Breaking Up Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook Could Save Capitalism, NYU Professor Says (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader shares a VentureBeat report: If you want to get an idea of how quickly sentiment has shifted against U.S. tech giants, just listen to NYU professor Scott Galloway. [...] "After spending the majority of the last two years of my life really trying to understand them and the relationship of the ecosystem, I've become 100 percent convinced that it's time to break these companies up." It's an audacious claim from anyone, even more startling coming from someone who has been such a close and bullish observer of these tech giants. Yet for Galloway, it is clear that the four companies have simply become too big, and too powerful. "The premise of my book is that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are our new gods, our new source of love, our consumptive gods," he said. "And as a result of their ability to tap into these very basic instincts, they've aggregated more market cap than the majority of nation's GDP ... I think these entities are more powerful than any entity, with maybe the exception of China and the U.S."

[...] Galloway said he wasn't making his argument based on many of the current emotional outcries against the companies, though these are important to note. And he proceeded to list what he considers to be these giants' numerous sins. "There are reasons to be angry at them," he said. "They basically power fake news ... So the notion that our platforms have been weaponized by the intelligence unit of a foreign adversary was initially responded to by Facebook as crazy, that we were crazy for thinking that. Then we found out it was millions of people, and now we're finding out it was hundreds of millions of people who were exposed."

Comments

Why is this here?

[xvan]

Breaking up Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook could save capitalism

Says Scott Galloway, NYU marketing profressor

Re:Why is this here?

[MitchDev]

Don't forget to break up ALL the Banks, Wall Street corporations, Walmart, Comcast, Time Warner, DISNEY, the much consolidated airlines, etc etc etc while you are at it.

Re:Why is this here?

[macsimcon]

Banks are a systemic threat to the economy. The top four (or is it five?) banks are now so large that the failure of any one of them could destroy the country.

But there is another way: every state could charter its own bank, just like North Dakota has. With that much competition, fees would fall, the big banks would lose marketshare, and shrink to a size which didn't threaten the country with their failure.

Re: Why is this here?

[edtice1559]

In case this question is serious, the issue is not that there won't be banks left, its that large banks have many counter-parties. And it's not transparent who those counter-parties are and what would happen to them should the bank fail. Depositors of course get paid back via the FDIC (at a cost to taxpayers). But other counter-parties may end up bankrupt as well. During the period of unwinding, it will be impossible to know which entities in the country are solvent and which ones are not. This tends to throw markets into a tizzy. And while this is happening, certain things can't get done. Like for example, the issuing of municipal debt (is the insurer solvent nobody knows). Because the US economy relies so heavily on debt ( a separate but somewhat related problem ), the economic impact would be quite significant.

No-brainer?

[Rick Schumann]

Last time I checked, aren't monopolies bad for capitalism, and by extension, bad for a national economy in general? Am I right? All the above-named corporations have de-facto monopolies. Add Microsoft and AT&T to that list, by the way, just for starters; there are many others, too.

While we're at it, how about we repeal the decision to consider corporations to be 'people' in the eyes of the law, and also ban them from contributing to political campaigns. In fact, I'd prefer that all campaign funds come from a neutral source, so no corporations or rich individuals can influence politics.

Let me guess - his funding....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny that he didn't mention Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs,.....you know, the banks that fucked up the economy and then got a big government handout for their illegal actions.

You want save capitalism, break them up and jail their bosses.

No coherent argument

[david.emery]

At least not in the article (I didn't watch the video). These companies are not the same. Facebook controls 'views' and advertising. Google controls 'search' and advertising, but of course there are alternatives for search. Amazon controls sales and delivery. Apple provides widely used, but not dominant, phones and computers.

Trying to make an argument that they're collectively the same is flat-assed wrong. And size itself is not a sufficient justification for government intervention.

Amazon, Google and Facebook arguably have potential monopolies in their markets, but each does have competitors. Apple clearly has viable competitors in each of its markets.

But hey, this guy gets to go around making bogus arguments, and probably collects nice speaking fees as well as a lot of clicks and publicity.

wrong target

[swell]

If you want to break stuff up start with oil companies and banks- companies 'too big to fail' that have already failed and become even bigger. These companies crush innovation, control our elected officials and pretty much run the world as they please.

Teddy's time and our time.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Trust buster Teddy Roosevelt cracked down on American monopolies when it was difficult for foreign companies to break into American markets.

Now we are in a totally different era. It is extremely difficult for any foreigner is just move in and live in the USA, legally. Even illegally one risks life, limb and liberty to move in here.

On the other hand, any Tom, Dick or Harry, of Ching Ling or Ramanathan Murugappa or Aziz al-Burkati or Omonomo Boborossa can set up a company and do business in America. We break up our monopolies, we still be under monopolies, except this time the monopolies are based in foreign countries.

They are the only ones who can keep foreign monopolies at bay. We should find ways to tame them, contain them but not cripple them so much foreign companies come and take our market.

'Simple' rules for a healthy economy and society

[Baron_Yam]

Determine what a safe market share is, set an exponential growth in corporate tax by percentage over that share.

Determine which goods and services are best considered 'infrastructure' where competition is counter-productive, and have the government take them over - ideally while farming out the actual work to contractors in accordance with the first rule.

Now look at Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc... how do you break up such things when the whole point of them is that they provide a single interface? Consider search and social media (over a certain market share) to be infrastructure, nationalize it, and have a government central interface that combines regional providers. And deal with the idea that instead of a corporation deciding what is acceptable to do with your personal information, you now have a government making those decisions.

I'd argue that chopping companies up will reduce their influence on government, and remind the government that their 'shareholders' are voting citizens, and that ultimately so long as you don't elect a tyrant you'll be better off.

Re:Idiotic Reasoning

[StormReaver]

What does Microsoft have a monopoly on?

Microsoft still has an abusive monopoly on desktop operating systems.