue and profit than most of the tech companies. And its market cap will be higher than Amazon and FB for a few more years.

Apple could be included because of their astoundingly revolting behaviour. Microsoft never pulled a "You write a program that runs on windows we'll take 30% of your revenue off the top or we block your sales" stunt. Literally the only thing that has ever made apple less awful than microsoft is their lack of success. I would miss them no more than microsoft if they died in a bankruptcy event redolent with the kind of…

The counterargument to this is that Apple does not have a monopoly, or anything even close to it, even in the mobile device space. It's of course the most profitable company there, but its Android competitors sell far more phones than they do, even if you look only at the US. IMO, this basically means Apple's high fees are a "stupid tax" for Apple customers. If you don't like their policies or prices, don't buy an iPhone, it's that simple.

Of course, this might leave you single and lonely, since studies have shown that women are more likely to discriminate against potential suitors based on their choice of phone (if a man doesn't have an iPhone, or their iPhone is too old, the women isn't interested). But this can be a useful way of screening out superficial people who spend too much money and will end up spending you into bankruptcy if you marry them.

BTW, MS is trying to copy them, with Windows 10S and their policy that only software from the Windows Store will run on it.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#29

Post by malandrew »

Good luck getting other countries to "play along". Doing this is tantamount to handicapping your nation's corporate giants, who will no longer be able to compete as effectively against the corporate giants of nations that don't play along.

This line of thinking is how you end up like Europe that today consumes goods and services produced almost entirely by large US tech companies. If you handicap the American tech giants this way, prepare for a world where the only remaining tech giants dominating globally are Chinese, Korean and Japanese (it wouldn't be Europe because Europe has already handicapped its businesses).

I'm honestly amazed that most people that don't realize that your country's businesses are in competition with all the businesses of other countries. A well meaning policy that would be good for your nation pre-globalization will handicap and disadvantage your country's economy now that globalization is the status quo.

Economic nationalism is a prerequisite if you want to live in an economically prosperous nation.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#30

Post by anth1988 »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #8
flashman wrote: post #3

There was a video on building monopolies the other day[1] which pointed out that tech companies' "other bets" are designed to make them look less monopolistic. Google can say "we're not a monopoly in phone software or self-driving cars" and divert attention from being a near-monopoly in search engines and advertising. I think it's possibly a bit soon to go down this route. There needs to be more time to determine whe…

Why would we consider google a monopoly before cell-providers, ISPs, major credit card companies, or auto companies? [All of whom actively have stifled competition in unfair ways]

Why not? You have to start somewhere.
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