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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

#211

Post by aneutron »

quirkot wrote: post #174
aneutron wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with the legal work required to patch up Google's physical infrastructure than spans, literally, worldwide. For example, if it owns a cable (or just wavelengths) that connect Asia to Europe, how would you handle that ? It certainly doesn't comply to US territory regulations. Unless of course I'm mistaken which is very likely.

You do realize a cable that connects Asia to Europe could be like 6cm long, right?

It's a stupid example I gave, also sometimes the connection has to take the not shortest route due to legal restrictions. So no, not always.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#212

Post by sctb »

bpodgursky wrote: post #80

I don't know where they dredge up chimpanzees who can look at the glorious history of nationalization in Venezuela et all and say "yeah that really worked out well" It's pretty pathetic how the internet scum found a startup-oriented board and infested it with articles about nationalizing the tech startups the board was about founding. Congratulations, you found a thing someone else built and trashed it. Fittingly, no…

Maybe what's needed is just some cooling off, but it should be clear that you're not welcome to continue to violate the guidelines like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#213

Post by uoaei »

demonshalo wrote: post #173
igravious wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what bread and circuses means. That expression is a cynical look at the relationship of the individual to the State: so long as my belly is full and I am entertained I'm all right Jack. “… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself…

> That expression is a cynical look at the relationship of the individual to the State: so long as my belly is full and I am entertained I'm all right Jack. Wow. You just describe Sweden O.o I'm mighty impressed how this saying fits perfectly into the context of the modern Swedish culture!

Would you please clarify what you mean?

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#214

Post by Veratyr »

mikojan wrote: post #76
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…

This is such a widespread idea I wonder where it comes from. At least your government (hopefully) is a somewhat democratic institution and is to that extend accountable and is providing standard procedures to make it more accountable if you believe it ought to be. There's no such thing in Facebook or Google. Managers dictate policy and if you don't like it you can leave/stop using their service.

My government is far more democratic than the US but I still wouldn't trust it with that kind of power.

Democracy is nice and all but the representative democracy most of the world is ruled by puts people who are good at getting elected in power rather than people who are good at running a country. Google/Facebook don't have that problem, their leaders are there on merit rather than their charisma, popularity or the lies they told.

Also, Google/Facebook are very much regulated by data protection authorities in the countries they operate in.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#215

Post by harryh »

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…

> DNS operates in this way, as far as I'm aware.

Your awareness is wrong. DNS is, by and large, operated by for profit enterprises. Y combinator, for example, uses Amazon Web Services as their DNS provider.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#217

Post by maym86 »

peoplewindow wrote: post #198
kiliantics wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's basically the Breitbart of the left Please. The Guardian is establishment liberal media. The opinions they publish aren't even that extreme. There are plenty of journals that are far more radical and much further to the left. It's funny how conservative HN looks when posts like this appear.

The opinions they publish are fantastically extreme and often deeply offensive. The Guardian constantly pumps out honest to god racism, sexism and other deplorable viewpoints. The only reason you don't believe it's comparable to Breitbart is you haven't sat down and done an honest comparison. My post simply lists out Guardian headlines for all to see. It originally had something like +15 points and now it's sitting a…

Care to go through each headline and explain your issues with each? I don't see any extreme or unreasonable views in the list you've posted.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#218

Post by ucaetano »

Let's do a mental exercise: the US government decides to nationalize those 3 companies.

1) Buying them would require at least 30% over their market caps, so let's say $1.3T for Google, and $1.3T for Amazon and FB combined, which is about 2/3 of the entire US Gov budget, so there's no way the government is paying fair market price for this

2) Since the government isn't paying fair market price, it essentially needs to seize the shares by force and then go through the courts for years to fight it off. Millions loose hundreds of billions of dollars in their ETFs, and their retirement savings take a massive hit

3) Even if the government seizes the shares by force, there are very few actual assets owned by those 3 companies, most of the value is in data, systems, growth expectations, employees, etc.

4) With the government forcibly taking control of those companies, countries around the world would take action and either take control of the local subsidiaries or just detach them from the US company, everything starts breaking down

5) Employees quit em masse, there's nobody able to run the systems, the government either has to arrest employees and force them to work, or simply let all the systems go down one by one. Hiring new people won't make a difference, as the learning curve is massive, and you wouldn't even have access to the systems

6) The products offered by those companies quickly fail, and the former employees open new companies that offer similar products, the government wiped out trillions of dollars from the global economy, a massive economic colapse ensues

7) As the global economy crumbles, the author blames the companies and the employees for not being willing to work for a shitty government job in a gulag with no opportunity for innovation, and refuses to take responsability for his/her stupid idea.

It doesn't take a lot to understand how stupid this idea is. I usually don't like to call things stupid, but whoever came up with this idea put so little critical thinking behind it, that it isn't just bad, it's stupid.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#219

Post by slowmovintarget »

igravious wrote: post #107
slowmovintarget wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are awful because someone wrote an opinion piece in the newspaper? I heartily disagree that anyone should "detect a consensus" from leftists preaching expropriation. That's just an ordinary activity for them. Nick Srnicek may be shouting a bit louder than most from his pulpit in The Guardian, but that has as little to do with truth as his article has to do with reason. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are just fas…

That's not what bread and circuses means. That expression is a cynical look at the relationship of the individual to the State: so long as my belly is full and I am entertained I'm all right Jack. “… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself…

The article is an argument over who ought to own and run the circus. The article is also a distraction, on its own, and thus part of a circus.

Granted, I'd completely accept a quote from The Dude as a legitimate response: "Yeah, well you know... that's just, like, your opinion, man."

It is.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#220

Post by zild3d »

igravious wrote: post #113
visarga wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe nationalization is a bad way to go about it, but these companies are too large, they have too much power over society and society needs to exert power back onto them. So there should be some kind of external oversight when decisions that affect millions of people are being made. I think governments are inefficient and corrupt, but companies are absolutely free to do as they please when deciding how to change pr…

Largest companies by annual revenue[0]: WalMart Stores (US) - $485.8bn State Grid (China) - $315.1bn Sinopec (China) - $267.5bn China Natural Petroleum (China) - $262.6bn Toyota Motor (Japan) - $254.7bn Volkswagen (Germany) - $240.2bn Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands) - $240bn Berkshire Hathaway (US) - $223.6bn Apple (US) - $215.6bn Exxon Mobil (US) - $205bn None are the big three. Should we nationalize Toyota and Volk…

Not really relevant, it's not the revenue that is a problem. It's their massive network effects that are, as the author puts it, platform monopolies.

Walmart, Toyota, Apple, do not have entrenching networks that lead to a monopoly. You can just as easily go to Target, buy a Honda, or get an Android phone

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