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Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

nytimes.com

641–650 of 735 posts

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#641
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon achieve their goal, you won't have the option of going to your neighborhood supermarket.. because it will have either been run out of business or acquired by Amazon.

And we can have that discussion then. When Amazon is actually a monopoly. Until then , they're not. And being good at business is not a problem.

The problem is that those who defend Amazon will continue claiming it "isn't a monopoly" as long as there's so much as a single person selling 5 widgets per year on the internet, reducing Amazon's market share to only 99.9999999999999%.

"See, they still have competition!"

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#642
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When visiting a site you have the choice to visit or not. Site owners have the choice of what to put up and how to host it. That's like asking the government to break up the react framework because more sites are using it and you have no jquery option.

> When visiting a site you have the choice to visit or not. Site owners have the choice of what to put up and how to host it. Not really — my option is basically "indirectly support AWS" or "forego large swaths of the Internet." Site owners have to choose between directly supporting AWS, indirectly supporting AWS via intermediary services that use it, or giving up the economies of scale that AWS's dominance allows. >…

Would anything meaningfully change if React was a paid product?

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the perceived risks of breaking up the tech giants is that they will be at a competitive disadvantage to their foreign peers. The degree of competitive risk at the time of Boeing's split was perceived as lower. As long as Americans are ok with losing some areas of advantages, they should move forward.

There are other regulatory tools to level the playing field with foreign companies.

In the US yes, but the US companies would be at a disadvantage to their foreign conglomerate counterparts in foreign markets.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#644

I'd like to say this is just politics but I'm not even sure it's good politics. How many people are really concerned about the size of Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. If people are that concerned, why do so many people I know have Prime? The fossil fuel industry continues to run rampant. As does the Military Industrial Complex. The former is a key player in the degradation of the planet; the latter is a money sucking…

> I'd like to say this is just politics but I'm not even sure it's good politics. How many people are really concerned about the size of Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc

Oh, lots and lots.

> If people are that concerned, why do so many people I know have Prime?

The reason so many of the people you know have Prime is because of Amazon's dominant market position.

> The fossil fuel industry continues to run rampant. As does the Military Industrial Complex. The former is a key player in the degradation of the planet; the latter is a money sucking Hover that is sucking the life out of infrastructure, education, etc.

> The environment and peace are much bigger issues than taking down and busting up the tech giants.

Good points, but can we not do all three of these things? (1) Shrink the Defense budget and (2) Invest in renewables including nuclear tech, (3) Tackle Facebook and Google's dominance of net advertising and search and social media and Amazon's of e-commerce and so on …

> Editorial: I want to like Liz Warren. I can related to some of her ideals. Unfortunately, as a politician she too often comes off as inexperienced, out of touch and/or naive. This is another one of those times.

?

“Elizabeth Ann Warren (née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American politician and academic serving as the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts since 2013. Warren was formerly a prominent scholar specializing in bankruptcy law. A noted progressive leader, Warren has focused on consumer protection, economic opportunity, and the social safety net while in the Senate. Some commentators describe her position as left-wing populism.[2][3][4]

Warren is a graduate of the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School. She taught law at several universities, including the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University.

Warren's initial foray into public policy began in 1995 when she worked to oppose what eventually became a 2005 act restricting bankruptcy access for individuals. Her profile rose due to her forceful stances in favor of more stringent banking regulations following the 2007–2008 financial crisis. She served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and was instrumental in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for which she served as the first Special Advisor.”

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Bing engineers laugh uncontrollably when people at HN claims DuckDuckGo is a search engine.

Seems like they're doing fine https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

No, the reason OP made that comment is because duckduckgo uses Bing by default to power its search. So duckduckgo is literally just Bing with a duck taped over it basically.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#646
post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it equally unacceptable to be entitled to try to force companies to hire/fire who they don't want? What about forcing companies to offer housing to people they do or don't like? And what about offering loans? Should companies be forced to offer loans to people, even if they don't want to?

We're talking about protected classes here, and I don't think it's equally unacceptable. On a fundamental level, inherent characteristics (race) are very different from ideas (speech). So I think you can be in favor of anti-discrimination on basis of who you are, while also being against beliefs becoming a protected class. Though, just so you know where I'm coming from, in my ideal world it would be strong social and…

The heritability of certain political preferences are higher than the heritability of homosexuality (a protected class).

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#647
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is this type of vertical splitting doesn't solve the problem of large tech companies. It's like treating a burst appendix with a kidney transplant. The problem of Amazon is that it is effectively the only online shopping place, and thus can act as a Monopsony in hiring it's workers for warehouses, splitting AWS out of that doesn't fix that problem. Maybe you could require that distribution centers be owne…

If we had a progressive corporate tax, I think all the problems would sort themselves out. You want to build a trillion dollar company? Fine. Corporate tax rate of 50%. You're a small business with less than $1M in revenue. Cool. Corporate tax rate of 0%. Big companies will break up to take advantage of the tax code. Problem solved. Instead, the bigger you are, the harder you can lobby for tax breaks. Currently, if y…

I don't think the relationship between monopoly behavior is directly correlated with size. Your solution is a "one size fits all" approach will would probably cause problems for big markets with non-monopoly players.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#648
The $25B revenue cut off seems really arbitrary and ignore different types of businesses. Some business (like Walmart) have super high revenues, but relatively small profits. While others are smaller revenue, but super high profits.

I know this proposal is just for tech companies, but it seems like it will create as many problems as it solves.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#649

How about going after Comcast and Verizon first, the actual tech monopolies ? I already don’t use Facebook, I buy things online from places other than Amazon, and have email accounts that aren’t hosted by Google. However, all of that goes over Comcast’s network because that’s my only viable choice for Internet service. Also, while FAANG occasionally do things I don’t approve of, they don’t actively lobby congress for…

How about going after all these companies...and to make it simple - start alphabetically.

So start with Alphabet?

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#650
post #619

There's zero net benefit in breaking up large companies that are driving innovation and improving consumer experiences. If you don't like the economic result, redistribute some of the growth. Walmart doesn't deserve to be saved by splitting up Amazon if they can't compete.

The thought, clearly expressed in Elizabeth Warren's post, is that Amazon et al are stifling innovation by discouraging entrants and using dominant positions in adjacent industries to crowd out competitors. This isn't a new idea—it's one of the pillars of antitrust.

They're not stifling innovation. Their successes have had massive spillover effects helping other companies to innovate. The Golden Goose is still laying eggs.

This isn't Standard Oil. It's not Ma Bell. When they stop innovating and start extracting rents we can have a reasonable conversation about breaking them up.

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