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The Monopolies That Dominate the Internet
Tim Wu has a piece up at the Wall Street Journal pointing out that the free-market, open Internet — "competition in its purest form" — has evolved to be dominated by monopolies. Wu argues that this is nothing new, and that each wave of information technology in the US has followed a similar pattern. "Today's Internet borders will probably change eventually, especially as new markets appear. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we are living in an age of large information monopolies. Could it be that the free market on the Internet actually tends toward monopolies? Could it even be that demand, of all things, is actually winnowing the online free market — that Americans, so diverse and individualistic, actually love these monopolies? ... Info-monopolies tend to be good-to-great in the short term and bad-to-terrible in the long term."
Wu argues that this is nothing new, and that each wave of information technology has followed the same pattern
It's not just information technology, it's technology in general since 1840. Textiles, railroads, oil, PC operating systems - they all started out as highly competitive markets then inevitably became monopolies, until the government stepped in. Why should the Internet be any different?
that Americans... actually love monopolies?
No, it's just that most of us are too stupid to realize this tendency, no matter how many times it's been demonstrated in the past. Show an American government regulation, even if it's to protect him, and he'll start shrieking about communism before you can get a word in edgewise.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Admittedly this is anecdotal, but when I was using Bing for my searches I didn't notice any more of a skew than I did with Google. At this point with Google the first page or so is typically crap. Link farms regularly appear in the first page, as do sites which ask for a donation to see the information while including it at the very bottom so that they're technically in compliance with Google policy.
In short Google doesn't have a better product. In fact the use of their dumb algorithm to do the searches has probably set the industry back several years. The reason people started using them was that they were fast and provided more relevant searches more quickly. The problem is that they did it by not even bothering to attempt to analyze the sites.
Should children be still working from age of 5 on the fields? Should children be given an opportunity of being something more than a subsistence farmer?
The capitalism allowed children to be more than that. Yes, some worked in terrible dangerous conditions, that's not a reason for any gov't involvement ever.
It may be a reason for private interests to have a union, I am not against totally private unions, they make sense in an economy just as much as a business makes sense.
Gov't intervening does not make any sense and it ends up destroying economy.
As to 'workers being born into company hospital', tell me something, how much better is it to be born into the gov't caused debt, into gov't caused economic disaster that will destroy economy and currency and all jobs? How much better is it?
Should slavery exist? Did gov't really stop slavery or was slavery stopped by people? Business will use the cheapest form of labor, but realize that gov't didn't protest much AT ALL to that when slavery existed.
Gov't has a job - protect liberties and freedoms of its citizens, I am not arguing against this point.
I don't take you seriously either because you cannot argue me at all on points.
You can't handle the truth.
Competition needs not actual competition; as long as the market is free for new investors to come in, competition already exists. The "monopolist" can only profit as much as it would cost the second best entrepreneur to come in. But that's something I suppose only Austrian Economists fully understand, so it's inevitable that people will be clueless for decades to come still.
Also, the state is the biggest monopoly of all. Those inherently opposed to monopolies should consistently oppose it - yet most do not. They look for the greatest monopoly to swallow all others, never accomplishing anything that was allegedly intended. That's because the state cannot increase competition, it is analytically impossible. All the state can do is restrict, forbid, restrain. Every time it breaks a monopoly for example, it creates a cartel of higher prices.
http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf
Singapore is where lots of action is in Asia and where regulations are much more lax than in US or Europe. Qatar is an exporter of oil, known as emirate state.
Luxemburg is a 'country' of 500,000 people. I suggest you go there if you haven't been, I was just in London last week and went through Belgium and into Luxemburg before going further my way. They are a producer of actual refined materials and chemicals. They are also an investment hub.
None of these countries spend on wars, they also pretty much do not print money, imagine that.
However US doesn't even belong in that list on that line. The US GDP is fake, like most of information you will keep finding about it on the web.
The CPI is fake, the inflation rate is fake, the GDP is fake. Everything about US economy that is reported by the gov't is false.
Hong Kong is an extremely free market oriented economy with competing private currencies, maybe you should look into HK dollars, they are cute. They also are printed by different private banks and are backed by production capacity.
HK also has very low taxes: 8%, 14% and 20% depending on your bracket, and that's it.
Switzerland, I enjoy my canton because there is no federal income tax there.
It has the money of the world and almost no taxes only user fees.
Ireland... you'll hear soon about Ireland. It's going down, it's a disaster.
Australia is a raw material exporter, they'll be fine.
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All these countries import Chinese products, some are running deficits now, but except US nobody is running wars and insane levels of military spending and their social spending is actually much lower than what US has it at.
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What is funny about you, is that you have not a single clue about the actual world that is around you.
You can't handle the truth.
That's not regulation, that's weeding out the stupid who do stupid shit and get caught.
I left a comment in this thread responding to the moron over there, showing that as an example in Germany you don't need a license to be a food vendor AS LONG as you are actually doing the correct thing - making sure that you are following the correct food handling procedures, but if you do not follow procedures and you get caught, it means your ass - fines and who knows what other sanctions.
OTOH in USA you need to get various licenses, vendor permit, sellers permit, dba certificate...
That means that before you start a business you already have to deal with a bunch of bureaucratic nightmares, this obviously means that startup costs go up and it cuts off a bunch of people from doing business before they even start.
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So my point is that it is much easier to do business, to start business in Asia and even in Germany than it is in US in many cases. This relates to gov't subsidizing monopolies, creating monopolies, creating regulations that kill competition before it even starts. Then there are crazy taxes, rules, regulations you have to comply with while running a business, takes the joy out of otherwise interesting work as well.
Patriot Act made it impossible for new start ups in fund hedging, you have to become an IRS and CIA rat basically, you have to set up systems, logs, control and check points, you have to prove you have all of that working. Then there are enormous amounts of regulations concerning what you can even OFFER to your customers and all of this was created by gov't, who subsidizes the existing banks/insurance firms/hedge funds, in many cases it was created as a knee jerk reaction to these gov't created monopolies taking advantage of their customers BECAUSE they have no competitor they can really go to.
Then the new start ups have to somehow comply with all these regulations, that were created with huge existing monopolies in mind, for who all of these regulations are a minor issue, no problem, they have cash flow, it's just a small cost and very easy to fit into existing structures they have, and given they are also subsidized and bailed out they have basically no risk to themselves doing any of this.
But if you are a private individual today in USA, you actually have to be a millionaire to even try and start your own hedge fund and you probably will fail anyway because the field is rigged, you are not subsidized by gov't, because you'll be paying outrageous taxes that existing monopolies all have exemptions for since they are part of the system.
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Bullet in the head for an insignificant number of cases for doing something wrong? That's a tiny price to pay for a working economy.
You can't handle the truth.