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How To Tame the Tech Titans (economist.com)
dryriver shares an opinion piece from The Economist: Not long ago, being the boss of a big Western tech firm was a dream job. As the billions rolled in, so did the plaudits: Google, Facebook, Amazon and others were making the world a better place. Today these companies are accused of being BAADD -- big, anti-competitive, addictive and destructive to democracy. Regulators fine them, politicians grill them and one-time backers warn of their power to cause harm. Much of this techlash is misguided. The presumption that big businesses must necessarily be wicked is plain wrong. Apple is to be admired as the world's most valuable listed company for the simple reason that it makes things people want to buy, even while facing fierce competition. Many online services would be worse if their providers were smaller. Evidence for the link between smartphones and unhappiness is weak. Fake news is not only an online phenomenon.
But big tech platforms, particularly Facebook, Google and Amazon, do indeed raise a worry about fair competition. That is partly because they often benefit from legal exemptions. Unlike publishers, Facebook and Google are rarely held responsible for what users do on them; and for years most American buyers on Amazon did not pay sales tax. Nor do the titans simply compete in a market. Increasingly, they are the market itself, providing the infrastructure (or "platforms") for much of the digital economy. Many of their services appear to be free, but users "pay" for them by giving away their data. Powerful though they already are, their huge stockmarket valuations suggest that investors are counting on them to double or even triple in size in the next decade. There is thus a justified fear that the tech titans will use their power to protect and extend their dominance, to the detriment of consumers (see article). The tricky task for policymakers is to restrain them without unduly stifling innovation.
But big tech platforms, particularly Facebook, Google and Amazon, do indeed raise a worry about fair competition. That is partly because they often benefit from legal exemptions. Unlike publishers, Facebook and Google are rarely held responsible for what users do on them; and for years most American buyers on Amazon did not pay sales tax. Nor do the titans simply compete in a market. Increasingly, they are the market itself, providing the infrastructure (or "platforms") for much of the digital economy. Many of their services appear to be free, but users "pay" for them by giving away their data. Powerful though they already are, their huge stockmarket valuations suggest that investors are counting on them to double or even triple in size in the next decade. There is thus a justified fear that the tech titans will use their power to protect and extend their dominance, to the detriment of consumers (see article). The tricky task for policymakers is to restrain them without unduly stifling innovation.
Apple is to be admired ... for the simple reason that it makes things people want to buy
So do meth cooks. And like those scofflaws Apple bends a lot of rules and fosters a lot of bad shit in this world. They don't get absolution just because they're cool.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
This is not about tech companies. There is a general problem with the way our system is set up whenever a company (representing the desire to make money) is large and powerful enough to make demands from a government (representing the diverse needs of the people).
Whenever one desire can subdue all other desires, you have something we call addiction in psychology. And the general agreement is that it's a bad thing, unhealthy for the whole organism.
View societies as organisms (living systems theory, in case you are into such fields) and many faults of our system become painfully obvious.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That's an oversimplification. They have to live up to their charter/stated aims. Pre-1970s, it was common for the board to consider effect on the towns they live in, etc. Heck, there's no reason that we as society should allow "just make profit" as a valid mission statement.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You are providing free data to Google who sells it to companies who need to pay advertising. So you pay Google through the products you buy from companies that do online advertising.
The "Google ecosystem" is just a honeypot to get your data.
Same story for Facebook.
The business model of these (and many other "tech" companies) is to squeeze in between customers and sellers by luring away consumers and then charging the sellers for getting them back.
Seth Godin as explained it nicely here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/s...
The greatest thing about capitalism is that it fully embraces the unfairness of life, and in fact, uses it to produce something worthy.
There are haves and have-nots. This goes far beyond mere money. Life is completely unfair, top to bottom. But in a capitalist society, it doesn't have to stay that way. A have-not can become rich by mass-providing something that the rich have to all his fellow have-nots.
Just two generations ago, the ability to quickly research something and gain an insight that might give you a competitive edge was limited to people with access to research libraries and experts. Today we have the Internet. Yes, the Internet is full of sludge, but that's only on its bottom. What runs on top is extraordinarily valuable information. And all that value now rests in the palm of everyone's hand.
Government funded the research phase of the Internet, and it was a spectacularly good investment. But it's only in hindsight that we can say that, only after capitalism mass-produced it. Can you imagine what an Internet run by the government would look like?! I shudder to even think.
Embrace the unfairness of life and exploit it. Be creative and courageous. Don't rely on the government -- of all institutions! -- to make life "fair". Life in North Korea and Cuba is what government's idea of "fair" looks like.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Corporations are required by law to make money. Share holders can exact retribution if they don't..
Impressive. Not many people can pack so much factual error into so few words.
First error is that corporations are required by law to make money. They are not. They are required to fulfill the aims laid out in their corporate charter, IPO statements and other promises to shareholders. There are, in fact, several corporations in existence (mostly "activist" investment funds) whose explicit goals are social or environmental in nature. Their share holders could exact retribution for making money the wrong way, or, if their goals turn out to be incompatible with making money, for making it at all. Google is an interesting case here, because its IPO documents say quite a bit about social responsibility as part of the justification for the distinction between the common and preferred stock issuance that allowed Google's founders to retain voting control (if Page, Brin and Schmidt vote together, they outvote all the rest of the shareholders put together).
Second error is that shareholders exact retribution if corporations fail to pursue their stated goals. In theory you're actually correct here. In practice, can you find a single example of share holders doing this that wasn't due to simple malfeasance?
Third is the implicit assumption that focusing on making money always leads to negative decisions. In fact, more often than not it's exactly the opposite because the very best way to make lots of money is to make and sell something people want at a price they want to pay for it. In other words, provide a public good. Where focus on profits often does lead to evil decisions is when companies' products are not doing well in the marketplace, so execs become desperate to squeeze a little more wherever they can. Companies that are awash in money and growing rapidly rarely have any need to do this.
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