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We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

theguardian.com

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Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#31

Post by ajdlinux »

hueving wrote: post #19
prewett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation, e.g. of utilities, in the in U.S. is sort of a form of nationalization. Technically they are not nationalized, but since they have all kinds of requirements, including needing to apply for rate changes, they aren't exactly normal, either. And if you don't have control of your prices, do you really have a capitalistic business? But aside from that, 3 people at Google get to effectively dictate what the wor…

>This sounds a lot like a dictatorship, and is this what a free society does? Rediculous, nobody is forcing you to use Google or Facebook.

Nobody's forcing in the sense of directly threatening you if you don't use Google or Facebook, that is true.

But: (a) particularly with regards to social networking, the social pressure to use walled-garden sites like Facebook can be very, very strong (b) if you're a Normal Person(tm), it can be hard to know what else to do other than use the same services that everyone else uses and that are being actively marketed to you.

Sure, at the individual level, using Google and Facebook services (as I myself do) is still a voluntary, consensual transaction, but there may well be societal-level effects that look fairly close to those of traditional monopolies.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#32

Post by mmmnt »

Veratyr wrote: post #2

I totally agree that Google, Facebook and Amazon have too much power and too little accountability. However they're all global companies and as bad as they are, I trust all of them more than I trust the US government (I am not American). Can you even imagine how their business would work when these are state entities? You're no longer buying ad placements from a marketing company, you're buying them from the US gover…

I guess the idea is that each country or region has its own Google, Facebook or Amazon - Not that it all belongs to the US government.

I would also argue that they are US companies first and global companies second. Their main focus is always USA and their spirit is also very American for the good and the bad. Strategy for the rest of the world is made in the USA. All important decision are made in the USA. Most investments are made in the USA and also the profits go to the USA.

This is nor good or bad but the point is that those are not global companies.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#34

Post by ajdlinux »

A further alternative - require that certain businesses that reach this level of monopolistic influence transition into some kind of Public Benefit Corporation.

I don't quite know what this would look like, but I'm thinking of some kind of framework where we develop controls and accountability mechanisms on a company-by-company basis.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#35

Post by corobo »

dasil003 wrote: post #7

> For the briefest moment in March 2014, Facebook’s dominance looked under threat. Ello, amid much hype, presented itself as the non-corporate alternative to Facebook. Okay, this is a terrible opener. Ello never appeared to have any greater traction than as a hipster fad, much less posing a material threat to Facebook. Also, you can not nationalise any of the companies listed, because they are not British nor of Comm…

Yeah I think I registered on Ello just to get my preferred username if it did become popular (after missing out on early Twitter) and haven't really thought about it until just now

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#36

Post by lucb1e »

olau wrote: post #17

Actually, I think behind the nationalisation idea, which doesn't seem workable given the circumstances, there's an interesting thought: these companies are sitting on basic infrastructure so instead of treating them like other companies, perhaps we should treat them like utilities. Note that this piece appears in The Guardian. I don't know how it works in the US, but I'm of the impression that in many European countr…

This would also make me a lot happier about sharing info with said companies. Right now I avoid their products (the non-open source ones) because they just have too much market share and power, but if a site like Facebook turned non-profit I'd be much happier to use it.

It just sounds like a great idea all around.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#38

Post by jhasse »

kayman wrote: post #20
featherverse wrote: post #6

That's the _worst_ idea I've heard this week. First of all, "Nationalizing" corporations is not something that free societies do. Second, the effect of this would be to further stifle competition from smaller businesses. Which is also not something that free societies do. I question the motives of the author.

Agreed 100%. Does this mean if you ever built a company, and it gets too big, it will get nationalized? And what will keep the law from evolving to nationalizing slightly smaller businesses as time goes.

> Does this mean if you ever built a company, and it gets too big, it will get nationalized?

Why not? I guess it also has to provide some important infrastructure for other companies.

> And what will keep the law from evolving to nationalizing slightly smaller businesses as time goes.

That's a slippery slope argument. Do you want to nationalize nothing?

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#40

Post by CryptoPunk »

kagamine wrote: post #14
featherverse wrote: post #6

That's the _worst_ idea I've heard this week. First of all, "Nationalizing" corporations is not something that free societies do. Second, the effect of this would be to further stifle competition from smaller businesses. Which is also not something that free societies do. I question the motives of the author.

You keep saying "not something that free societies do" as though that phrase in itself has meaning, but fail to explain why. From a socialist's pov putting a profitable industry in the domain of _everyone_ and sharing the profits is freeing capital from the few and providing an (more)equal share to all. It's not capitalism but that does not mean it isn't "freedom". What is "freedom"? Market competition The way Amazon…

>From a socialist's pov putting a profitable industry in the domain of _everyone_ and sharing the profits is freeing capital from the few and providing an (more)equal share to all. It's not capitalism but that does not mean it isn't "freedom".

I don't believe all ideologies and their definitions need to be given equal respect. Socialists shouldn't get to just redefine "freedom" to mean a government monopoly running major industries, by outlawing private citizens from owning productive enterprises in those industries, and have everyone else accept their definitions as equally valid as a classical liberal's.

Think about it practically for a moment: what is the government going to do when private citizens in another country fire up thousands of servers and begin providing web services to the people within the government's jurisdiction? Put up a firewall? Start raiding anyone running a relay node that bypasses the firewall? How is that congruent with any reasonable definition of freedom?

We can pretend that we're frameless and judging all perspectives as equally valid, but in actuality that will never happen, as it would make any sort of meaningful communication impossible. Someone could argue war is peace, slavery is freedom, etc, and there would be no way to reject their statements as unequivocally wrong. We would be uttering words to each other that mean completely different things to different people, because we would no longer follow the basic convention of language, which is that the widely observed and long established definition trumps the unorthodox one.

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