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We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
171–180 of 237 posts
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be saying there's a high threshold for extreme opinions to be published in the Guardian, so the fact that someone wrote such an article suggests that there is a genuine problem that needs to be taken seriously. Guardian writers do not live inside a "bubble" and therefore, there is inherent merit to what they write. I wonder how often you actually read the Guardian, which is famous for having wildly extrem…
>It's basically the Breitbart of the left That's ridiculous. The Guardian has been a mainstream newspaper for over 100 years. It is not a fringe publication, no matter how much you disagree with everything in it. I'm sure that says more about your political leanings than it does about the Guardian (as if it even had one unified ideology behind it, which it doesn't).
Yea Breitbart is on another level, doesn't even make sense to compare them.
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Things are awful because someone wrote an opinion piece in the newspaper? I heartily disagree that anyone should "detect a consensus" from leftists preaching expropriation. That's just an ordinary activity for them. Nick Srnicek may be shouting a bit louder than most from his pulpit in The Guardian, but that has as little to do with truth as his article has to do with reason. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are just fas…
That's not what bread and circuses means. That expression is a cynical look at the relationship of the individual to the State: so long as my belly is full and I am entertained I'm all right Jack. “… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself…
> That expression is a cynical look at the relationship of the individual to the State: so long as my belly is full and I am entertained I'm all right Jack.
Wow. You just describe Sweden O.o I'm mighty impressed how this saying fits perfectly into the context of the modern Swedish culture!
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#174Actually, I think behind the nationalisation idea, which doesn't seem workable given the circumstances, there's an interesting thought: these companies are sitting on basic infrastructure so instead of treating them like other companies, perhaps we should treat them like utilities. Note that this piece appears in The Guardian. I don't know how it works in the US, but I'm of the impression that in many European countr…
Good luck with the legal work required to patch up Google's physical infrastructure than spans, literally, worldwide. For example, if it owns a cable (or just wavelengths) that connect Asia to Europe, how would you handle that ? It certainly doesn't comply to US territory regulations. Unless of course I'm mistaken which is very likely.
You do realize a cable that connects Asia to Europe could be like 6cm long, right?
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#175Nationalizing said companies might sound like a good idea at first but one must wonder if this is indeed for the better.
In theory, we own the Govt. in a democracy but it's often realized that in practice, it is owned by whosoever can afford to lobby ignorant politicians, who often care neither for the profit of public industries, nor for their constituency composed of generic ignoramuses.
This seems reminiscent of how 'communism' came to indicate a crony-capitalistic system with a single worst crony possible - the state itself. I for one don't believe public ownership is the same as being owned by a state agency.
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#176I share the sentiment that we are dealing with a new kind of companies that don't fit into our "capitalism 2.0" thinking but I wonder: where are those crazy and capable people trying to compete with them in a realistic way? Probably optimizing ads and investment models. Please don't mention blockchains as a solution to this problem.
I have some very raw ideas about this. For example, I really think that Google search engine is unique and its complexity almost almost irreproducible but back in 2013 I wrote[1] a small piece thinking about layered search engines where web sites, specially the top ranked ones, improve their local search, and subsequent layers improve the global searches. Local searches within a specific site are usually awful. I am thinking of these web sites sharing the search "parameters" so we can integrate these information along the different layers. I find many flaws in this thinking but it is good to start discussing different ideas.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bKpAf08NQa7ChQnGQh--YwdP...
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#177which nation?
perhaps, instead, we need to tokenize them:
https://blog.bigchaindb.com/tokenize-the-enterprise-23d51baf...
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#178Or, I think the other way is more sensible or probably already in motion -- we need let Google, Facebook and Amazon govern.
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#179Actually, I think behind the nationalisation idea, which doesn't seem workable given the circumstances, there's an interesting thought: these companies are sitting on basic infrastructure so instead of treating them like other companies, perhaps we should treat them like utilities. Note that this piece appears in The Guardian. I don't know how it works in the US, but I'm of the impression that in many European countr…
> but I'm of the impression that in many European countries, basic infrastructure like energy or transportation or communication links is either very tightly regulated or owned by a non-profit organisation that in turn is owned by either the local consumers, the local authorities, or by the state.
"Europe" is a big place so it's hard to talk in generalities, but this is mostly not true. Europe followed the US's deregulation trend and in many cases European utilities are less regulated than American ones.
The EU electric market is similar to the U.S. As in the US, it is split up into distribution, transmission, and generation components. Distribution tends to be handled through regulated local monopolies or municipal entities, while generation happens in a competitive market: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/59351....
Telecom market structure is roughly similar too. Big telecom companies that were previously state-owned were privatized in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. British Telecom and Deutsche Telecom). The biggest difference probably is that the EU has strong rules requiring wholesale access of "local loops" (the wires into peoples' houses). However, this is a smaller difference in practice than in theory. In the big EU countries, unbundling doesn't apply to cable, http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. In many EU countries (notably Sweden and Spain, which have among the highest fiber deployment), unbundling doesn't apply to fiber either.
Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon
#180If the current state is 0, nationalization is 10. Maybe we should look for 5. Something like a law that requires customer generated content to be accessible via API, and allows customers to PERMANENTLY delete data they've generated, the code, and data can be subject to random audits. Companies will only be subject to the rules if their customer numbers are > x. Or something similar to that.