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America has a monopoly problem

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Re: America has a monopoly problem

#41

Post by dforrestwilson »

ashark wrote: post #27
whistlerbrk wrote: post #14

America has a corruption problem. The ability for companies to vertically integrate and essentially make smaller businesses non-competitive can only occur when you don't have to pay the taxes your smaller competitors have to pay and don't have to obey the same laws your competitors have to obey. We have a systemic corruption problem (manifested in lobbying) coupled with greed on scales we've never seen before. Everyt…

Our preference for (relatively) high levels of local control (and the resulting tiered cake of tax jurisdictions and regulatory domains) makes our system incredibly vulnerable to race-to-the-bottom behavior when confronted with powerful non-state actors (corporations). Our fear of a hypothetical (though, to be clear, in other times and places realized) evil state leaves us with a host of real, everyday stresses, anno…

Yup.

Amazon receiving 238 bids of localities falling over themselves to handover tax credits and other goodies is the example I've been thinking about recently.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-headquarters/a...

How to fix it though?

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#42

Post by sandworm101 »

whistlerbrk wrote: post #14

America has a corruption problem. The ability for companies to vertically integrate and essentially make smaller businesses non-competitive can only occur when you don't have to pay the taxes your smaller competitors have to pay and don't have to obey the same laws your competitors have to obey. We have a systemic corruption problem (manifested in lobbying) coupled with greed on scales we've never seen before. Everyt…

I think it goes a step deeper. Imho the issue starts with the fundamental distrust of government. Lacking the ability to see government as a valid leader, Americans turn to corporations and billionaires. They really do believe that Apple and Dow chemical can do a better job leading the country than any elected politician. They are not worried about the monopolies. They should be, any economist would agree that monopolies are not good for consumers, but the average person is not a rational economist. I don't think Americans believe lobbying is bad. They want to be led by corporations and see lobbying as the legitimate means for them to lead.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#43

Post by [deleted] »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #10
rayiner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They often are, because companies in highly competitive industries don’t have the excess profits to reinvest in research. Computing as we know it is largely the story of monopolies. Bell Labs bankrolled by the AT&T monopoly. Xerox PARC bankrolled by the Xerox copier monopoly. The Internet bankrolled by the ultimate monopoly (the military). The modern web bankrolled by the Google/Apple duopoly.

>companies in highly competitive industries don’t have the excess profits to reinvest in research. On the flip side, monopolies often have little incentive to invest in improving their products/services, and find they can profit from making their products cheaper/worse.

[deleted]

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#44

Post by ZeroGravitas »

newmanships wrote: post #23
grzm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be an interesting discussion here somewhere, but as constructed your comment is less likely to produce such. Do you have specifics regarding Thiel’s position and how it compares with that of the article? As is, it appears you’re looking to provoke a reaction rather than promote a productive discussion.

He gave a talk about his thoughts to a Stanford class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6K8PZxyQfU His slide on monopolies is around 4:40

My take is that he's basically saying capitalism doesn't work (edit: at least there's big problems within it) and if you want to get rich you should know how to play the system because just providing large amounts of social value isn't sufficient. I'm not sure that's his intended message though, since he often presents himself as a libertarian with the implicit message that capitalism and getting rich is a sign of providing social value.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#45

Post by walshemj »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #41
ashark wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our preference for (relatively) high levels of local control (and the resulting tiered cake of tax jurisdictions and regulatory domains) makes our system incredibly vulnerable to race-to-the-bottom behavior when confronted with powerful non-state actors (corporations). Our fear of a hypothetical (though, to be clear, in other times and places realized) evil state leaves us with a host of real, everyday stresses, anno…

Yup. Amazon receiving 238 bids of localities falling over themselves to handover tax credits and other goodies is the example I've been thinking about recently. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-headquarters/a... How to fix it though?

unfortunetly you would have to radically reform the entire political system and take a lot of powers away from states eg single sales tax, a single set of employment law.

Unfortunately the states are not turkeys voting for Christmas

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#46

Post by snomad »

ashark wrote: post #27
whistlerbrk wrote: post #14

America has a corruption problem. The ability for companies to vertically integrate and essentially make smaller businesses non-competitive can only occur when you don't have to pay the taxes your smaller competitors have to pay and don't have to obey the same laws your competitors have to obey. We have a systemic corruption problem (manifested in lobbying) coupled with greed on scales we've never seen before. Everyt…

Our preference for (relatively) high levels of local control (and the resulting tiered cake of tax jurisdictions and regulatory domains) makes our system incredibly vulnerable to race-to-the-bottom behavior when confronted with powerful non-state actors (corporations). Our fear of a hypothetical (though, to be clear, in other times and places realized) evil state leaves us with a host of real, everyday stresses, anno…

Just a minor clarification to your point. In "industry" towns like the Bay Area, Detroit, and Chicago - corporations are definitely the powerful non-state actors.

Outside of those though, their are many cities of considerable size where local developers hold the most sway. These local developers behave and are motivated by different things then the mega corps.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#47

Post by adventured »

whistlerbrk wrote: post #14

America has a corruption problem. The ability for companies to vertically integrate and essentially make smaller businesses non-competitive can only occur when you don't have to pay the taxes your smaller competitors have to pay and don't have to obey the same laws your competitors have to obey. We have a systemic corruption problem (manifested in lobbying) coupled with greed on scales we've never seen before. Everyt…

Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple would be extraordinarily profitable even if they were paying 26% corporate income tax rates. Your entire premise collapses right there.

Facebook will generate near $20 billion in earnings before tax for fiscal 2017. You're positing that if they pay $6 billion in taxes, instead of $4 billion, then their monopoly will unwind or somehow their competitors will finally be able to catch up (yeah, it's just not fair, the tax rate that Snap is paying).

Now apply the exact same thing to the other tech giants (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Intel, Cisco, etc). It's just as far-fetched with them as it is Facebook.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#48

Post by ashark »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #41
ashark wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our preference for (relatively) high levels of local control (and the resulting tiered cake of tax jurisdictions and regulatory domains) makes our system incredibly vulnerable to race-to-the-bottom behavior when confronted with powerful non-state actors (corporations). Our fear of a hypothetical (though, to be clear, in other times and places realized) evil state leaves us with a host of real, everyday stresses, anno…

Yup. Amazon receiving 238 bids of localities falling over themselves to handover tax credits and other goodies is the example I've been thinking about recently. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-headquarters/a... How to fix it though?

> How to fix it though?

Don't think we can. We're more likely to fix one of our other big, fundamental problems—the two party system + gerrymandering, for which proportional representation or any of several other schemes would be a good fix—than we are that, and I'd say the odds of our fixing that this century are maybe 50/50. We have no stomach (or mind...) for questioning such foundational premises of our system in the face of something as abstract and high-falutin' as a kind of political root-cause analysis, and aside from that we have too many states-can't-possibly-do-anything-right-ever-evidence-be-damned-no-really-I-proved-it-from-first-principles-it's-just-like-math folks running around.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#49

Post by rayiner »

callinyouin wrote: post #38
rayiner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They often are, because companies in highly competitive industries don’t have the excess profits to reinvest in research. Computing as we know it is largely the story of monopolies. Bell Labs bankrolled by the AT&T monopoly. Xerox PARC bankrolled by the Xerox copier monopoly. The Internet bankrolled by the ultimate monopoly (the military). The modern web bankrolled by the Google/Apple duopoly.

Kind of a hard argument to make when there are plenty of examples of contributions to computing that weren't bankrolled by monopolies. Just think about how much, especially in the early days, came out of academia alone. And I'm not sure where you get that the modern web has been bankrolled by Google and Apple when there are many, many other contributors. IMO, innovation is usually fueled by competition. Where there's…

> Just think about how much, especially in the early days, came out of academia alone.

Academic institutions are hugely monopolistic...

> Where there's lots of competition, the need to innovate is the necessity for survival.

That's the theory. In practice, competition drives bean-counting efficiency. See, e.g., Thinkpads before and after the Lenovo acquisition. Pretty much the only place you see innovation in that space is among companies that can carve out a niche based on brand or differentiating factors (Apple), or among companies that have a monopoly on a key piece of the supply chain (Intel, Microsoft).

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#50

Post by Brakenshire »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #41
ashark wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our preference for (relatively) high levels of local control (and the resulting tiered cake of tax jurisdictions and regulatory domains) makes our system incredibly vulnerable to race-to-the-bottom behavior when confronted with powerful non-state actors (corporations). Our fear of a hypothetical (though, to be clear, in other times and places realized) evil state leaves us with a host of real, everyday stresses, anno…

Yup. Amazon receiving 238 bids of localities falling over themselves to handover tax credits and other goodies is the example I've been thinking about recently. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-headquarters/a... How to fix it though?

The EU has a set of laws called State Aid, which disallows member states from subsidizing business to the detriment of their competitors (either other businesses or other states). Government can improve infrastructure, but cannot literally hand out cash to build a factory, or anything like that.

This exists even though EU nation states have far more individual power than US states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_aid_(European_Union)

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