Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#171

Post by wolfgke » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 11:02 AM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #168

wolfgke wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steve Jobs described the whole point to the design: he wanted people to frequently bump into each other, rather than being hidden away in private offices. He noted it was one of his favorite aspects of the Pixar office. It's strange that anybody would blame Jony Ive for a design that Jobs chose. Jobs took what he thought worked about Pixar's office to spur creativity & innovation, and used it in building the new Ap…

Programmers working on products like the iPhone or on networked services can end up applying creativity more often than you think. Sometimes there are difficult problems that can only be solved with applied creativity, and you also get much better results if your thinking is informed by the people who will be using your product (or taking it across the finish line once your code is 'done'). In my past jobs working on…

> Sometimes there are difficult problems that can only be solved with applied creativity

For these really hard problems, long hours of completely undisturbed concentrated working are the key to success.

Strong collaboration ("bumping into each others") is rather helpful if the "problem" is not that the problem is hard, but it is unclear what problem is even to solve, e.g. you don't know what the customer wants.

Addendum: My comparison with ATC is rather meant the way that it is of central importance to avoid mistakes (bugs in software, plane crashing in ATC) and the work environment should be centrally concern itself around this theme.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#172

Post by mbrodersen » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 11:39 AM UTC

Governments have a monopoly on violence, the ultimate source of influence. Tech giants don't. End of story.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#173

Post by jotm » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #46

jotm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's go by the price of land in Denmark. 25,000 Euros per hectare in 2009. That's for agricultural land. Greenland does not support agriculture, but it does have natural resources, and can have a good strategic value. So let's say it's 10,000 Euros per hectare, a good discount. It would cost 2.6 trillion Euros, or 2.9 trillion US Dollars. Everything has a price, I wonder if that would be acceptable for Denmark and u…

> Everything has a price This idea needs to die. It is simply not true. It's so stupid to say that, and clearly only people obsessed with money actually believe it. We're killing the planet in the quest for ever more money, and tons of people have absolutely no interest in more money. They want more time and more health.

Sadly, it is true. And "price" doesn't only mean money. Maybe a country wants a longer shoreline in exchange for a piece of mountain land or something.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#174

Post by banads » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #133

banads wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A tech company can deplatform you with impunity, but they’re not inflicting any real violence in the process. Corporations are still agents of real people, and those people are still subject to the laws of nations. The influence of Twitter on say, the Arab Spring, says differently. Or the many other cases of social media platforms and algorithms being used to incite mobs, riots, and revolutions. Hatred is a prime in…

What we are discussing here is not whether a platform which enables people to communicate can be used to incite and coordinate violence, of course it can! We’re discussing whether deplatforming a person from a private social media platform or video distribution platform is a form of violence.

We're discussing the violent capabilities of governments versus tech giants.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#175

Post by rfmw19 » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

awb wrote: post #81

ncmncm wrote: post #25

It is essentially the same at all corporations, always has been. Lenin was a great admirer of Ford Motor Company. His Soviet committees were copied directly from Ford. You could think of the SSRs as divisions, and satellite countries as wholly-owned subsidiaries.

I've overheard forms of this many times from C/VP-level execs facing internal debate: "We're not running a democracy here". It is interesting that we only see it in government. Most companies are dictatorships. Some might have a board of directors that is responsible for voting in it's own members, kind of like a tribal elders system. It's interesting to see these different forms of decision making producing differen…

> Most companies are dictatorships.

That's an interesting conclusion. I guess one big difference is that in most places you have a choice in whether or not to work for a company, but you don't have this choice when being born in a dictatorship, unless you consider migrating elsewhere a reasonable choice. It seems there are also less good choices when considering where to work (i.e. they're all becoming dictatorships?).

It's also as bad when you consider paying or using a free service provided by a dictatorship company. Do we really have a choice anymore? You may not choose email provider X, but all your friends use X so in the end it doesn't matter, e.g. in terms of data privacy. You may not choose social network Y, but all your friends have so you're forced to participate in the dictatorship, e.g. if you want to have a normal life.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#176

Post by Double_Cast » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #132

AsyncAwait wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say there are sanctions imposed on a country by the U.S. that make it near impossible to import the necessary mediacations for cancer patients, as a result of which, some of them die. I'd say calling that 'economic violence' is pretty accurate.

A trade sanction is intended as a form of physical violence backed up by physical force. You could call it economic violence, I would just call it violence.

I see this as analogous to saying

> Numbers are inherently binary. You could call 93 "a decimal number", but I would just call it "a number". There's no point in having the term "decimal" since the tech stack is all just "(binary) numbers" beneath layers of indirection.

Surely you see the usefulness in assigning each layer of indirection a unique qualifier?

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#177

Post by speedplane » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 6:07 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #29

speedplane wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For starters, because of freedom of association. You are free to not work for any company you like. If you feel like an employer is oppressing you, you can simply leave Nice in theory, but what about companies that are so large that they effectively control the labor market? What about companies with non-compete agreements? What about collusive non-poaching agreements between companies that lower the market value o…

> but what about companies that are so large that they effectively control the labor market There is no such company in the world, and if there was, it would almost certainly be an illegal monopoly. All but one of the rest of your theories are illegal everywhere, and the last one is illegal in many places (or at lease unenforceable). If you have a problem with companies breaking the law, then you have a problem with…

>> but what about companies that are so large that they effectively control the labor market

> There is no such company in the world, and if there was, it would almost certainly be an illegal monopoly.

Funny wording, it's like saying "nothing bad as happening, but if there was, it would be illegal." My original point is that yes, there is bad stuff happening, there are many monopolies, but no one is doing much about it.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#178

Post by speedplane » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 6:12 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #112

epicgiga wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong. Look up noncompetes in the US. The American rule of costs means it doesn't matter if it's not enforceable (which actually it often is). They still have a cause of action to destroy you by the mere act of dragging you through court (and the associated legal costs). And most lowly employees aren't aware of, or willing to test, the enforceability when they get threatened by their ex employer. The balance o…

Non-competes was the only part of his post that had any merit. But read my comment again, I’m not wrong. > All but one of the rest of your theories are illegal everywhere, and the last one is illegal in many places (or at lease unenforceable).

> All but one of the rest of your theories are illegal everywhere

The definition of "monopoly" varies widely even within the USA, and enforcement of antitrust issues generally depends on who has political power.

If a company has market control and is monopolistic, but no one with power actually prosecutes them for their behavior, then is what they did actually "illegal"? Whether something is legal depends on both the written law, as well as how it is enforced.

Re: Tech giants have as much money and influence as nations

#179

Post by modo_mario » Wed, Jan 15, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #156

modo_mario wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They swapped to Android too late but honestly I would have seen them turning it around some. Bringing in Stephen Elop to then have Microsoft strangle em some more to push the winphones was what fucked em up more imo.

By the time Microsoft bought Nokia, they were already in deep trouble, having lost major parts of the smartphone market.

And they already had Elop as their CEO for a long time and under his guidance started their alignment with Microsoft and had to lay off countless people. Someone who wasn't a trojan horse would have likely acted differently.