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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

#141

Post by sanderjd »

supercanuck wrote: post #120
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

They most certainly are monopolies and we can see it in their behavior. What America is figuring out that, if the US Markets are going to remain uncompetitive, than Chinese companies that don't play by the same rules are going to outcompete these lethargic companies that don't want to get better but instead vacuum up all their competitors. This hurts American's technology advantage and competitiveness in the global m…

> They most certainly are monopolies and we can see it in their behavior.

This is not true for all the reasons I already pointed out in my comment.

You can't just wish this away. You need some other theory of the case. I agree with you that all those things are bad, but those bad things just don't flow from monopoly, they flow from some other problem.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#142

Post by sanderjd »

mywittyname wrote: post #63
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

You're right on the technicals, but the GP is right in spirit. It seems like society needs a term for the concept of a company accumulating far too much power, and that we need laws similar to anti-trust laws, that apply to these companies. This is an incredibly difficult problem to address specifically because FB is not a classic monopoly. I'm not even sure what it would mean to "break them up". Amazon, MS, Apple, a…

I agree with this. My point is merely that the current problems are a round peg that it is unwise to try to fit into the square hole of existing anti-trust regulation.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#143

Post by ZeroGravitas »

mywittyname wrote: post #63
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

You're right on the technicals, but the GP is right in spirit. It seems like society needs a term for the concept of a company accumulating far too much power, and that we need laws similar to anti-trust laws, that apply to these companies. This is an incredibly difficult problem to address specifically because FB is not a classic monopoly. I'm not even sure what it would mean to "break them up". Amazon, MS, Apple, a…

I was going to reply to the parent that we used to have a word for this, and that word is "monopoly", but apparently we now no longer have that shared definition, probably an intentional confusion bought at great expense by monopolists.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#144

Post by throwaway09223 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #121
camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Trust busting can seem like it’s anti free market, but when a company has a monopoly on a network it stops functioning as a company and basically becomes a government. The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. It’s similar to if a single company owned the ro…

> The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. None of these things are a natural monopoly. Facebook only stays relevant by buying its competitors. You don't even need to break them up, just disable acquisitions. Then Instagram would be separate, WhatsApp would…

Google isn't primarily a search engine. By revenue they're primarily an ad network.

Ad networks naturally form monopolies. Ad matching algorithms can make better matches (more revenue per click and more desirable product for advertisers) the more ad campaigns they have to select from and the more display properties they have to publish ads to. It's a market extremely prone to winner-takes-all.

I say this as someone who worked internally on an ad system which used to be one of Google's primary competitors. I specifically worked on projects intended to address these runaway network effects. It wasn't possible and the company exited the business (they actually tried to be a customer of google's because it'd be more profitable to just show their ads, but this was blocked on antitrust grounds ...)

The monopolistic aspects of these entities aren't necessarily the customer facing products they market to the masses.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#145

Post by tqi »

throwdecro wrote: post #140
tqi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the problems then?

> What are the problems then? As stated in the review, and presumably in the book: that "the very bigness of present-day companies — especially those in the tech sector — does not just harm consumers, but that it also threatens innovation and undermines the power of government." The problem that trust-busting is meant to solve is the bigness, and its impact on the government, innovation, and consumer markets.

That seems tautological. How does bigness harm consumers in this case?

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#146

Post by supercanuck »

sanderjd wrote: post #141
supercanuck wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They most certainly are monopolies and we can see it in their behavior. What America is figuring out that, if the US Markets are going to remain uncompetitive, than Chinese companies that don't play by the same rules are going to outcompete these lethargic companies that don't want to get better but instead vacuum up all their competitors. This hurts American's technology advantage and competitiveness in the global m…

> They most certainly are monopolies and we can see it in their behavior. This is not true for all the reasons I already pointed out in my comment. You can't just wish this away. You need some other theory of the case. I agree with you that all those things are bad, but those bad things just don't flow from monopoly , they flow from some other problem.

Take it up with the FTC and Tim Wu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu) then, you obviously are more in the know than they are.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#147

Post by JohnWhigham »

AlbertCory wrote: post #56

I wrote this [1] four years ago. It shows how to break up FAANG by making their biggest asset, their data, transparent and regulated. And you would get a check from it. Imagine your consuming history on Amazon in a company by itself, you own dividend-paying shares, and if you don't like their policies, you can take the data elsewhere, or keep it private. Anyone who wants to use it, including "Amazon" itself, has to p…

Yup, one's data needs to become a first class citizen. I should be able to grant/rescind access of it at a moment's notice. Unfortunately I don't think we'll get there any time soon...if ever.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#149

Post by NoGravitas »

Senator John Sherman, the primary author of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, was the brother of Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman. It seems there is a Sherman for every problem... if only we could send Uncle Billy on a march to the Pacific today...

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#150

Post by JohnWhigham »

ncallaway wrote: post #124
smooth_remmy wrote: post #53

Instead of trust busting these companies, the libertarian answer to them would be to invalidate their patents. Google partially remains a search monopoly because of its search patents - of which it has many. If the state invalidates its patents and then moves out of the way, other competitors will naturally become successful. There is no need to break up companies. Just take away some of their state-imposed advantage…

Wouldn't invalidating the patents of companies that are too powerful and abusive in the market just be another "trust busting" tactic? I don't see how that is separate from "trust busting", but rather just another way to bust trusts?

I guess it could be, but I think his point is that from a libertarian angle, the government should be out of the picture as much as possible. And one of the biggest ways to do this is invalidating software patents which would remove some of the massive barriers of entry needed to compete against the Googles/Facebooks.
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