Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

members.tortoisemedia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 179 posts

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#101

Post by mtm7 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #61

This article was an interesting read, but I think it got the basics incorrect. Financial elites and corporations increasingly control governments in clever and effective ways: Few corporations control almost all news media, fragment population using news media to make (to use the USA as an example) Democrat’s fear and distrust republicans and vice versa, turn over public assets to corporations at bargain basement pri…

This is interesting. Can you suggest any books or articles about the power climb?

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#102

Post by JorgeGT »

SllX wrote: post #99
soulofmischief wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they’re not inflicting any real violence in the process Are you suggesting violence can be only physical in nature? Even if you aren't, your choice of the word violence is intentional because you want to avoid words like "harm" which more fully capture the socioeconomic implications of being fired without due cause from a position which your livelihood depends on. In an ideal world, nation states would provide UBI…

Violence is inherently physical. It is the forceful physical violation of one’s person or property. Trying to expand the definition of “violence” beyond this scope dilutes its meaning beyond recognition and usefulness. However, I will agree it is harmful when a supplier terminates its services, particularly so if you were dependent on that supplier. People make their own choices about who to do business with and how…

> It is the forceful physical violation of one’s person or property.

But not all property is physical. And increasingly, our property is just data located in somebody's servers: your Dropbox contents, your Steam games, the money in your online bank account.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#103

Post by _0ffh »

tasogare wrote: post #60
christiansakai wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me for my naive thinking. But as long as country have a military power, isn’t that the ultimate deciding factor? Like, sure you can bully nations all you want, but as soon as they implement policies like “obey our rules or get out of our land or receive the end of the gunpowder” companies will just obey

In theory yes, but it takes a government with "balls" to take this kind of stance. Big companies owners and leaders are from the same schools, eat at the same table, are friends with the politician ruling class. One government might take action against a foreign company because it is foreign, yet allows the same behavior from a domestic company. Ultimately the people need to cut some heads to remember them what is th…

> One government might take action against a foreign company because it is foreign, yet allows the same behavior from a domestic company

Yup, I think we have seen that with Monsanto. US courts mostly got the kid gloves out when dealing with their antics. Cue Monsanto gets acquired by Bayer, next thing you know it's convictions left and right.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#104

Post by SllX »

JorgeGT wrote: post #102
SllX wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violence is inherently physical. It is the forceful physical violation of one’s person or property. Trying to expand the definition of “violence” beyond this scope dilutes its meaning beyond recognition and usefulness. However, I will agree it is harmful when a supplier terminates its services, particularly so if you were dependent on that supplier. People make their own choices about who to do business with and how…

> It is the forceful physical violation of one’s person or property. But not all property is physical. And increasingly, our property is just data located in somebody's servers: your Dropbox contents, your Steam games, the money in your online bank account.

I would argue it is physical insofar as it has to exist on something tangible, whether that’s an aggregated bank ledger or a server somewhere or as backups on disks that you own, but your point is taken so I’ll address the concerns you raised.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, but unfortunately from my perspective, in the case of Steam games and software, that is largely covered: you paid for licenses to play games rather than licenses, but some of it is DRM-free so you can take backups.

That money in the bank account is yours, unless seized through a legal process, which can happen and you can challenge it if it does.

Everything else, Dropbox, Google Photos, iCloud, emails, whatever, you should have your own backups. You should have them not just for legal reasons or because your service providers might terminate their services to you, but because they might actually lose your data.

You have some rights to that data, but none of the businesses involved in hosting it are compelled to do business with you specifically, and aren’t required to keep it anymore than the law compels them to.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#105

Post by banads »

SllX wrote: post #72
epicgiga wrote: post #53

Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state. Not so with these companies. Step out of line and they can unperson you like that, and you can't vote on their leadership. And increasingly entire livelihoods and social existences are tied into them. This is why you're seeing states start to get so aggressive with them. The EU fining billions ou…

The difference between a sovereign nation-state and a corporation is that a nation-state has a legal monopoly on sanctioned violence within their jurisdiction. Those constitutional safeguards are necessary because otherwise they could search, seize, detain, arrest, imprison, torture and kill with impunity. A tech company can deplatform you with impunity, but they’re not inflicting any real violence in the process. Co…

>A tech company can deplatform you with impunity, but they’re not inflicting any real violence in the process. Corporations are still agents of real people, and those people are still subject to the laws of nations.

The influence of Twitter on say, the Arab Spring, says differently. Or the many other cases of social media platforms and algorithms being used to incite mobs, riots, and revolutions.

Hatred is a prime input/output for algorithms optimized for engagement. We all know what impulsive mass hatred can lead to.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#106

Post by wrinkl3 »

wskinner wrote: post #88
awb wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've overheard forms of this many times from C/VP-level execs facing internal debate: "We're not running a democracy here". It is interesting that we only see it in government. Most companies are dictatorships. Some might have a board of directors that is responsible for voting in it's own members, kind of like a tribal elders system. It's interesting to see these different forms of decision making producing differen…

The difference is that the natural state of the corporation is to go extinct. Governments have so much inertia that it often takes a literal revolution to replace them. Bad externalities are the downside to dictatorships. The externalities of a corporation are much more limited, and there is more pressure to reduce them (from governments, other corporations, and their customers). Continuing the dictatorship metaphor,…

Except for those that become "Too big to fail". Banks don't seem to dissolve naturally all that often.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#107

Post by JorgeGT »

SllX wrote: post #104
JorgeGT wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the forceful physical violation of one’s person or property. But not all property is physical. And increasingly, our property is just data located in somebody's servers: your Dropbox contents, your Steam games, the money in your online bank account.

I would argue it is physical insofar as it has to exist on something tangible, whether that’s an aggregated bank ledger or a server somewhere or as backups on disks that you own, but your point is taken so I’ll address the concerns you raised. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, but unfortunately from my perspective, in the case of Steam games and software, that is largely covered: you paid f…

> That money in the bank account is yours, unless seized through a legal process.

And this is because through the centuries we have enacted enough laws to deter private banking companies from messing with our money. If left to their own devices, we would have DRM-ed money, random service terminations, unexplained money loses, etc. We just need to extend these rights and safeties to other spheres of our digital property through the use of law and its enforcement.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#108

Post by adventured »

_0ffh wrote: post #103
tasogare wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory yes, but it takes a government with "balls" to take this kind of stance. Big companies owners and leaders are from the same schools, eat at the same table, are friends with the politician ruling class. One government might take action against a foreign company because it is foreign, yet allows the same behavior from a domestic company. Ultimately the people need to cut some heads to remember them what is th…

> One government might take action against a foreign company because it is foreign, yet allows the same behavior from a domestic company Yup, I think we have seen that with Monsanto. US courts mostly got the kid gloves out when dealing with their antics. Cue Monsanto gets acquired by Bayer, next thing you know it's convictions left and right.

The likely decade of court losses was clearly inbound, it's why Monsanto was sold off. There was going to be no upside to the stock in that atmosphere, so a nicely priced sale was the optimal out. The court losses you're referring to were well set before the sale. The roundup trial for example was filed a year prior to the sale. The lawyers for Monsanto and Bayer very likely knew how bad it was, they had a better view than anybody else.

Bayer knew exactly what it was buying: they're going to trade a mere year or two of Monsanto profit (maximum), across a decade, to pay for the overall legal hit. In exchange they get to buy a fortress of intellectual property and one of the globe's dominant AG chem / AG biotech businesses (on a planet that will add ~3 billion more people to feed in the coming decades).

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#109

Post by adventured »

culturestate wrote: post #10
rusk wrote: post #2

This made me laugh ... > “Many employees don’t like Apple Park [the company’s new headquarters] because it has very few private offices. ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. Says it all really.

> ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. I feel like it's worth pointing out that Steve Jobs was still running Apple when this building was designed. I don't work for Norman Foster so I have no way to know how much changed internally after he died, but I doubt the balance shifted too wildly given the logistical constraints of massive constr…

Steve Jobs described the whole point to the design: he wanted people to frequently bump into each other, rather than being hidden away in private offices. He noted it was one of his favorite aspects of the Pixar office. It's strange that anybody would blame Jony Ive for a design that Jobs chose. Jobs took what he thought worked about Pixar's office to spur creativity & innovation, and used it in building the new Apple campus design.

> According to Jobs’ recent biography, the [Pixar] headquarters was to be a place that “promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations.”

> Pixar’s campus design originally separated different employee disciplines into different buildings – one for computer scientists, another for animators, and a third building for everybody else. But because Jobs was fanatic about these unplanned collaborations, he envisioned a campus where these encounters could take place, and his design included a great atrium space that acts as a central hub for the campus.

> Brad Bird, director of The Incredible and Ratatouille, said of the space, “The atrium initially might seem like a waste of space…But Steve realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen.”

> And did it work? “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” said John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative officer “…I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.”

https://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-an...

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#110

Post by SllX »

JorgeGT wrote: post #107
SllX wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue it is physical insofar as it has to exist on something tangible, whether that’s an aggregated bank ledger or a server somewhere or as backups on disks that you own, but your point is taken so I’ll address the concerns you raised. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, but unfortunately from my perspective, in the case of Steam games and software, that is largely covered: you paid f…

> That money in the bank account is yours, unless seized through a legal process. And this is because through the centuries we have enacted enough laws to deter private banking companies from messing with our money. If left to their own devices, we would have DRM-ed money, random service terminations, unexplained money loses, etc. We just need to extend these rights and safeties to other spheres of our digital proper…

Yes, but a bank can still terminate its business with you. It just has to return your money to you.

Now if you’re suggesting we have a law that companies which hold our data have to return our data when they terminate their business relationship with us, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree.

Post reply on HN