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.

Comments

Poor thinking

[Tailhook]

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.

Re:The Problem

[Actually, I do RTFA]

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.

Fairness is an illusion

[davide marney]

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.