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America’s antitrust apparatus prepares to act against big tech

Lafayette

Lafayette

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From the Economist, Shumpeter: America’s antitrust apparatus prepares to act against big tech - excerpt:


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Inside the University of Chicago, a bastion of free-market thinkers and of free speech, tech has become more prominent, too. On April 19th and 20th most of America’s antitrust establishment—officials, economists and lawyers—as well as a smattering of Silicon Valley types, gathered to discuss whether big tech needed to be tamed. The conclave came just days after Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief, testified before Congress.

America’s antitrust establishment is like a clergy that after decades of obscurity finds itself blinking on the world stage. It simultaneously resents being criticised for its passivity, wants to preserve its doctrinal purity and absolutely loves all the attention. Since the 1980s American competition policy has been timid. Even today some antitrust officials and scholars want to pass the buck, arguing that the tech problem rightfully belongs to other parts of the government. [Right, now pull the other leg!]

Yet ultimately big tech is also a matter for antitrust. It is possible that the big firms’ dominance will be transitory. But this is a risky assumption. The stonking valuations of Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon imply that they will double in size by 2021. All five firms prevent the emergence of rivals by buying or crushing them. They have hoovered up at least 329 small firms in the past five years, according to Bloomberg, a data provider. One venture capitalist told the audience in Chicago that there is a “kill zone” around Alphabet and Facebook, which startups cannot survive.

Antitrust is vital because any solution to the problems of big tech will require innovation as well as regulation. For example, privacy could be protected by the rise of new “fiduciary” companies that act as trusted, anonymised intermediaries between users and the big tech firms. “Ethical” firms could emerge that create search engines, social-media platforms and digital assistants which are not reliant on ads and surveillance. The job of helping competitors emerge belongs squarely to the antitrust watchdogs.

Here is a prediction. An alphabet soup of different consumer, privacy and media regulators will slowly try to ensnare the big tech firms. At the same time the antitrust regulators (the DoJ and the competition arm of the FTC) will make it nearly impossible for the big five companies to acquire smaller ones. They will also seek to enforce mechanisms to ensure there can be a safe transfer of data and customers between the big incumbent tech firms and their potential competitors so that newcomers can prosper.
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Permit me to employ once again my favorite bit of the Greek language. It is "oligopoly". Which translates into, more or less, this: A market form wherein commerce is dominated by a small number of large sellers (oligopolists).

And the counterpart effect is that, with no outright illegal "monopolization" of markets, some market sectors are dominated by major groups that all profit from higher-prices due to lesser competition. And who pays for this gross error of non-monopoly oligopoly?

Look in the mirror, sucker. You do by means of higher than necessary prices had real competition existed ...
 
America’s antitrust apparatus prepares to act against big tech
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good. i'm for breaking a lot of large companies up. capitalism works best when there is fierce competition.
 
Helix said:
good. i'm for breaking a lot of large companies up. capitalism works best when there is fierce competition.
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Fat Chance! We have CORPORATISM, not Capitalism. Citizens United set that in stone. It will require a huge economic crash to remove the blinders and reform our political/corporate oligopoly.
/
 
I really hope the antitrust mechanisms kick in soon. These companies are getting ridiculous. I fully support breaking up oligopolies, duopolies and monopolies. It's the only way to prevent economic stagnation and spur innovation. Not to mention it's just ethical.
 
WE, THE SHEEPLE!

DaveFagan said:
Fat Chance! We have CORPORATISM, not Capitalism. Citizens United set that in stone. It will require a huge economic crash to remove the blinders and reform our political/corporate oligopoly.
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Well, no it wont need a crash to bring about change in DC. It will take simply a mid-term election coming up in November to change the ball-game there.

Americans simply have to wake up to the fact that they fell for the BS on televised commercials two-years ago. This country's governance by the high-'n-mighty has impoverished the nation wholly on behalf of enriching that select few at the top in the Replicant Party. They are a wicked people who have contrived since the get-go of the nation, by means of gerrymandering and the Electoral College, to manipulate their way into near absolute power.

Remember, Donald Dork lost the popular-vote. He would today NOT BE POTUS today in any real-democracy!

If anything, what the country needs is a change in rules-of-the-game. What is going on in La-la-land on the Potomac is not a democratic republic. It is a wedded-relationship of the three powers of governance (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) all in the hands of the Replicant Party.

How the hell did this nation of decent people ever come to that sad end? By those who did not vote thinking it was "not worth it". Now you should know finally what that attitude gets you in America's manipulative politics.

Screwed royally! So, instead of bleating in a blog - get your duff to the voting-booths in November!

Show the Moneyed Bosses who's really in charge of this country! We, the sheeple ... !
 
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WHY, WHY, WHY?

Northern Light said:
I really hope the antitrust mechanisms kick in soon. These companies are getting ridiculous. I fully support breaking up oligopolies, duopolies and monopolies. It's the only way to prevent economic stagnation and spur innovation. Not to mention it's just ethical.
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Me too.

Believe me, those anti-trust mechanism are still there. Just not been tested for, well, almost a 100 years given that "trusts" were major combines to further develop the railway industry. This political cartoon from that period in our not so glorious long-past history:
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Why does do such societal-economic advances not persist? Why did we all celebrate King's "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial? It gave hope. But blacks are really not that much better off.

Some say, it's just history playing it's stop-'n-go-'n-back-again tricks on us. Somehow, I don't think so.

Somehow, the nation dumbed-down and just aint prepared to smarten up. Not yet, anyway ...
 
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Lafayette said:
Somehow, the nation dumbed-down and just aint prepared to smarten up. Not yet, anyway ...
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The dumbing down has been intentional. Major education cuts, widespread standardized testing, and making it extremely expensive to go to post-secondary while having a normal adult life are all mechanisms put into place to ensure dumbing down. It's one of the long-term ways that demagogues use to seize power while also increasing their profits.

A democracy doesn't work if it's not informed.
 
Northern Light said:
The dumbing down has been intentional. Major education cuts, widespread standardized testing, and making it extremely expensive to go to post-secondary while having a normal adult life are all mechanisms put into place to ensure dumbing down. It's one of the long-term ways that demagogues use to seize power while also increasing their profits.

A democracy doesn't work if it's not informed.
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No, I don't think it was planned that way. It just happened.

I suggest that Americans have very little sense of "communality" - that we are all-in-this-together. Independence is a cornerstone of the American way-of-life.

And we abhor the notion of a Social Democracy, despite the fact that such a concept accepts capitalism as a major component. Which means that to obtain the ultimate freedom to do whatever they damn well please Americans lose the socioeconomic strength of a "fair economy" that guarantees not equality of incomes but their equitability.

The only acceptable usage of the word "social" in America is ... like a "church social". That's just fine - it has no political signification whatsoever.
 
Lafayette said:
From the Economist, Shumpeter: America’s antitrust apparatus prepares to act against big tech - excerpt:


20180428_WBD000_0.jpg





Permit me to employ once again my favorite bit of the Greek language. It is "oligopoly". Which translates into, more or less, this: A market form wherein commerce is dominated by a small number of large sellers (oligopolists).

And the counterpart effect is that, with no outright illegal "monopolization" of markets, some market sectors are dominated by major groups that all profit from higher-prices due to lesser competition. And who pays for this gross error of non-monopoly oligopoly?

Look in the mirror, sucker. You do by means of higher than necessary prices had real competition existed ...
Click to expand...

Good. Then, do the Unions, and government provision of Education :)
 
Lafayette said:
Americans lose the socioeconomic strength of a "fair economy"
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what is fairer than all economic transactions being made freely and voluntarily only when both people think they are fair. To a liberal fair is when a liberal tax collector with a gun shows up to impose his version of fairness!! Wakey Wakey!!
 
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