The (good) movie Social Network makes a Fair portrait of Zuck and his awful personality traits.
It's really terrible to have somebody like him as the head of a powerful corporation that almost controls our minds.
Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
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Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#42“Competition is for losers” - A talk from Peter Thiel hosted by Y combinator ( https://youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R ) Timestamp 13:50: “If you’re a startup, and you want to get to a monopoly, start with a really small market and you take over that whole market and then you find ways to expand that market in concentric circles” Last I checked Zuckerberg is doing precisely what Thiel taught him to and has d…
It goes deeper than that. All publicly traded corporations are morally obligated by the Friedman Doctrine [0] to do stuff like this. If something returns value for shareholders (and monopolies do) then a CEO must do it. This is how the whole system is supposed to work. Of course, there's no reason that capitalism must to work this way, but this is the toxic form of capitalism that we've unwittingly chosen. Thiel just…
That is not a moral obligation, it is in fact the opposite. It is a lie that people tell themselves and the world to allow themselves to make immoral decisions for their own benefit.
I’m not saying running a company is easy and I know that many gray areas exist in the decision making. I do think companies can exist, profit, and be a net good for the world. However, we need to remove the notion that the duty to shareholder profits is a moral duty. It’s a cowards way out of having to make actual difficult choices. It’s one of those things that sounds great exactly because it allows you do horrible things with no responsibility. It creates a system where you offload the effort and weight of your decisions. As long as you’re are acting in the interest of shareholders, you are in the clear. That’s a dangerous concept and the opposite of morality.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#43“Competition is for losers” - A talk from Peter Thiel hosted by Y combinator ( https://youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R ) Timestamp 13:50: “If you’re a startup, and you want to get to a monopoly, start with a really small market and you take over that whole market and then you find ways to expand that market in concentric circles” Last I checked Zuckerberg is doing precisely what Thiel taught him to and has d…
It goes deeper than that. All publicly traded corporations are morally obligated by the Friedman Doctrine [0] to do stuff like this. If something returns value for shareholders (and monopolies do) then a CEO must do it. This is how the whole system is supposed to work. Of course, there's no reason that capitalism must to work this way, but this is the toxic form of capitalism that we've unwittingly chosen. Thiel just…
Nobody is obligated to do this, its just that they say they are so they can extract the most amount of money from any situation and blame some vague principal. Plenty of companies leave money on the table because its terrible for everyone.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#44Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#45> Did Zuck buy Insta to neutralize a competitor? Sure seems like it! For one thing, Zuck cancelled all work on Facebook Camera "since we're acquiring Instagram."
I don't get this bit. That seems to be supporting exactly the opposite of the author's thesis. If the acquisition had existed only for "neutralizing a competitor", they would have continued work on their existing products in this space, no? Canceling their existing product and keeping the acquisition is more in line with them realizing Instagram was a service they couldn't hope to catch up with. It'd also be consistent with them wanting to carve out a larger niche for Instagram, by reducing the overlap between the two on Facebook's side.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#46Some things are fine if done under the table, but aren’t fine if spoken out loud.
Correction: Some things are hard to prosecute if done under the table, and are not fine if spoken out loud :) Ethics are essential in every decision, not because you can get in trouble legally, but because you are part of a society of people like you.
The problem is if money justify everything in the society where you live.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course, there's no reason that capitalism must to work this way There kinda is. Capital is allocated to where it makes most profits, and most profits go to companies maximizing shareholder value. In aggregate this makes the profit maximizing companies more likely to survive. Sure this can be perhaps mitigated by e.g. legislating other duties to companies, but I'd say it's very hard even in theory, let alone in p…
So... Capitalism is bad for the people , communism is bad for the people. What _is_ good for the people? Canada?
Man, more people should read Schumpeter. Capitalism is really good for rapid growth. The second the profit motive negatively affects the quality of the product or efficiency of its production a company should be nationalized to prevent the profit motive from destroying part of our economy (the actually-useful part, that is, not investors or shareholders or dividends).
Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#48This article would have been much better if it was at least a bit more direct. At the most crucial juncture, instead of including Zuck's own words, the author wrote the author's interpretation of his words and then an analogy. > At this point, Zuck's CFO – one of the adults in the room, attempting to keep the boy king from tripping over his own dick – wrote to Zuck warning him that it was illegal to buy Insta in orde…
I mean this has been Cory's writing style for years. It should be no surprise.
I think he included, or linked to, enough direct quotes and references to allow him to editorialize as well, and get across his disdain (that many other share no doubt).
This is the man who coined the term "enshittification" after all.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#49The anti-trust regulators have targeted almost all but one of the FAAMG companies and that is Microsoft, who certainly knows how to avoid a break-up of their entire company. The rest have not dealt with totally removing their cases entirely, so it makes sense for the FTC and the DOJ to target everyone else first before lastly bringing up a massive case against Microsoft. Perhaps that is their strategy in all of this.
There's a reason there's no M in FAANG. Unlike those "upstarts", Microsoft is more like the Lockheed Martin or GE of tech. There is so much Microsoft software in use in the gov't (especially the DoD) that it would be precarious to prosecute/regulate them.
That isn't the reason nor is that a convincing argument to not enforce anti-trust laws against a particular company. So one is allowed to have a monopoly in government software and the rest are not?
Reducing competition is one of the goals of a monopolist and anti-trust laws applies to all, no exceptions.
Don't you think there are other companies competing against Microsoft for government contracts like Amazon, Google or even Palantir that includes software?
Also, Apple isn't some "upstart" either.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you’re saying the only way Y combinator makes money is when it’s illegal. So let’s RICO them then I guess.
By itself, becoming a monopoly can be legal & ethical. But once you have a monopoly, you're not allowed to do certain things like buying competitors for the purpose of crushing them.
What verifiable existing/attempting monopoly today is ethical?