Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
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Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
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Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#2Capitalism, according to all these men, is about frictionless, seamless engorgement.
The writer is losing the thread a bit here. "Eating" in this context, means to disrupt with a more efficient way of doing things. "Eating people" is replacing manual jobs performed by people with automation and networks. If a job can be "eaten" then that means keeping it is just top-down mandated make-work.
More generally, he argues that we are, in fact, in an all-out return of the Gilded Age — and perhaps only the clothing has changed.
We are, in fact, in yet another variation of a "Gilded Age." [1] Only the clothing and particular cultural artifacts have changed. For years on this site, I've been making an analogy between SV of today and "Mad Men." I think people have misunderstood. In both cases, there's a tribe of people, recently imbued with greater socioeconomic status, mostly from all of the same schools, with the same subculture, dressing the same, consuming the same non-mainstream products, becoming increasingly out of touch with mainstream people and mainstream culture. In both cases, the interests of the subgroup have diverged and come to odds with the interests of society at large. In both cases, many members of the subgroup have come to look down upon the society and mainstream culture they originally came from.
When it comes down to it, groupthink is the underlying motivating factor in all of history's great tragedies and great evils. As an intellectual in 2019, it behooves you to constantly look over your shoulder for its approach. Look across the media landscape for its encroachment. Look the hardest at yourself and those nearest to you.
([1] - yes, I know the one referenced predates the Mad Men milieu. There are many gilded ages.)
Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#3Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. The main reason that competitors to Google don't do well is that people will just use the search engine that returns the most relevant results (unless your internet connection is censored). The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations.
Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#4As talked about in this article, I think the main catalyst to increased anti-trust scrunity will be a mind shift away from the "consumer welfare" view of anti-trust.
For the most part, big tech companies provide amazing service. I can't think of another industry that has a product as good as the tech companies of today have. Yes there may be some fakes on Amazon, and DDG in some use cases may be better than Google, but for the majority of consumers these companies provide excellent service.
We really need more scrunity when it comes to acquisitions, the fact that Google was able to acquire YouTube and Facebook was able to acquire Instagram shows a real lack of foresight on regulators. Perhaps this is because when you're busting up Standard Oil you have more tangible view of what the monopoly looks like: the oil company owns the fields, the railroads, the refineries, the whole damn stack. When it comes to tech everything is a data play, Google (a search engine) and YouTube (a video site) look like distinct industry, but at the end of the day the main resource being competed for is attention and data.
Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#5Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. The main reason that competitors to Google don't do well is that people will just use the search engine that returns the most relevant results (unless your internet connection is censored). The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations.
if such things are meant to be monopolistic, then the state should manage it.
Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#6Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. The main reason that competitors to Google don't do well is that people will just use the search engine that returns the most relevant results (unless your internet connection is censored). The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations.
if such things are meant to be monopolistic, then the state should manage it.
You want the state in charge of managing communications between friends and family members?
Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#7As a self-defined libertarian, I think one of the most critical functions a government is responsible for is anti-trust and Monopoly busting. This is one of the critical issues of our time, but is only a symptom of the corruption of Congress, which is a deep topic in it's own right.
Free markets are like any hierarchy, and if theres no regulation mechanism the powerful will dominate the less powerful. I think history and established economic and game theory is fairly universal on this point.
I'd be interested to hear an argument that these international megacorporations without meaningful competition don't need to be broken up.
Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
if such things are meant to be monopolistic, then the state should manage it.
You want the state in charge of managing communications between friends and family members?
In the same way/to the same degree that the state manages the phone lines and the postal system, I suppose.
Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#9Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. The main reason that competitors to Google don't do well is that people will just use the search engine that returns the most relevant results (unless your internet connection is censored). The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations.
The main reason for that is because they have been allowed to build a walled garden. Interoperable protocols would allow other companies to innovate on an equal playing field. Indeed if we follow the Bell example, the networked platform could be forced to be separate from those who profit off of it.
Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
#10>Capitalism, according to all these men, is about frictionless, seamless engorgement.
I could not care less about the opinions of thirty-something techies about political ideologies. At a time when capitalism seems more attacked in the West than at any other time in modern history, I think it is deceitful to talk about capitalism from the point of view of the group of the most unethical business leaders in America. We wouldn't tolerate someone defining socialism from the point of view of dictators.