House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy” • Hacker News Board

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#61

Post by jeffbee » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

sircastor wrote: post #55

runawaybottle wrote: post #49

I wonder if this an inadvertent dark pattern used by Congress. Doesn’t this fundamentally set up lobbying infrastructure? You set up a racket where you start regulating a business, then said business reacts by funding massive lobbying toolkits to buy the crooks in Congress off to curtail regulation.

“This is a nice little multi-trillion dollar industry you got here… it’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”

You think David Cicilline knows a thing or two about shaking down businesses? Why, that's a repugnant attack against Italian-Americans!

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#62

Post by SamiPerttu » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #25

throwkeep wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a liberal and it's clear that big tech is suppressing dissenting voices. It's not targeted at conservatives specifically, but it captures them in larger number because tech and corporate media is mostly liberal and progressive. As such, conservative is by default a dissenting voice. Edit: See the lab leak hypothesis where big tech was suppressing and even banning people last year for questioning the approved narr…

Please give us a specific example of "big tech suppressing dissenting voices". I can certainly see how you could lay that charge on the Hearst Corporation, for example, but I have a hard time seeing how it applies to companies who will record and disseminate your writings, photos, and videos worldwide without charge and almost without regard to the content thereof.

Google Admits to Censoring the World Socialist Web Site

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html

Facebook Purges Left-Wing Pages and Individuals

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/23/pers-j23.html

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#63

Post by ethbr0 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

EastSmith wrote: post #59

One of the bills (The "Ending Platform Monopolies Act") specifically targets companies with $600 billion market cap (AAFG), and misses Walmart by around $200 billion (it currently has market cap of less than $400 billion). It will be really funny if Walmart stock rises due to Amazon being split, and hits the $600 billion.

I noticed that too. I read the language to imply that momentarily touching it would be enough to classify any business as a covered platform (assuming the other 2 tests are met also).

"... at the time of the Commission’s or the Department of Justice’s designation under section 2(d) or any of the two years preceding that time, or at any time in the 2 years preceding the filing of a complaint for an alleged violation of this Act..."

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#64

Post by aerosmile » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

mikeiz404 wrote: post #37

foolfoolz wrote: post #7

the problem with “breaking up big tech” is it only breaks up american companies. it has a long run impact of letting foreign companies take over american market share

Maybe I’m taking you too literally here but none of the bills in the article talk about splitting companies up. The bills mentioned limit acquisitions of their competitors, increase funding for merger investigations, require data portability, limit self-preferencing on platform, and limit self-preferencing across business areas. At least this is what is stated in the article. I have not read the bills.

"Breaking up big tech" or "throwing monkey wrenches into their gears" is related enough that it might be worth paying attention to the OP's overall point - we're applying these rules only to American companies which will automatically a) help Chinese companies like Tik Tok compete against Facebook and Snap, and b) disincentivize them from opening US offices. Why isn't there a 6th bill saying something like: "because we cannot control Chinese companies directly, we'll control them indirectly through American app stores or what have you." I know it's a pipe dream, but we better dream quickly or those companies will get so big that we'll be all using a Chinese OS soon enough and then that last ability to control any aspect of their business model will be gone.

EDIT: someone posted that these bills will equally affect American and international companies. I don't see how that's possible. Eg:

> The “Platform Competition and Opportunity Act” prohibits acquisitions of competitive threats by dominant platforms

Who is going to prevent ByteDance from acquiring every competitive Chinese company? Once they start doing that and we see some massive consolidation in China, ByteDance will go from being the most profitable private company worth $140B to being close to Facebook's $1T market cap. This is not some fiction scenario, it's literally how American companies got big as well. While I wish the American consolidation never happened, I am not sure if the right solution is to just prevent it domestically.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#65

Post by plandis » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

Interestingly enough the main sponsor for one of the bills (Jayapal) represents pretty much all the tech workers that work at Amazon in Seattle.

Wonder how they will feel knowing their representative is proposing legislation will likely hurt their financial well-being.

Edit: Why the downvotes? I think it’s an interesting dynamic between constituents and their representative.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#66

Post by clairity » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #51

clairity wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, and the focus on tech is a red herring distraction du jour. every company over $100MM should be scrutinized for breakup into smaller entities. m&a should be default deny, with extraordinary evidence required for approval, with penalties that pierce the corporate veil for not meeting stated fair market objectives. that would actually encourage competition and functional markets without harming substantive efficie…

> yes, and the focus on tech is a red herring distraction du jour. every company over $100MM should be scrutinized for breakup into smaller entities. Or we could just levy punitive corporate taxes on large companies over $100MM, and let market participants figure out the most efficient breakup arrangement. Come to think of it, this doesn't look all that different from what the Biden administration seems to be plannin…

i'm absolutely in favor of progressive tax functions (minus the numerous loopholes, e.g., tax shields) for corporations. in fact, there's no reason to have differing corporate and individual tax functions (smoothly varying, as opposed to discontinuous, stepped rates), especially when corporations have gained favored personhood status, and are treated better and more deferentially relative to actual people. note that the biden global tax is a tax floor, and discontinuities just beg to be gamed.

moreover there's no reason to preclude one for the other. let's do both, and more, to make markets competitive and work for the common welfare, rather than decidedly favoring consolidation and capital-holders.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#67

Post by toast0 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

foolfoolz wrote: post #7

the problem with “breaking up big tech” is it only breaks up american companies. it has a long run impact of letting foreign companies take over american market share

I can't think of any foreign companies in a monopoly/monopolistic position in the US that don't have a US counterpart in a similar position.

T-Mobile is/was German and is in a monopolistic position, but it doesn't have any specific advantage over AT&T or Verizon, and is subject to the same type of regulatory scrutiny over aquisitions, etc.

There's a lot of foreign pharma corps, but afaik, they don't do anything more monopolistic than US pharma corps. Same with oil and chemical companies.

Would be happy to consider something I missed, however.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#68

Post by jeffbee » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

SamiPerttu wrote: post #62

jeffbee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please give us a specific example of "big tech suppressing dissenting voices". I can certainly see how you could lay that charge on the Hearst Corporation, for example, but I have a hard time seeing how it applies to companies who will record and disseminate your writings, photos, and videos worldwide without charge and almost without regard to the content thereof.

Google Admits to Censoring the World Socialist Web Site https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html Facebook Purges Left-Wing Pages and Individuals https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/23/pers-j23.html

Google returns that site as the #1 result for "world socialist", and "world socialist web site" and the Facebook accounts that were supposedly "purged" are all online, for example https://www.facebook.com/iyssesdsu. So, again, please provide specific examples of accounts that were suppressed for dissension, and apparently also I need to ask you to think critically about whether and how such suppression was achieved.

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#69

Post by mistrial9 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #54

lend000 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Standard Oil claim is historically false. Kerosene prices fell dramatically during Standard Oil's tenure [0]. The competition did not benefit from Standard Oil, but consumers benefitted dramatically. A malevolent monopoly needs government support to sustain itself for long (like today's telecoms/internet companies). All of the natural monopolies that have existed without rent seeking either greatly benefitted the…

Standard Oil is also a special case because a monopoly on the supply of environmentally harmful stuff is actually good for the environment - by the very action of charging a higher price, it helps compensate for a negative effect that would not be priced in otherwise. Breaking up Standard Oil was just a bad idea, all around.

> by the very action of charging a higher price, it helps compensate for a negative effect that would not be priced in otherwise

that is charitable interpretation to say the least.. Once monopoly revenue is passing hands, who is to say that safety, service and responsible behavior strengthens? There are manifold examples of a whole range of outcomes.

A defense of oil monopoly markets is particulalry distasteful in light of a global, literal crisis due to oil consumption by the billions of barrels, right?

Re: House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for “a stronger online economy”

#70

Post by ethbr0 » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #43

gsmo wrote: post #35

Hard to tell from the summaries. I hope this addresses ISPs too. Comcast, AT&T seem to operate like a cartel.

Spoiler: they don't! The ACCESS act, for example, applies only to services with > 50 million MAU and either sales or market caps over $600 billion. Since there has never been any company with $600 billion annual sales, it applies to only 7 companies in the world, and really only 6 because I don't think Saudi Aramco really qualifies.

Personal opinion? Good.

The restrictions and remedies here seem fairly harsh. Of the sort you'd only want to cover monopolies (but-we-don't-want-to-prosecute-you-as-monopolies).

Telecom definitely needs its share of modernizing, but it should probably be more targeted.