Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#41

Post by zepto » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #40

WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

Because this tired old argument has been made far too many times. These companies have become bloated and become a liability to the US and the dollar... Soaking up all the newly printed money and wasting it on bureaucracy whilst depriving everyone else from capital. Monopolizing user attention for the benefit of other aging, rotten, decrepit, bureaucratic corporations. They were producing big nominal gains through ho…

> Because this tired old argument has been made far too many times.

Perhaps if people listened, then it wouldn’t need to keep being made.

> They were producing big nominal gains through hoarding of newly printed money but rotting the economy from the inside.

It isn’t obvious how this statement relates to tech companies in any way.

How for example is Apple hoarding newly printed money?

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#42

Post by iammisc » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

wittycardio wrote: post #24

veerabadhra wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti trust break up of AT&T led to disruptive innovation, like mass produced cell phones. I personally can't wait for the AI revolution that will occur when Google is broken up. The Big Tech incumbents need to die out, because innovation stagnates in these monopolies.

Google and Facebook are amongst the most important sponsors of scientific research in the world. Why would you want to destroy that. The internet is a winner take all industry , all things considered the current winners are pretty good. Why ruin that for narrow political goals

> all things considered the current winners are pretty good

Quite literally, the representatives of >50% of the country disagree with you.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#43

Post by fmajid » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #34

dantheman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is clearly not needed. The citizens of the US are being harmed in education both primary and secondary, medicine, and in housing. These are heavily regulated industries that recieve large amounts of tax dollars - why are they not being addressed?

Strongly agree. We're seeing legislation target the sector of the economy with some of the highest productivity ever seen in human history. Congress needs to look at the sectors with the lowest productivity growth! Home construction, infrastructure, health care, and eduction. Here's a great place for congressional investigators to start: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-c... Though, in reali…

The Tech monopolists are not the entire Tech sector, in fact they are a very small portion of tech employment (and thus productivity). Their rent-seeking behavior stifles innovation and competition, and they coast on the hard work of non-monopolists, e.g. Apple's outrageous 30% cut on app developer revenues.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#44

Post by ALittleLight » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #38

reidjs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think monopolies are bad, though? Maybe they're convenient, but it's better to spread wealth around, right?

What if the result of breaking up US monopolies is their replacement by non-US monopolies? How is that better? I'd think very, very hard about crippling US companies in a global marketplace. So far, I don't even see any discussion about it.

If foreign monopolies take over then the US government should ban or regulate them in the same way that domestic companies are regulated. Foreign monopolies may (or may not) dominate global markets, but I think that concern should be lower priority than the health of our own markets and the well-being of our citizens.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#45

Post by viraptor » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #20

88840-8855 wrote: post #17

One of the things that I would love to see would be the ban of all those acquisitions that those large firms do. Yet alone the 9bn USD MGM takeover by Amazon was not understandable. Amazon is already too huge. Why are those aqcuisitions allowed?

I hear what you are saying and agree but wonder if this would have the effect of stifling the creation of new companies as so many people start a company with the hope of being acquired.

Oh no, what will we do without the companies running on funding, without a viable business model, trying to get more monthly active users by any means. /s

I don't think this approach has been healthy for quite a while. It may be an actual good thing that companies think more about long-term independent survival.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#46

Post by jdgoesmarching » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #23

stephc_int13 wrote: post #12

This is clearly needed, even if late, considering that antitrust laws are not a new thing. There is hope, we tend to forget after only a few generations, but if politicians are moving now this is because the collective opinions about big tech progressively shifted during the last decade. I might be naïve, but I think that HN played a role. And of course this is not over yet.

This is clearly not needed. The citizens of the US are being harmed in education both primary and secondary, medicine, and in housing. These are heavily regulated industries that recieve large amounts of tax dollars - why are they not being addressed?

Tech companies currently have more more influence over the mental and emotional education of our children than any school could.

You seem to be misunderstanding the issue as “these businesses are doing poorly” instead of “extreme concentration of power in the industries that control huge swaths of people’s lives is bad.”

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#47

Post by fmajid » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

Stoller makes the excellent point that Congress will also need to rein in the judiciary and notably the Chicago School "interpretation" (neutering, really) of antitrust law perpetrated by Judge Robert Bork (he of Nixon's infamous Saturday Night Massacre) in a stunning act of judicial activism and caprice:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/robert-bork...

(this is a conservative publication, by the way, hardly one you'd expect to be unfavorably biased against Bork).

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#48

Post by creato » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #40

WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

Because this tired old argument has been made far too many times. These companies have become bloated and become a liability to the US and the dollar... Soaking up all the newly printed money and wasting it on bureaucracy whilst depriving everyone else from capital. Monopolizing user attention for the benefit of other aging, rotten, decrepit, bureaucratic corporations. They were producing big nominal gains through ho…

I think this is a pretty absurd take. These companies are highly profitable and highly visible to the average person, but in terms of revenue, they aren't outliers among the largest companies. They aren't disproportionately impacting "the US dollar".

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#49

Post by Workaccount2 » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #34

dantheman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is clearly not needed. The citizens of the US are being harmed in education both primary and secondary, medicine, and in housing. These are heavily regulated industries that recieve large amounts of tax dollars - why are they not being addressed?

Strongly agree. We're seeing legislation target the sector of the economy with some of the highest productivity ever seen in human history. Congress needs to look at the sectors with the lowest productivity growth! Home construction, infrastructure, health care, and eduction. Here's a great place for congressional investigators to start: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-c... Though, in reali…

I'm sticking my head out a bit here given that this is HN...

But I largely attribute the high productivity of tech to the simple nature of software as opposed to the tech industry being comprised of the most productive workers and efficient management.

The flexibility and efficiency of software is insane compared to even just the hardware side of it, much less medicine or home building.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#50

Post by dnissley » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

bigcorp-slave wrote: post #10

[flagged]

If there's one thing to be said for the incompetence of our government, it's that at least they will be unable to actually follow through with this plan. Truly ludicrous.