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Where Warren’s Wrong

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Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#141

Post by baddox »

sib wrote: post #50
mtmail wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[Amazon] has captured 43 percent of all internet retail sales in the United States, with half of all online shopping searches starting on Amazon. In 2016, it had over $63 billion in revenue from online sales in the United States — or more than the next 10 top online retailers combined. It controls 74 percent of e-book sales, is the largest seller of clothes online and is set to soon become the biggest apparel retail…

Exactly, so, not a monopoly in ecommerce. And only a single-digit share of commerce . And, of course, there is literally nothing inherently illegal (in the US, at least) about building a monopoly in any case.

> there is literally nothing inherently illegal (in the US, at least) about building a monopoly in any case.

This is not true, despite being repeated extremely often. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#142

Post by scarface74 »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #136
scarface74 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it “captured it” because of the incompetence of the previous incumbents in retail - Barnes and Noble, Toys R Us, Tower Records, Walmart, etc. Why should the government punish companies because they were able to disrupt incumbents? Should we also punish Apple because RIM and Palm couldn’t compete?

It wasn’t only that. Amazon also avoided sales tax for the longest time, while all those brick and mortar stores had to pass that fee to the customer, immediately making it appear less price competitive on top of the added cost of running a physical store.

The brick and mortar stores could have easily started another company that was only online.

But as far as being uncompetitive because of a previous business model is the entire premise of the “Innovator’s Dilemma”. It’s not the governments responsibility to protect old business models.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#143

Post by zepto »

root_axis wrote: post #102
cm2187 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually amazon is the one that I would say doesn't have a monopoly. It doesn't have a monopoly in the retail space (far from it), nor in the cloud hosting (let alone server hosting) business, nor in online streaming (music/tv). Google on the other hand has close to a monopoly on search (and browsers). Facebook on social medias.

The typical antitrust concerns around monopolies don't really apply to google (currently). Google hasn't used its position to create barriers to entry for competitors, it is only that google has a reputation for producing a superior product in this domain. I've also heard some argue that google has a monopoly on advertising eyeballs, but this is clearly false (i.e. there are lots of platforms that make a lot of money…

This is patently false.

Google’s monopoly is on resources required to be a search competitor. It has a giant stash of patents related to search, and it also has an enormous collection of historical data that can never be obtained by a new competitors. On top of that it continues to extract behavioral and structural data about both users and the web from things like analytics, Android, etc. with gigantic reach.

These are gigantic barriers to entry and Google created them.

Now it’s reasonable to argue that there they did nothing insidious or unfair in order to create them.

However just because they didn’t do anything evil to create the barriers to entry they now enjoy doesn’t mean they didn’t create them or that they now enjoy a monopoly position as a consequence.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#144

Post by basch »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #48
_red wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The redefinition of the term 'monopoly' to just be 'large marketshare' is very dangerous. However, as a bit of schadenfreude, its nice to see the leftist big-tech receive the unintended consequences of their beliefs. Sadly, the realities is that they will just hire ex-regulators as 'consultants' to help enshrine their businesses into quasi-state protected monopolies.

Then use the proper term for the FAANG companies: A criminal conspiracy. And we have laws against conspiracies. RICO act for starters. And collusion is also a crime, no? How many execs have gone to prison for the wage fixing that FAANG was accused of and lost?

its called a cartel. are you accusing youtube, facebook, netflix, and amazon of secretly working together to keep other video streaming apps from existing?

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#145

Post by martythemaniak »

jtr1 wrote: post #112
martythemaniak wrote: post #95

There's a lot of common sentiment around politicians that goes something like "It doesn't matter if they got the details wrong, what matters is that they're essentially correct because they see the Big Picture" We see this here, with fans of Warren saying getting things wrong is irrelevant, because we all know FANG is too powerful and she says it. Thus, quibbling over details is nitpicky pedantry. This tactic is also…

This smacks a little too much of "both-sidesism." The substantive difference between the two is that Warren will hire a cabinet of seasoned policy specialists who have the bandwidth to write accurate distinctions into law, while there was never any corollary action for Trump because birtherism was never going to be translated into policy; it was a play to prejudice.

It is actually the exact opposite of both-siderism, because I'd like people to hold Democrats to a far higher and tougher standard than Republicans. But also, it applies to politics in other countries, it is not strictly an American R/D thing.

Also, you should go back to 2015/2016 and read the things said about Trump at the time. The idea that he'd hire a cabinet full of super competent people to run everything while he connects with people and sees the larger truth was very popular. Scott Adams is one of the people who took this line very seriously that I specifically remember.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#146

Post by basch »

Shivetya wrote: post #26
comnetxr wrote: post #16

Agree 95%, but one point he uses to crticize Warren seems wrong: Where Warren says "America’s big tech companies have achieved their level of dominance in part based on two strategies: using Mergers to Limit Competition,..." he argues that they achieved dominance by making good products and were already dominant when they started making major mergers, and that Warren doesn't understand this. It sounds like he's missi…

Sorry, but the idea that Apple needs to be separated from the App store is ludicrous. If you don't like the App store don't buy Apple products. There are hundreds of other phones to choose from and some get equal or better reviews. It would be one thing if Apple was the only cell phone maker in existence but that is so far from the truth. Amazon and online purchases, again, there are so many choices that you never ev…

Do you think Apple preventing the user from setting their default mapping app, default music app, or default mail app is anti competitive?

it might be a minor detail but it absolutely breaks how operating systems and deep links work if i cant set file and protocol associations. Im FORCED to either use Apple Mail OR avoid clicking email addresses and physical addresses and copy and pasting them into fields instead. Like I said, a minor detail on the surface, but I would argue massively anti competitive. Same goes with Microsoft forcing edge on people with alternative PDF viewers, or asking ARE YOU SURE when you try to switch default browsers. you should not be using your operating system position to force first party apps on people trying to switch. promoting them at the top of the app store list is one thing (which we can argue about being competitive cheating or not) but disallowing alternate defaults or dark ux patterns to trick users into new defaults is absolutely scummy.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#147

Post by scarface74 »

chj wrote: post #135
scarface74 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I have this great idea to delivery pet food. Should the government protect me while I grow it?

OK, I see that we have different ideas of protection. When you are selling pet food, surely you don't want the delivery company steal your customers, right? Now if government says that delivery company can't sell user data, that's the kind of protection I meant.

And the government has been great about protecting privacy? The government is one of the biggest proponents of less privacy because of the various “Wars on $X”.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#148

Post by [deleted] »

cgriswald wrote: post #116
scarface74 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it “captured it” because of the incompetence of the previous incumbents in retail - Barnes and Noble, Toys R Us, Tower Records, Walmart, etc. Why should the government punish companies because they were able to disrupt incumbents? Should we also punish Apple because RIM and Palm couldn’t compete?

You seem to be arguing for a winner-take-all approach to the market. Should future competitors to [monopolistic entity] be punished because [previous competitors] were unable to effectively compete? In any case, I don't think punishment is really an apt metaphor for breaking apart a monopoly.

[deleted]

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#149

Post by chillacy »

Reedx wrote: post #75
almost_usual wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re going to see more and more defensive content come out and it’s only going to help Warren. Strategically she’s positioned herself well, she could easily be the most publicized democratic candidate because of this topic alone.

It's definitely timely and getting a lot of attention. But Andrew Yang could end up making waves here. His approach seems more productive - proposing a VAT on big tech and a "Freedom Dividend".

I think Yang goes a lot farther than warren in that breaking up tech companies still concentrates wealth in costal tech hubs while a UBI would begin shifting that back to the middle states.

It is sort of admitting that tech has “won”, but the power of data at scale is imo fundamentally a part of reality and denying it in the US just means China will develop AI technology faster.

Either way I’m glad to see these ideas being discussed more broadly.

Re: Where Warren’s Wrong

#150

Post by cgriswald »

scarface74 wrote: post #132
cgriswald wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be arguing for a winner-take-all approach to the market. Should future competitors to [monopolistic entity] be punished because [previous competitors] were unable to effectively compete? In any case, I don't think punishment is really an apt metaphor for breaking apart a monopoly.

So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out? Every company I named was once dominant. Even Spotify came out of nowhere and made the once dominance iTunes Music Store basically irrelevant without government intervention. It wasn’t government intervention that caused the once The Beleaguered Computer Company that was about to be crushed by MS what it is today.

> So back in 1999 people thought that Microsoft would be dominant forever - how did that work out?

> It wasn’t government intervention that caused the once The Beleaguered Computer Company that was about to be crushed by MS what it is today.

The criticisms of Microsoft weren't that it was preventing Apple from selling computers; but that it was using it's monopoly in the operating system to prevent competition against its other software.

> Even Spotify came out of nowhere and made the once dominance iTunes Music Store basically irrelevant without government intervention.

And if Apple decided Spotify could not be on the App Store, how would Spotify do then? (Nevermind we're ignoring the "Apple tax".)

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