Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#711

Post by mrep » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

hwillis wrote: post #622

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Only profits are taxed, and they're only vaguely related to revenue, and both profit and revenue are vaguely related to whether a company is a monopoly or not. Profit is an okay-ish measure of how much a monopoly a company is, but not great. Comcast and Amazon turn profits of ~10 billion. Apple is 60 billion, microsoft is 16 billion. Amazon is much more of a monopoly than either of those, and Comcast enjoys a much st…

> Amazon is much more of a monopoly than either of those

In what market are they a monopoly? Seriously. Amazon retail competes with walmart and target both of which offer online sales and AWS competes heavily with Azure and Google cloud. In what way is Amazon a monopoly?

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#712

Post by cromwellian » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

Amazon is eroding brick and mortar mom and pop stores, but it isn't doing that because it's a monopoly (it has 5% of retail sales), it's doing it because people prefer shopping online compared with physical stores. If you broke up Amazon into 5 competing e-commerce sites, strip malls across America would still be closing, and you'd just have 5 Bezos billionaires instead of 1.

And it will do nothing to help the millions of American retail workers who are going to be out of a job, nor the logistics workers who are going to be automated out of jobs.

This is populist demagoguery and scapegoating and not looking at real solutions, like strengthening the social safety net by increasing taxes on these businesses. At least Medical for All, Free College, or UBI have tangible, immediate benefits to people suffering.

Or writing laws on Data Privacy can directly address that issue.

But simply busting up companies? It won't address the underlying economic disruption happening, and if anything, it is likely to simply increase the amount of entities tracking you and risk of hacks.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#713

Post by slowmovintarget » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 12:23 AM UTC

bhl wrote: post #665

slowmovintarget wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Separating Google Search and Google's ad business would kill both. Advertising subsidizes search, search supports advertising.

Google isn’t only search and ads. Their adverse is worse in smaller markets like Maps and Cloud, where they use revenue from another market to commoditize and build a moat in another — thereby unfairly competing.

Elizabeth Warren specifically mentions separating Search from Ads as something she'd do to Google. Most likely because that's as deeply as her target audience is going to think about it.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#714

Post by pseudalopex » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 1:47 AM UTC

bertil wrote: post #536

sigmar wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Elizabeth Warren Slams Comcast, Wants More Antitrust Enforcement" https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Elizabeth-Warren-Slams-C... 2016, but still..

Has she done anything since?

What actions do you expect from one legislator in a house where the controlling party has been deregulating ISPs?

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#715

Post by pseudalopex » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #676

cooooooffffeeee wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's called out Comcast before too — don't jump to the conclusion that someone can't chew gum and walk at the same time without at least a 10 second Google.

True. Another commenter linked to an article about Warren ragging on Comcast... back in 2016. What has she done about Comcast since then? Anything?

What actions do you expect from one legislator in a house where the controlling party has been deregulating ISPs?

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#716

Post by pseudalopex » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 3:37 AM UTC

renholder wrote: post #704

anisppp wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Splitting a large monopoly into smaller territorial monopolies gets you all the drawbacks of a monopoly with none of the benefits of centralization. Pretty much a total loss. Improvement in US telecom probably had more to do with demonopolization wholesale at the national level rather than the formation of the baby bells.. which pretty much all failed.

> ...rather than the formation of the baby bells.. which pretty much all failed. The general premise is that the smaller companies allows competition to enter the market. It is precisely because of this competition that the smaller bells all failed - because they were still stuck in the mentality that they needn't compete, whilst also lacking the resources to drive the competition out of town (e.g.: lobbying, buy the…

How did the Baby Bells fail? AT&T and Verizon are Baby Bells that merged with other Baby Bells.

They did drive out the competition. The Baby Bells inherited the existing infrastructure. Most competing carriers relied on regulations that allowed them to lease access at wholesale rates. The Baby Bells got those regulations overturned. Investors weren't lining up to fund duplicate infrastructure anyway but especially not when the Baby Bells could tie up any project in court for months or years.

Dividing a national monopoly into regional monopolies did almost nothing to improve competition. Vertical disintegration did while it lasted.

The only companies that really managed to compete with the Baby Bells were cable companies, which had built out infrastructure before they started competing.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#717

Post by pseudalopex » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 3:55 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #581

weberc2 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got that SV myopia here in Chicago too ;)

Chicago has Comcast, AT&T Fiber, Spectrum, and RCN.

How many households can choose between all of them?

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#718

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 4:54 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #461

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neither of these would do much to increase your ISP options. The first one works if you do it properly. One of the lines of business just operates the physical infrastructure. It not only doesn't provide video service, it doesn't even provide internet service -- the end user is never their customer, their only customers are third party ISPs, who all get the same terms.

There is no "proper" way to do this. The U.K. does what you're describing, and U.S. broadband speeds blow away U.K. broadband speeds: https://www.speedtest.net/reports/united-kingdom/#fixed (UK); https://www.speedtest.net/reports/united-states/2018/fixed/ (US). The physical infrastructure is what makes everything on top of it possible, and at the same time it is one of the most expensive pieces to build, upgrade, and…

> The physical infrastructure is what makes everything on top of it possible, and at the same time it is one of the most expensive pieces to build, upgrade, and maintain. There needs to be adequate returns on investment in the infrastructure, and that's hard to do in the unbundled model.

Why is it hard? You charge a price that reflects the cost of building the infrastructure. 200Mbps service can have a higher price than 50Mbps service, providing an incentive to build the capacity necessary to offer it. Which is still true even if the price for the faster service falls to approach the price for the slower service as upgrade cost is paid off. And then there is another upgrade and 1000Mbps service becomes the more expensive one compared to the now more affordable 200Mbps etc.

> Consider trains. Trains create value for people using the train to get around, but also value for the real estate by the train station. If you only let the train company recover from the rider, you won't incentives that reflect the true value of investing in the train.

You're essentially arguing against there being efficient Coasian bargaining. But the arguments against it are usually related to transaction costs, which don't seem to help you here. If Comcast can't charge anything to Netflix and as a result Netflix service is slightly less expensive to the user and internet service is slightly more expensive to the user, the user is not engaging in any new transactions and the net to the user is approximately zero. Moreover, then there is no transaction happening between Comcast and Netflix, which reduces the overall number of transactions that have to occur.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#719

Post by bertil » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #714

bertil wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has she done anything since?

What actions do you expect from one legislator in a house where the controlling party has been deregulating ISPs?

Suggest bi-partisan regulations sounds like a bare minimum. Gather information from specialists. Suggesting to split companies requires a minimum effort: understand what interactions exist now between the teams. I don’t have the impression that she’s done that.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#720

Post by JVIDEL » Sun, Mar 10, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

will_brown wrote: post #326

psadauskas wrote: post #211

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…

>But no, because Comcast has -bribed- donated to way more congresspeople than Google... Lobbying is tracked and google spent over 33% more than Comcast - in your own words - bribing members of Congress. The bulk of Google’s lobbying expenditure was for immigration, tax reform and antitrust. I’d say Google’s far better “at playing the game” after all no one is randomly sticking up for Comcast.

Yep, and given their data mining capabilities google is far more dangerous. Tbh they shouldn't own Android and YouTube, those companies should be spin off from alphabet.