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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

#131

Post by lvoudour »

jerrre wrote: post #105
lvoudour wrote: post #101

>We’ve only begun to grasp the problem, but in the past, natural monopolies like utilities and railways that enjoy huge economies of scale and serve the common good have been prime candidates for public ownership. The solution to our newfangled monopoly problem lies in this sort of age-old fix, updated for our digital age. It would mean taking back control over the internet and our digital infrastructure, instead of…

>Facebook is a chat/opinion/vanity medium, are we really saying that losing facebook (or whatsapp or whatever) access is a national emergency? Not a direct answer, but this triggered me to wonder how many relations/connections would be lost because people have no other details of each other than what's on facebook.

Sadly that's true, but the blame for this single point of failure falls entirely on those people. In this day and age it's inexcusable not to have multiple ways to contact people you care about.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#132

Post by ionised »

peoplewindow wrote: post #73
bem94 wrote: post #18

I think a lot of the "oh my gosh nationalisation is such an awful idea" / "not in my free society" comments are missing the point. I too believe nationalisation is a bad idea in this case , but given the enormous reaction it would bring, can you imagine how awful the situation appears to be from the authors (any many other non-tech-bubble) peoples perspective to even contemplate such a thing? Let alone write an opini…

You seem to be saying there's a high threshold for extreme opinions to be published in the Guardian, so the fact that someone wrote such an article suggests that there is a genuine problem that needs to be taken seriously. Guardian writers do not live inside a "bubble" and therefore, there is inherent merit to what they write. I wonder how often you actually read the Guardian, which is famous for having wildly extrem…

>It's basically the Breitbart of the left

That's ridiculous.

The Guardian has been a mainstream newspaper for over 100 years. It is not a fringe publication, no matter how much you disagree with everything in it.

I'm sure that says more about your political leanings than it does about the Guardian (as if it even had one unified ideology behind it, which it doesn't).

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#133

Post by pdkl95 »

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 trust all of them more than I trust the US government

Governments don't deserve your trust. The same goes for business. Trusting either is is a terrible idea, because power corrupts wherever it accumulates. While public and private use power in different ways, they are both a serious threat when they are allowed to act without regular check on their power. The solution isn't to pick sides. Power needs to be diluted regularly, and that happens when government and business work as checks on each other. It is the conflict itself that keeps power from accumulating.

> Can you even imagine how their business would work when these are state entities?

They already are, in all but name. Remember Prism?

> All that information on people all over the world is now in the hands of the US government.

That ship already sailed, unfortunately. I agree that this is a terrifying problem, but I'm not sure how to fix it. However, consider this: right now there are effectively no restraints on that power. Nationalizing/utilifying Google et al at least introduces the opportunity to add regulation by bringing the problem into public scrutiny.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#134

Post by ionised »

janlukacs wrote: post #125

Never reading a Guardian story again, crypto-communists - no other word for them, pretty much every day some kind of idiotic leftist agenda is being pushed.

You think the Guardian is communist?

Haha, it's a left-of centre paper. They are not even close to genuinely socialist publication like the The Socialist or the Morning Star, which if you read I imagine would give you a heart attack.

Do you think the Daily Mail is a moderate publication?

I find the ideas people have of left and right so pointless and hilarious. It's just childish sports team politics.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#135

Post by mattacular »

amelius wrote: post #129
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…

I think we should move back to the model we had at the beginning of the internet era: 1. Universities and government agencies create the protocols and the software. 2. Companies create just the hardware. 3. Infrastructure is run and maintained by the government with the help of companies.

Universities and the government providing all the software doesn't sound like a great situation.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#137

Post by jondubois »

I agree that advertising should be nationalised and Facebook is a particularly good target. Advertising makes capitalism more centralized; whoever has the biggest budget gets all the customers. Having worked for both big corporations and small companies in the tech industry, I'm certain that big corporations are less efficient overall; I think that they are successful in spite of their innefficiencies because of their advertising power.

Centralization reduces the number of people who have wealth (increases inequality); there are so few of these people and their money is in such high demand (and they have so much of it) that they are effectively incapable of investing it efficiently - Their investing bandwidth is all used up (they are spammed-out with investment opportunities). If wealth was more spread out, more people could be investors and they would have more time to really think through and consider opportunities and because they would have less money on an individual basis, they would be much more careful about their investment decisions.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#138

Post by amelius »

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…

A simple solution is to treat these companies as telcos.

We could learn something from history. See e.g. the Mann-Elkins Act (1910), [1]. And the telecommunications acts, [2], [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann%E2%80%93Elkins_Act

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#140

Post by smcl »

gaius wrote: post #110
jpttsn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure the authors are writing this story out of a genuine heartfelt fear? Do you think the editor who published them shares this genuine fear?

The Graun is ideologically committed to nationalising all the things . It would be noteworthy if they ever called for anything to remain private, let alone be privatised. Having said that there's a decent case for Google being broken up.

That just isn't true at all
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