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Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

mattstoller.substack.com

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

#81

Post by sethherr »

sethherr wrote: post #80
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.

Great! As a modern resident of planet earth, I’m not opposed to international competition. I’d love for FAANG not to be able to crush or acquire competitors, regardless of their country of origin. I bet, based on recent history, that most of the upstarts would be from the US. If that isn’t the case, it will be a wake up call and hopefully the US will rise to the occasion.

Nationalism aside, there is a common refrain on HN comments that breaking up companies will result in a decline in innovation. History suggests otherwise:

The last company broken up was AT&T; at the time everyone was worried about Japanese electronics companies.

> breaking up AT&T in 1982 was the best thing that could have happened to America. AT&T's core project in 1982 wasn't fighting Japanese electronics companies: it was suppressing the growth of the internet in the USA

> Antitrust enforcement isn't an economic drag, it's an economic STIMULUS

Source: https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/21/each-drop-of-strych-a-nin...

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

#82

Post by aurizon »

tk75x wrote: post #3
aurizon wrote: post #2

Perhaps they saw how the big national monopolies, like Siemens and BASF and Samsung, and Sanyo and . became stultifying nepotistic monopolies in various fields, and when faster and quicker more innovative US companies came along that ran past them - and seeing this, decided to have a way to limit these monopolies. Look up Standard oil monopoly for some aspects, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil That is the w…

That's a nice sentiment, but I don't believe politicians and regulators have enough foresight to see past their nose.

Yes, The US system at it's finest.

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

#83

Post by iammisc »

dnissley wrote: post #53
iammisc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all things considered the current winners are pretty good Quite literally, the representatives of >50% of the country disagree with you.

How much consideration do you think the average representative put into their decision?

Quite a bit I'd imagine. Many have been talking about this for months

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

#84

Post by Nasrudith »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #46
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?

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.”

So does Peppa Pig. That is a poor metric and worse yet very selectively applied by the power hungry.

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

#85

Post by azinman2 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #44
WalterBright wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So are we going on to put up a great firewall preventing you from using Tencent?

Seems very unlikely.

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

#86

Post by bronzeage »

You must be incredibly naive if you think any anti trust regulation hurting Facebook or Google is going to pass.

Biden literally owes his presidency to unprecedented censorship and propaganda by Facebook and Google. Censorship that included censoring the virus lab leak theory, included incredibly laughable propaganda about the safety of mail in ballots (which was proven wrong by orders of magnitude of evidence of fraud), by incredible levels of censorship and anti Trump propaganda across the board, by shady donations on the orders of billions of dollars by Facebook which completely owned voting infrastructure in Wisconsin.

Facebook and Google literally own Biden. They elected Biden - not you the people. Don't be surprised when all these bills weakening Facebook and Google are thrown in the garbage.

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

#88

Post by Hydraulix989 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #30
ehnto wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone would want to work at a FAANG company either. I have quietly hoped for a redistribution of software resources for a while, it's not a practically thought out hope. I just feel like the worlds software talent could do better work in more interesting and varied fields. I also think it would lead to more innovation. How many engineers aren't working on their own ideas because the insane salaries at big tech…

As someone who has never worked for a FAANG company, nor wants to (FB recruiter email I got this morning will go unanswered) the mind boggles at these $200K-$500K salaries. If I were making a salary in that range I'd think it would be possible to retire after about 5 years if one was frugal. > I just feel like the worlds software talent could do better work in more interesting and varied fields. Agreed, but I'm not s…

Taxes take a decent chunk out of it.

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

#89

Post by alexanderdmitri »

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.

I think this exact thinking has perverted the idea of business and has steadily been eroding consumer trust in small business and their offerings.

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

#90

Post by username90 »

dundarious wrote: post #39
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.

I'm highly skeptical of that prediction. The EU are hardly slouches with respect to anti-monopoly actions. Chinese and Russian companies are subject to intense fear-mongering (not that every criticism is invalid) and are unlikely to take the place of FAANG. And I don't foresee other Asian, African, Middle-Eastern, or companies from UK or the Americas achieving huge monopolies before actions could be taken against the…

EU doesn't tend to break up big companies though, just regulate and negotiate with them.
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