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Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

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Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes Amazon different in this regard? Safeway/Kroger/Costco do not have direct third-party merchants, do they? They are just resellers. This is fundamentally different from what Amazon is doing.

I worked for Frito Lay as a salesperson and yes perhaps only 20% - 40% of grocery store inventory is maintained by the store staff. The rest was space that we were allocated to sell our stuff. Stores would pay for the inventory, but we would rebate them for what would not sell as an incentive to make sure we put out products that actually sold. But I would literally come in every day to the larger stores and put prod…

This is how Frys Electronics ran too, which is not that surprising as it grew out of the Fry's grocery stores.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently?" Nothing, and they aren't. Except they're maybe the biggest. The intellectual foundation of this new movement isn't specifically anti big tech. It's anti all kinds of anticompetitive business practices, many of which have had huge negative effects outside of tech. Grocery stores are one of them, but one can point to any area of the economy a…

These aren't anti-competitive, they increase competition. The help the consumer get better prices.

Until they push the competition out, and then there is no more downward pressure on prices.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#123
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the most pernicious effects of tech advances in recent decades has been the rise of surveillance state and surveillance capitalism, and the loss of privacy that comes with that. Exactly this! Two out of five of FAANG derive effectively all their revenue from global-scale dragnet spying, and all five of them use that kind of data collection as a highly effective moat against competition. It should simply be o…

I'd say 3/5 (+Amazon). And arguably 5/5 if you include product mining within their ecosystems (+Apple +Netflix).

Yeah, that'd be the "moat" I mentioned, but maybe I didn't sufficiently emphasize what a huge advantage that is for them. Losing the ability to vacuum up and hoard data just wouldn't be quite as big a shock directly to the bottom line, in very short order, for the rest of FAANG (+M) as it would be for F and G, in particular. It'd hurt the others plenty, however.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently?" Nothing, and they aren't. Except they're maybe the biggest. The intellectual foundation of this new movement isn't specifically anti big tech. It's anti all kinds of anticompetitive business practices, many of which have had huge negative effects outside of tech. Grocery stores are one of them, but one can point to any area of the economy a…

These aren't anti-competitive, they increase competition. The help the consumer get better prices.

Until they become the monopoly and are free to hike prices

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#125
Given the current state of the Senate, it seems unlikely there is going to be any big legislative changes before 2024. 2022 is still eons away (in political timescales) but a fairly likely scenario seems to be that the GOP will narrowly gain the House and the Democrats will pick up 1 seat in the Senate.

So we're largely arguing academic situations. And the thing about that is you then have a lot of people who are virtue signaling rather than genuinely arguing a position because they know their rhetorics, even their votes, won't change anything. It's why opposition parties always vote for campaign finance reform.

So I'm highly skeptical of the need for any government action here, be it sweeping legislation or antitrust. There are several reasons for this:

1. Big tech companies are more fragile than you might think. Government action is slow. As we've seen from Myspace, Yahoo and the like, big companies can disappear almost overnight. If a company can face an existential threat and possibly disappear within a few years then, by definition, it's not the monopoly you think it is. It's certainly not Standard Oil.

2. Western companies have been largely excluded from Chinese markets while those companies have far less restrictions elsewhere;

3. Chinese companies are essentially an extension of the state. US companies are not, not to the same degree anyway.

What we actually need is company-agnostic action that protects consumers, their data and what you can do that with that data. This is sort of happening already thanks to the EU (eg GDPR). The US needs to start extending those protections to US consumers. And that needs to apply to both domestic and foreign companies.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#126
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really why they pissed off the left though. What other industry treats its workers better than tech? They pissed off the left by moving in on their turf. Big tech is a direct threat to universities, journalism, media, and entertainment industries. It's not a threat, and even a benefit to transportation, oil/gas/mining, and agriculture, which are more republican industries.

>What other industry treats its workers better than tech? There's a bit of a disconnect between what a FAANG company considers an employee and what the colloquial definition of employees are at a company. The large corporations have shed every worker they can that's unrelated to their core business, such as by contracting out security or cleaning. Then the large corporations say they treat their employees better and…

It's really weird that you attribute this to "FAANG" for some reason when contracting out your cooking, cleaning, and security is almost universal among modern American companies. It's especially weird when you consider that physical security at Google is actually inside, not contracted out. So FAANG may be different but in the opposite way that you meant.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently?" Nothing, and they aren't. Except they're maybe the biggest. The intellectual foundation of this new movement isn't specifically anti big tech. It's anti all kinds of anticompetitive business practices, many of which have had huge negative effects outside of tech. Grocery stores are one of them, but one can point to any area of the economy a…

These aren't anti-competitive, they increase competition. The help the consumer get better prices.

I see it the other way; What's the point of designing something that is affordable and usable by everyone if Amazon is just going to rip off the design and market theirs over me?

Whats the point in making a budget ketchup brand if Safeway has their own? I can't compete with their margins there especially with that level of competition.

I give a bit of a pass here to kirkland stuff cuz it never feels like a race to the bottom nor do I feel like costco just advertises the hell out of it over other goods.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#128
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trader Joe's is the closest to Amazon in this regard. They introduce new products as the name brand, the best sellers are cloned and then replaced with the store brands.

But Trader Joe's doesn't sell anything that is name brand? The whole store is store brand.

They stock plenty of third party Wine in my area, although the beer is all Trader Joe labeled. There are a handful of other things that aren't Trader Joe store brand or completely generic (yet?).

Not that it would matter here, the law in question sets the market cap miles above where Trader Joe's is.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#129
post #59

What if the FAANG companies were paying taxes like ordinary businesses do, wouldn't this be enough to fund free medical services for every US resident?

It's not even remotely close. FAANG total revenue is $275 billion [1]. National health expenditures are $3.8 trillion [2]. You'd have to tax FAANG on revenue at a rate of over 1000% for this to be true. 1. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/tr... 2. https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...

Your first source does not cite revenue. For reference, just Amazon's total revenue for 2020 was 386 billion [1]. Apple's was 274 billion [2]. I think your point still stands. FAANG alone obviously won't get us there, but taxing corporations generally would help (since other nations are able to afford state funded healthcare on a level of taxation only slightly higher than the US, despite having less income).

1. https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-details...

2. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY20_Q4_Consolidated_Fin...

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#130

They pissed off the left by being sociopathic big businesses that treated people poorly. They pissed off the right by exerting perceived control over public discourse. They've pissed off government in general by swinging around their power when called out on these things. It wasn't a question of if the feds would screw them it was a question of when.

That's not really why they pissed off the left though. What other industry treats its workers better than tech? They pissed off the left by moving in on their turf. Big tech is a direct threat to universities, journalism, media, and entertainment industries. It's not a threat, and even a benefit to transportation, oil/gas/mining, and agriculture, which are more republican industries.

i think what pissed them off is trump winning in 2016. Which they then blamed on facebook and "disinformation".. (instead of hillary being the worst candidate in history) and the left decided they needed to take control of these companies so that doesnt happen again.
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