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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?

#31

Post by theamk »

I am curious how can you even break Google apart -- it is not like you can just split it into regional companies (like with Ma Bell). The article only mentions:

- Fining Google over shopping-comparison results

- Forcing Bell Labs to license its patents to all comers

I don't think that the fines could reduce Google's or Facebook's market share in their primary market.

As for the patent example, I am not sure how to apply it to Google/Facebook. AFAIK, their patent portfolio, or even their software, is not the key to their success -- their social networks are.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#33

Post by TheCoelacanth »

malandrew wrote: post #29

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 gi…

Obviously you would need to have a blanket ban on overly large corporations operating in your country and on goods and services produced by overly large corporations being imported into your country. You couldn't apply it only to domestic corporations.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#35

Post by Mystrl »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #33
malandrew wrote: post #29

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 gi…

Obviously you would need to have a blanket ban on overly large corporations operating in your country and on goods and services produced by overly large corporations being imported into your country. You couldn't apply it only to domestic corporations.

And how would this be implemented? Are you proposing every country creates their own equivalent of the great firewall?

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#36

Post by bbctol »

jhbadger wrote: post #22
bbctol wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's... not communism in a nutshell, though. That's just autocracy, it describes fascism equally well. I don't know many companies that even claim to distribute income to employees based on need.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#37

Post by jhbadger »

bbctol wrote: post #36
jhbadger wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's... not communism in a nutshell, though. That's just autocracy, it describes fascism equally well. I don't know many companies that even claim to distribute income to employees based on need.

That's not what the communism analogy is referring to. The point is within a company there aren't generally entities that compete among themselves in a market economy for resources. Instead, there is a command economy with the CEO and other high executives making decisions as to the allocation of resources much as how resources were allocated in the Soviet Union. In fascism there were numerous corporations that competed with each other as in any capitalist system with the exception that the dictator could have the CEOs imprisoned or killed if they didn't like them, of course.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#38

Post by ilaksh »

The technopolies bring greater efficiency and common platforms along with the unfair business situation.

The trend is towards more consolidation morphing into a type of technocracy. This is basically technological communism. The biggest problem with both capitalist and communist systems is over-centralization.

There are quite a few technocrats out there and people that don't know they are. They will run up against the problems of over-centralization and have their models fall apart.

We can look at the platforms built by companies like Uber, Amazon, and Google as centralized testbeds for the decentralized platforms that will replace them. We must have common platforms for compatibility and efficiency and data sharing. But we cannot allow companies to control them and use them to dominate markets in ways unfair to employees, other businesses, and eventually even consumers as their monopolies grow more absolute.

Adoption of decentralized platforms is the next step. These platforms must provide some type of holism while at the same time being able to evolve freely.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#39

Post by TheCoelacanth »

Mystrl wrote: post #35
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously you would need to have a blanket ban on overly large corporations operating in your country and on goods and services produced by overly large corporations being imported into your country. You couldn't apply it only to domestic corporations.

And how would this be implemented? Are you proposing every country creates their own equivalent of the great firewall?

No, just punish any companies that break the law by seizing assets and imprisoning employees in the country.

Re: Should we break up the big tech companies?

#40

Post by Shikadi »

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…

This is relevant http://longorshortcapital.com/wp-content/att_history_chart.j...
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