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Elizabeth Warren Calls To Break Up Facebook, Google, and Amazon
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is proposing to break up technology companies, including Amazon.com, Google and Facebook, calling them anti-competitive behemoths that are crowding out competition. From a report: "Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world," Warren wrote in a post on the blogging platform Medium. "It's a great story -- but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets." Warren's call also comes as Democrats have begun to plan for increased oversight of tech companies after winning control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. On Wednesday, House and Senate Democrats introduced legislation to establish strong net neutrality protections that would look to prevent major service providers from using their power to manipulate how users experience the internet. Update: In a statement, Warren's team said that the proposal would also apply to Apple. "They would have to structurally separate -- choosing between, for example, running the App Store or offering their own apps," a spokesperson said.
No complaints about Apple and their walled-garden?
Force them to split into three companies:
- computers
- tablets/phones/watches/glasses
- music/tv/movies
Seriously, that's her plan "break up the monopolies" ... and give the market to the Chinese who have a vested interest in maintain control of the world's infrastructure and who have demonstrated the ability to exploit a totalitarian surveillance state? This is JV level retarded, not something that should be seriously endorsed by a reasonable statesman.
Warren has to say something to separate herself from the throngs of Democratic Presidential hopefuls, and elevate her campaign into the limelight, but she doesn't really have a clue what her proposal would do.
Internet neutrality is poorly understood by Washington, and there would be throngs of salivating international competitors for the void created if the US government handicaps their domestic tech industry.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So to get the full search results you'll have to look-up the same thing on:
googleatlantic.com
googlepacific.com
googlesouth.com
googlesouthwest.com
googlewest.com
googletech.com
googleny.com
?
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I recently ended my prime membership due to rate increases. I can honestly say I rarely bothered looking at competitors prior to this. If it's on Amazon, had 2-day or less shipping and looked reasonably priced, then that was my choice.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I dusted off my Ebay account recently to purchase an air filter for my car engine. By dusted off, I mean I created a new one because my old account hadn't been used in so long it was apparently removed.
For all I care, merge all of these big companies into one massive government if you like, but do away with Microsoft's licensing. It's the biggest scam they run.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Separate the networks and prohibit them from selling to users, or having exclusive contracts. Then we have competing networks (though sometimes it might be cable vs dsl), and competing providers on top of the networks.
Should be "Elizabeth Warren seeks to see relevant to any voters in 2020, tries to out-socialist all other candidates".
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
How is this different than any large store selling store brand products?
You're forgetting about other businesses that Google and Amazon and Facebook have. Web services, chat, internet service, browsers, stealing all your data, selling it to advertisers or abusing it themselves, tracking where you are all the time... Companies who are in a healthy market generally can't afford to splurge like that.
Break up Facebook? Why not just close it down? Facebook is a drain on humanity for being the megaphone of ignorance and narcissism.
I hardly find Amazon even having the best prices. Usually there is an online retailer that is selling the same product for less or about the same price. I really don't see Amazon having a monopoly on anything. They certainly don't in online shopping. They certainly don't have a monopoly on cloud services.
Anybody wanna take a look at AT&T?
That company was broken up in the 1970s and it's probably four times larger and more monopolistic than it is now.
It seems to me, the backbone ISPs are the ones stifling competition.
As a mental exercise, I've pondered whether it would be possible to break up Google into multiple search engines. The reality is that searching the modern web is a massive undertaking and competing against Google is really difficult. Bing is the only company currently attempting it - all of the other search engines (such as Yahoo or Duck Duck Go) either repost Bing's results or are language specific search engines that aren't interested in searching the whole web.
As I understand it, modern search engines could be broken into 3 parts: collection, organization, and display. It's the last part that everyone wants to do as it most directly affects what people see and its the best opportunity to make ad dollars. Collecting data from the web requires a massive infrastructure to do it right and it seems inevitable that most companies will narrow their focus here, prioritizing only the biggest websites, in order to save some cash. Organizing the raw data into something searchable is extremely complicated and technical; Google has spent a fortune building the technology to do this well and it is difficult for a smaller search engine to compete with them.
So if the US Government wanted to encourage competition in the search engine field, a straightforward approach would be to force Google to sell search data to 3rd parties who could then index it and display it as they will. If most companies relied on Google to organize the data, they would likely display identical results, but there would be room for all of the players to carve their own niche. A conservative focused search engine might push search results from conservative news sources, for instance.
It's not an ideal solution because it still leaves Google in a monopoly position as the engine that runs the web but it would remove a lot of their direct power over search results. I just don't see a good alternative because searching the entirety of the web requires so many that a small operator will just never be able to do it well.
Assuming she ends up in the election and assuming she doesn't except all the bribe money those companies are going to throw her way, this will push all of those companies to put their full backing and support behind Trump. Any of those three companies can change an election by throwing their weight around. Google through search results and advertising. Facebook though social news. Amazon though limiting and promoting products and advertising on its packaging. Not to mention all the outreach programs they will push their employees to participate in as well as providing targeted polls, tons of data mining, and all the tech resources they can provide to their side.
If they didn't break up Microsoft then, they won't break up these guys now
Russia and China would absolutely love if the US government shot their only remaining economic golden goose in the head in a fit of raging populism. What an amazing win for them and their own domestic services that'd be. The CCP right now only wishes that it could get Americans using QQ for their searches, filtering every scrap of information through Beijing for monitoring and indexing. The government obliterating Google would be their pathway to do that.
I quit using EBay years ago when I realized that most of the time I received a product that was different than what I ordered. That and the stupid PayPal shit.
Walmart
Microsoft
AT&T
Oracle
Disney
Koch Brothers
and so on.
I guess if you wanted to break them all up for the betterment of the people of the US, there wouldn't be any corporate entities left to contribute to :campaign finances", which would also be a good thing.
You don't need to break them up, you just need to make it a law that companies can't hold your data hostage nor engage in exclusive contracts. Instead, if you ask for it they have to provide you with all 'your' data so you can move to a competing service and a company can't lock up a data provider or service by saying they're unable to do business with anyone else (like how the movie industry controls what reaches your local theater). Make those two things illegal (and provide some patent reform), then anyone would be able to build competing products and have a chance at competing. Let the best service win and keep around the few others so we have choices.
She's got my vote. She's the only politician that I've ever heard suggest this. She's the only politician that I'm aware of who has the balls to even begin to properly reign in and regulate big business in the US. I'm tired of having to eat shit from big companies just because they can buy politicians and write their own laws.
I don't respond to AC's.
Somebody else was successful!
Waaaaaaahhhhhh!!
Warren and many of the Democrats are trying to learn from Trumps 2016 campaign. He said outrageous, ridiculous things that he'll never get that play to the extreme of his party.
Warren, and a couple of the other Democrats are doing the same thing. Warren and Harris both came out for reparations! A batshit insane idea that's as destructive as the wall, and they'll never get in a million years. Breaking of Amazon, Google and Facebook is pretty much the same thing, though at least slightly more likely.
Way too many people love Amazon to consider breaking them up. The last big breakup happened with Ma Bell, and EVERYONE hated them across the spectrum, so there was no real political fallout when they got broken up.
Google has an obvious natural monopoly. Treat them as such.
That doesn't matter one bit. What matters is that political parties try to dumb down their voters so they will vote on emotion rather than logic. I also believe all the Dem candidates have pledged all of their remaining campaign dollars to the Party should a certain individual decide to run (again).
I am a life-long Dem voter; straight ticket. Those days are gone now, not just because of the sorry-ass candidates the Dems are fielding but for the ignorant, asinine economic agenda that will fail out of the box. But the Dem Politbureau doesn't care, they care about getting power, without even having decent crumbs to hand out to those who put them there.
The nation is ripening for a third party to scoop out the Middle. It will be less cancerous than Wallace, smarter than Perot, and more energetic than T. Roosevelt. The proto-communists on the left and the genuinely racist, old-world whites will be swept to the dustbin of history where they belong. I just hope this new middle is what the Founders intended but I fear it will not be. The masses have become so ignorant.
No complaints about Apple and their walled-garden?
No, because there are easy alternatives - you can always get an Android phone, perhaps you've heard of them?
In no way in any space is Apple a monopoly, there are always other options - and the world would be poorer within a choice as distinct as Apple from other offerings.
The ones under discussion - Google, Facebook, Amazon, each have rather more a lock on what they do - although I don't see really how you can "break them up". What would that really mean for each of them? Google already self-broke into search and Alphabet. Facebook is just a big ball of yarn you can't really unravel. Amazon, what would you break off that could really survive by itself? Grocery stores?? H AH AH AHAH AHA HA. No.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For me their prices are typically competitive on things I can't find at a local nearby shop.
Once you factor in travel time and expenses to a nearby shop to pickup items versus free shipping (assuming you can wait on an item), Amazon's products become more attractive. Prime shipping sweetens the deal for a small fee.
Now if its perishable goods I find Amazon is typically more expensive than places I can easily get to with minimal travel time overhead and associated expenses.
I recently moved from a very rural area to a much larger metropolitan area and I can tell you, dealing with parking and associated expenses is a nightmare. Also, retailers that offer competitive prices like Walmart are an absolutely miserable experience as opposed to Walmarts in rural areas where there's far more isle
And how is this to be accomplished?
Apple doesn't fit her reasoning. Look at what her reasoning is for why government (her) needs more power:
--- ...
25 years ago they didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world.... That highlights why the government must break up
---
She's saying they must destroy "new* companies that have done well. Apple isn't new.
I'm not sure she read what she wrote before sending it in, though. The fact that upstarts can compete and become major players, like Amazon beat both Walmart and IBM/Dell/HP is why government has to break up established companies, she says. Because Amazon wouldn't have stood a chance if the government hadn't knocked Walmart down? Amazon couldn't have competed in data center computing if the government hadn't gotten rid of HP? Google couldn't have done anything with search, had the government not broken up Yahoo?
The lists off a bunch of companies that beat out the established big players, by being BETTER, not by having the government break up the existing successful companies. Then says those are examples of why the government needs to break up successful companies. Those are actually examples of why the government doesn't NOT need to meddle with things. All of the companies ahe listed beat out much larger companies, by simply offering something customers prefer, by being better.
... telling The People how to organize themselves.
... it didn't happen.
IMHO it won't work. For one thing these companies have far too much influence already to let that happen, also the US aren't interested in devalueing their most successful companies.
Another thing is, that they are in a business (especially facebook) where having more customers makes the service more attractive to additional customers. participation in a social network is more interesting the larger that network is.
With amazon the case is slightly different: there it's about convenience (ordering and paying via only one instance) and scaling effects.
With google: As far as i can remember there was always one search engine that people flocked to (at some point that was alta-vista), just because it gave the most useful results. Google became successful because their page-ranking algorithms gave the most useful results. Of course now they are so big, and know how to monetize their services, it'll be hard for any competitor to get a foot in the door. An exception may be niches like the one DuckDuckGo found (better privacy).
So i don't think breaking these companies up will be a realistic goal. I think that they should be regulated though, to hinder them from abusing their power (e.g. censoring or just imagine an amazon embargo).
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Nothing will change.
The racist old-world whites never left the Democratic Party. Richard Spencer, David Duke, The Virginia governor are all left side.
The DNC crowed about how great social media was, how well Obama's team used it, and how Twitter Spring was going to change the world..
Then they lost, and now Social Media needs to be turned off. No more opinions.
News organizations not allowed to even cover DNC primaries, they are so afraid of criticism.
Must be the 0.000005% injun in her.
No care that I have to pay $137 a month for 100 meg service because the local Cox internet monopoly sued google to keep them from laying fiber and won? Right after that they put 1 TB data caps on all home internet packages with a new $50/month "unlimited" data package on top of the $87 a month I was already paying. Ridiculous.
Not sure why this is marked Troll. She consistently lied about her heritage to advance her career. Not sure why more people are not outraged over that.
Facebook is a drain on humanity for being the megaphone of ignorance and narcissism.
If you're going to use that metric, you have too shut down the entire internet - and most of Hollywood.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Someone is probably bitter about the big tech companies that haven't donated to her campaign. What would really be more useful would be to break up the 6 companies that own all Mainstream Media. Since Bill Clinton passed the law allowing the media companies to consolidate, just a few companies now control the "trusted" news outlets.
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She doesn't have to wait to be president to begin addressing this, therefore, I call bullshit. It's no different than Hillary swearing she'd repeal Citizen's United in an attempt to sway people that were feeling the Bern.
lets break up Apple because they have a monopoly on iphones, and ipads, and macbooks,
lets break up the Ford motor company because they have a monopoly on Ford cars and trucks
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Going on principle only, Facebook and Twitter - what I call Facetwat - must be cleaned with fire. For one thing they make it far too easy for disinformation to get out into the heads of the gullible, and for another thing they engage in selective censorship. While it's their right as a private non-government entity to censor what they don't like, it doesn't always make it right.
Same for google. Monopoly in what sense? In the sense that they attempt to control the flow and content of information? Yes, they do do that. They do exercise undue and improper influence, I think, on how people think. That's not a monopoly, that's just being preachy bastards, as evil as Religions.
But the rest? They're not monopolies. Amazon's the closest one to being one. It could be argued that by having their own brand, now they are. If they start directly manufacturing they certainly will be.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Funny how they cry wolf when it's bits and bytes no worries when it comes to Big Oil, Telcos and Big Food (10 companies control all big brands in the world)
In the past, breaking up monopolies only did any good if the resulting companies ended up competing against each other. If you break up Google...it's not as if you can end up with multiple search engines.
This isn't 1982 anymore.
I find Warren extremely unlikable. I actually disagree with Bernie Sanders a lot, but I don't find him nearly as unlikable. Warren however I find VERY unlikable. I'm not a Trump supporter or right wing republican, but holy crap is Elizabeth Warren unlikable. She's up there with Ted Cruz.
I mean don't they fit the category? seems like they should also be on the list. I have always though require a company to produce 1 and only 1 product would be a boon for the average citizen. Greatly increasing jobs ( by the proliferation of companies) , personal engagement by creating smaller companies and forcing companies to favor consumers, because a boycott would hurt them a lot more.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
"Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world," Warren wrote in a post on the blogging platform Medium. "It's a great story -- but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets."
Except none of them is actually a monopoly. Facebook might come closest with social networking but even then to call it a monopoly is something of a stretch. Amazon and Google aren't monopolies in any serious sense of the word. Yes they are 800lb gorillas in their respective space but not monopolies unless you define the market so narrowly as to make the term lose meaning.
Believe me, I'm all for breaking up and regulating companies if/when they become problems but this isn't it. The companies that need to be broken up are the large banks. THEY are a threat to the financial stability of the country. Look to the events of 2008 if you need evidence. The big tech companies are not even close to being a serious systemic threat.
Update: In a statement, Warren's team said that the proposal would also apply to Apple. "They would have to structurally separate -- choosing between, for example, running the App Store or offering their own apps," a spokesperson said.
Umm, Apple doesn't really sell much of their own software through the App store. They aren't Microsoft where they have some dominating application like Office. I think these people have no clue how Apple's business actually works or how they make money.
A freaking socialist wants to break up the companies that give the US a competitive advantage over China and Russia.
When are people going to wake up and clue in that socialists are un-American traitors?
I wonder how much Trump's camp had to pay her to do something this stupid?
Pandering to the crazy fringe left will not win her an election.
Today March 8th it's time to tone down male chauvinism discourse: She's the only politician who has the ovaries ...
Yes, Warren is just like the original trust-buster, that well-known un-American socialist traitor, Republican president Theodore Roosevelt. It's quite revealing of how far the Republican party has fallen that all the things Teddy's presidency stood for (trust-busting, regulation, environmental protection, expanding Federal government) are now viewed by his party as "lefty" and "socialist".
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
If you want to advertise on the web you will either use facebook or you use Google as the middle man. Want to sell adds on your website you will either have to hire a sales person or sell add space to Google. Google owns both sides of the transaction, no other middle man can ever be created. Mail, search, docs, those are all walls and a moat around the castle that is adwords.
I seriously doubt Warren understands this though. Heck, most slashdot users think they are google's customer.
Are they also going to break up Huawei and Alibaba so that American companies aren't competing with massive foreign behemoths? How's that going to work?
We did it to Ma Bell when it was the only telephone company in most of the US. It worked fine. None of these companies are as important as Ma Bell was, so I don't know why you're saying that this is unrealistic.
I don't respond to AC's.
If you make the private market illegal and let the government run everything, you are back to a monopoly with all the abuse an inefficiency that comes with it.
Imagine a world where the US only has small tech companies and has to compete with these giant foreign companies. There would be so many complex ramifications of this, for so many reasons. There is no way that anyone could predict what would happen .
Right, because the current incentive is the only incentive (according to Grimm's law of narrativium butterfly rivets).
And onions are turnips, too.
I could say FTFY, but it's closer to a brain transplant.
Step aside, world according to onions with one layer to make a welcoming cavity for inbound cerebral folds.
SO a democrat that thinks they should control private business....
They are the biggest Democrat funders. This is like a Republican coming out against Christianity.
If past anti-trust breakups are any indication, It usualy ends up with the parent company making record profits and all the child companies also doing very well, and wealth gets generated quicker. It's like a toddler fighting a nap, they will bitch and say they don't need it, but at the end of the nap, everyone is much happier.
Any corporation that gets so big that it becomes a monopoly/duopoly becomes politically influential, e.g. lobbying, pressure on individual states for tax breaks, & shaping political campaigns, & effectively becomes a participant in government, e.g. billionaire's setting education agendas & redirecting public funds towards their own pet projects such as teaching software development in public K-12 schools.
At that point, rather than break them up, acknowledge that that particular industry/sector has matured & consolidated, & bring it in under democratic control, i.e. either nationalise it or convert it into a democratic worker-owned cooperative (independent from government). One of the most important areas of citizen life, i.e. the workplace, is still mostly run under a medieval/feudal system. How can we call ourselves democratic if we aren't working towards democratising the workplace?
How about telecoms, Google, Amazon, et. al. as public utilities? What if Facebook's policies & strategies were actually publicly accountable & the public could vote for change with transparency & oversight? What if their CEOs & executives were either elected by the public or appointed by their workers? Could you imagine working for a corporation like that & what it'd be like?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
They already are broken up into three distinct branches, executive, legislative, and judiciary. It's even further broken up into 50 different areas, and even more finely broken up within those areas.
Did you not pay attention in civics class?
"Actually, especially if it pisses Rand Paul off, that's just a bonus."
That's the congressman you have a problem with? The one that actually tries to follow the constitution?
Your feelings are no basis for a system of government. The sooner you learn that the better off you will be.
Here is a talk by Professor Scott Galloway at a Business Insider Ignition Conference: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, And Google should be broken up
I am not going to trust any mom and pop service or app that are incapable of providing at least standard security controls and cannot afford cyber insurance.
They Completely give up with the break up of oil monopolies and canâ(TM)t do anything when pharma raises prices 100x but as soon as democrats lose the election to an orange ape, they start blaming Facebook for privacy leaks and election interference and all of a sudden need to break them all up. I voted democratic against trump but the democrats need to take responsibility for their own screw ups in screwing over Bernie Sanders instead of putting the blame on these tech companies. Sheâ(TM)s so full of it.
You do know that the USA spends the most per capita on health insurance & has the worst healthcare outcomes, e.g. highest infant mortality rates in the developed world, don't you?
And you do know that the leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA is medical bills from getting sick & losing job/health insurance, don't you?
That's what a privatised healthcare system looks like: Predatory, brutal, & dysfunctional. People shouldn't have their lives & their families' lives ruined because they got sick.
Even semi-privatised healthcare, e.g. Canada's which offers universal healthcare but privatised insurance, is a poor comparison to nationalised services like in the UK & Germany, which look after *all* their citizens, have good healthcare outcomes, & low costs.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Monopolies are not inherently illegal. Abusive usually are. Abusive non-monopolies can also be. As you state, some of these companies aren't monopolies, but they often use their strength and/or size in one market to unfairly strong arm their way to another market. That leverage can be anti-competitive and illegal. The breakups being proposed seem to be more related to that than a good-ol Ma Bell monopoly breakup.
Lycestra
Elizabeth Warren will not be president.
Time for some trust busting
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The American Dream. Build your company, sacrifice as you build it, become successful, become very successful, support the free market and compete well, reach the apex in your field. Then have the government, who manages itself oh so well, step in and step on your Dream. Because they think they can do a better job than your customer driven enterprise.
Yet they think banks are too big to fail.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Democrats are the party that
Supports KKK members as Governors
Supports serial rapists as Lt. Governors
Supports anti-semites as House members and is unable to say anti-Semitism is bad
Supports killing babies after they are born in support of abortion
Supports illegals raping so often that ICE now gives pregnancy checks to all girls 9+ years old as they cross the border
Opposes criminal punishment for illegals attempting to get guns
Wants to make you a criminal for eating a hamburger or flying on an airplane
That about sums it up.
Making the sources of truthiness angry will suddenly get any news that's positive about this candidate labeled as 'fake news.'
Nice campaign you have there, it'd be a shame if something happened to it.
ZOMG!
Take that corporate dick outta your mouth, you're getting rich mans cum all over your face.
Friend of Sacagawea would certainly be better than an entire administration populated with the Friends of Sergei, but I can't say this heavy-handed proclamation compels blind allegiance.
Most serious of all is the underlying equation of false equivalence: that just because these companies are all humongous (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) means they all deserve the same regulatory scrutiny—and the same remedy.
Besides, unless we regain net neutrality, their pie is doomed to shrink, anyway.
Would sure be nice if this was couched in terms of principles, instead of merely pointing fingers at all the towering suspects.
* Revlon Redskin
Lewis and Clark got one look of the ultimate warpaint, hostilities erupted, and the next day she had to cut off her pony tails in self-defense.
Indeed. Let's start with Biggest, most self-serving, most psychopathic, greediest Trust of them all: Government.
Break that shit up.
You do know that the USA spends the most per capita on health insurance & has the worst healthcare outcomes, e.g. highest infant mortality rates in the developed world, don't you?
Indeed, the US counts every child born with a pulse as a live-birth regardless of how premature they may be or their chances of survival, while few other countries do so(I think most count anything less than 1 day as still-born). I had a nephew with, I think it was, 4 open heart surgeries before he died 1 week after being born. In most other countries he would have been counted as still-born and they would not have bothered.
This, combined with staggeringly high obesity rates, reduces the average life expectancy of a US citizen in spite of having the most advanced health technology in the world.
Of course defensive testing driven by multi-million dollar malpractice suits does nothing to help results and plenty to drive up costs.
This is what she said:
--
25 years ago they didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world
--
She SAID it's because they didn't exist 25 years ago (not part of the good old boys club that finances her) and they've been very successful.
I understand you wish she had said something different, something you could agree with. She didn't say something different, she said exactly what she said. If you don't like what she said, if you don't agree with what she said, the that's cool - you don't agree with her.
Maybe you WANT to agree with her, so you WANT for her to have said something that isn't stupid. She said what she said
How would the competitive market for social media look?
Would it be interconnected platforms, sharing posts and content, permitting users to have privileges on those other, competing platforms? How would the different user agreements coexist, be enforceable, and understandable?
Would these competing but cooperating platforms enforce censorship of unacceptable* content? How would such content be defined? How would disagreements be resolved?
If I block a user on another platform, would they be able to register on a third platform and still get through to me? Would there be a federated identity system to prevent, for instance, abuse by people under court order to not contact me? I this already a problem, and would a competitive but cooperative marketplace be able effectively deal with this?
How would platforms share unique, proprietary intellectual property? If not, would this defeat the intention of a cooperative marketplace?
How do we avoid favored and disfavored platforms, and the antitrust concerns arising? Would a new platform be able to petition for inclusion, and if so, based on subscriptions, or user demand, or what?
A 'competitive' market is such an attractive term and goal, but the reality is that unlike cars, it's not as simple (f this example is simple at all) as agreeing on the size of fuel nozzles, parking spaces, or safety devices. That may be an appropriate model, but then again, we actually DO HAVE a competitive marketplace. It's just not consistent in UI, in content type, in shape and appearance. Facebook isn't like Twitter like Instagram like Pinterest. Amazon is just a big retailer, so I expect Granny Warren to also demand Walmart be 'broken up' also, for one.
Which exposes the futility of all this. Even if you break up a Walmart and Amazon, what do you get? Fewer stores? New competitors? The breakup of AT&T resulted in the 'Baby Bells', with locks on their markets. Changing the rules to require competitors be permitted access to their networks changed
* - 'unacceptable' being my term for content that any platform determines cannot be permitted for distribution. This is often described as 'hate speech', 'inflammatory speech', or 'objectionable speech'. How it is named isn't as important for the purposes of this discussion as how it is defined, and currently there are not a lot of definitions that are consistently used or even disclosed.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
this is not about socialism, its about greedy people in those organizations. break those up, greedy acting people. not the organization.
One thing I look at in regards to Amazon is how it compares to Walmart. But this lends itself to political in-fighting- Trump supporters love Walmart because they say it provides cheap goods to poor rural people (while ignoring that they've destroyed local businesses and keep employees under poverty-line income) and they attack Bezos because of his ownership of the Washington Post.
Legislation would have to take into consideration what is essentially a retail duopoly. I can easily see Trump-led Republicans turning a liberal-led economic regulation reform into a one-sided fight against Bezos' Amazon
Media and Telecom companies?
Someone is probably bitter about the big tech companies that haven't donated to her campaign
FYI - Her entire campaign is based on NOT taking large corp donations
You do know that the USA spends the most per capita on health insurance; has the worst healthcare outcomes
Yes, our healthcare system is a dumpster fire, and I really wanted to vote for the candidate who would work towards fixing this.
Unfortunately, I don't want the rest of the ultra-left shit sandwich served along with it. Free childcare, Green New Deal, breaking up companies because you fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of the word "monopoly", etc. If the only choice is this or Trump, sorry, I'll be playing Pokemon Go Fuck Both of Ya'll on election day.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
A different direction resulting in better world for all,..
remove Speech from Corporations Dragons & immunity of major Owners & Executives - then likely the owners would want them fragmented down into manageable sizes & functional groups.
We should start there.
#KillCorpDragons
https://twitter.com/StevWork/s...
In conjunction iwith this article I would strenuously urge everyone to read:
The Myth of Capitalism (monopolies and the death of competition) by Jonathan Tepper with Denise Hearn
The right and its Christian soldier crusading "fringe" have a few more votes than your three. These are the people that go on about Balfour.
The fact she calls out "Google" and not "Alphabet Inc." indicates to me she has no idea what she's talking about. And yet I'm elated that someone is talking about consumer protections at all! but she's out of her depth here. I thought so when she ran for senator. OTOH I thought there was no way in hell Trump would get elected- I'm still shocked that impeachment hearings aren't ongoing now. So what do I know?
I dream of a day when every state, county, parish, township manages its finances, people, and economy with no outside help from the Federal government.
Post to me then. I'll be in Civics class.
blimp != blip. "m" is nowhere near "i" or "p". Extra letters uncommon compared to dropped letters.
Post author is AI bot.
My gut reaction was that Elizabeth Warren needs to shut the heck up and the government needs to stay mind its own business so companies can mind their own. Then I started thinking about the breakup of Ma Bell and how that unleashed tremendous innovation and creation of new services in telecommunications technologies and availability. Then there is the example of the airline monopolies being broken apart in a similar fashion. While no one enjoys air travel, anymore, at least it's cheap and widely available, something that couldn't be said when the monopolies existed. But those two industries had been in existence far longer than the companies Warren wants to gut. I think there is still plenty of time and room for innovation and growth under their current structures (well...maybe not Apple); breaking them up is inevitable and has successful precedents, but it's too soon.
The correct nickname is actually Fauxahontas
Yes. We'd have to go back to those things... what were they called? Oh yes... links, placed on purpose by the site owners after choosing what they wanted to represent. Without selling our data to anyone.
I totally agree. That would be terrible. /s
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Whatever makes you think we have privatized healthcare in the US? There is nothing free about this market. I can't shop around. I'm barely allowed to even choose my doctor since a bunch of middle men (either govt mandated insurers or govt entities set networks that I must adhere to) make those decisions. The _last_ thing I want is govt with more control of my healthcare. I want transparency and choice. No more middle men secretly negotiating arbitrary values I'm then responsible for paying.
Fuck, imagine if car purchasing worked that way: "No, you can't shop at that dealership offering a sweet 20k deal on the car you want. You have to go to one of these 3 dealerships we picked and pay 40k for the same model. And you can't negotiate with the dealer. We did that for you." You guys are nuts.
I think the problem with Apple is that it is hard to define their market share in a way that captures their real dominance. According to The Four that is because they are deliberately overcharging their small market share by appealing directly to the suckers gonads.
On the general topic, I like the idea of breaking up the giant corporate cancers into true competitors. However I have reservations about letting the government make the decisions in any direct way.
I would prefer to see indirect incentives via pro-freedom tax policies. The basic idea is that excessive market share limits choice, so it is better if the companies divide themselves to make sure there are sufficient REAL choices in the market. (Contrast with Microsoft's FAKE choices, but at least MS understands the problem.) Don't think of it as a punishment for success, but rather think of it as an incentive program to make sure the best ideas get reproduced into more competitors.
Smaller companies also makes it easier for the companies with bad ideas to die. No more too-big-too-fail companies. Plus the government can be smaller if the companies it has to regulate are smaller.
At the same time, too many competitors can also make it hard to exercise freedom in the form of meaningful choice. We're not smart enough to handle too many options, so we become too subject to manipulation. The optimum locus of choice is probably around 5, according to the research on how we think.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Dems in 2024 after they lose 2020 to Trump :
"Ban profits!"
> You don't understand American Politics. Trump didn't have a chance last time either. Almost all the Media Pundits were wrong last time, and they are wrong for all the same reasons this time.
You are talking about the election where he was given 30% chance. In fact 538 explicitly said that Hilary was at a worse position than Obama was in both his elections. There is a limit to how much you can ride on that "accomplishment".
> And Democrats have gone Batshit Crazy and Nancy Pelosi is looking like the most grownup in the crowd.
She was always grownup and reasonable. The fact that guys on the right try to represent democrat ideas as "batshit" when they are reasonable centrist ideas for the most part is a problem.
> The fact that Warren is still viable after her "I'm an Indian. No I never claimed to be Indian. Hey look, I have less Indian than most Americans that proves I'm Indian, but I am not claiming to be Indian" stunt is proof how bat shit crazy they are.
She never said "I'm an Indian". She said her great grandmother was descendant from a native American which might very well be true based on the test she took. In fact Trump promised to pay a charity of her choice if she took such a test (regardless of results): https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/15/elizabeth-warren-dna-test-she-urges-trump-to-fulfill-1-million-charity-pledge.html
Guess who is full of it and didn't pay...
Ignore the fact that Warren is one of biggest fighters for justice against the big banks (who literally run Trumps administration). Also ignore the fact that these companies are monopolies that charge a 30% tax just to get into their markets... Amazon charges a 70% tax from authors unless they provide exclusive rights... That's insane!
Where's the competition!
In a capitalist market competition should rise. However, here the competition is for lobbying money not for the people. That's why competition will come from China if these companies aren't broken up.
> The rampant Anti-Semitism in the party is fracturing the Jewish part of their coalition.
As a Jew this bullshit is seriously pissing me off. The leader in the Senate is a Jew. The front runner is a Jew. The only party to put a Jew on the presidential ticket. Dems have FAR more Jews in office by an order of magnitude.
Trump said there were "good people on both sides" for the Nazi "Jews will not replace us" Charlotsville rally. He consistently uses dog whistle white nationalist politics and during his administration there was a serious spike in anti-sematism. People hear that dog whistle like the Pittsburgh shooter who was a Trump supporter.
To be clear, I don't think Trump is an anti-Semite. I think he's an opportunist who wrecks havoc along the way causing these assholes to rise.
>Blacks are starting to figure out that after 60 years of "civil rights" that the Democrats aren't really supportive. Now with "Hey look, Illegal Aliens are the preferred minority" bit, more and more are realizing that the Democrats were the real racists all along, only courting the Black vote every other and four years, while ignoring them during off election years.
It's true they stayed home in 2016 effectively causing this. But they aren't moving on Trumps side and the recent midterms showed that. E.g. Trump keeps attacking Kaepernick and sowing division instead of building bridges to the community like a decent president would do.
> Hell, even Californians and New Yorkers are starting to bail on their Liberal states, the only problem is they haven't figured out that Taxing People to death (and beyond) isn't productive and are taking their stupid ideas with them.
So that's why even Orange county lost republican candidates in the midterms? That's why New York has some of the most liberal law makers and voted against Trump in HUGE numbers?
Seriously wrong on that front... I mean check the numbers.
> America is having boom years, record Employment, Jobs, wage Growth .... If Trump ran SIMPLY
This is absolutely insane. It's like the democrats don't want to win. The problem is service, not content.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you make the private market illegal and let the government run everything, you are back to a monopoly with all the abuse an inefficiency that comes with it.
Have you not seen our healthcare system? It's a total shit show. I paid over $12k last year in insurance for my family, and this year the coverage is worse for more money, just like it is every year. Our system really couldn't be more horrible. People die all the time because they can't afford to get sick.
- Vincit qui patitur.
For several years.
There are too many comments saying Amazon is not a monopoly, but they are staging and moving towards that. They are actively looking into owning their entire logistics chain, to include sea freight, which is not good for market competition in shipping, given how many companies ship for Amazon. This also presents competition problems for all port jobs related to shipping.
-This signature is strictly to prevent comments ending with questions or propositions.-
Let's be blunt, this is job protectionism and it's nonsense.
:
The planet can't survive unless we come up with a better plan than to try and avoid being smart. I personally believe that a much better solution would be to demand that Facebook, Google and Amazon establish a long term plan as to how to consolidate into a single company.
Here's the thing, the vast majority of our environmental problems are not from overpopulation. It's from overproduction due to capitalism.
In order for each person on the planet to have a job and earn enough income to sustain their lives, we have to produce far more than we need.
Visit Walmart or Amazon or eBay or any other major shopping source. Now, I want you to consider the percentage of the products they sell that simply would not exist unless someone was just trying to make jobs.
Now, take all the products which are in fact necessities and identify how they are packaged, stored, distributed, etc... and consider
- does a store like Walmart would really need 25 full length isles of freezers running 24/7 if it weren't for the fact that we have frozen pizza, frozen pizza with pepperoni, frozen pizza with extra pepperoni, frozen bite sized pizzas with pepperoni, frozen bite sized pizza with extra pepperoni....
- do we need 9 different sizes of corn flakes from 3 different brands?
- Does the cucumber need to be individually wrapped in plastic?
Our excessive consumerism comes from an overabundance of workers attempting to each have a place in the world producing things we simply don't need.
Companies like Google, Tesla, and Amazon and others are working extremely hard at optimizing all aspects of the supply chain. This will over time eliminate the vast majority of jobs on the planet. Google and Tesla's self-driving technology will make it possible in the near future to handle warehouse to warehouse shipping with almost no human intervention. Amazon's drone technology combined with Google and Tesla's self-driving technology will make it possible to deliver directly to the consumer with almost no human intervention as well. Self-sailing cargo ships are coming fast as well. Self-flying planes will be around the corner.
Why does this matter so much for the planet?
Well, suppose Amazon were to start buying massive numbers of farms... or at least they were to buy the vast majority of food produced by farms. Then they were to setup a few depots around each state. Now, they could slaughter meat on demand and produce meat on demand. In addition, they could in real-time alter the prices of different cuts on the wholesale and retail market to increase or decrease demand for different parts of the animals. This would allow producers of other products to setup plants attached to Amazon locations to purchase the meat products they would need in order to fulfill their orders. They could also, using automated production lines switched between which products they would produce based on real-time demand.
Now consider if for example Kellogg were to use real-time statistics to produce cereal based on demand. Now, instead of selling boxes of different sizes, shapes and packaging, they could offer on Amazon all different sizes, shapes and packaging labels. They could also offer bulk options made available in reusable packages. They would fill silos at Amazon's distribution locations with their products based on their production capability as well as the demand. By moderating production based on demand, they could reduce the amount of preservatives they use during production.
When a purchase is made, using a simple algorithm, a box would be printed and manufactured to size and labeling. A wax paper bag would be produced to size. The entire process would be automated.
Consider if Tropicana were to do the same, but they would provide oranges and silos at Amazon would be filled with their oranges and their production machinery that would produce orange juice to demand. Tropicana cou
... nuttier than a squirrel turd. But yes, fuck facebook.
Being a monopoly is not a crime. Using the monopoly in an anti-competitive way to dominate other sectors is. For instance, Microsoft used dominance in the operating system market to push Internet Explorer and decimate the competition (Netscape). They were convicted of anti-competitive behaviour in three venues.
Looking at Elizabeth Warren's transcript, it appears that she thinks that simply being a monopoly is a crime. For misinterpreting the law, she has lost my vote.
Of course the Amazon site would communicate using computers with the Amazon warehouse. In fact, they already do. The difference is the API would be open and JacksAwesomeEcommerceSite.com could also communicate with the Amazon warehouse via the same APIs
You mean like how PhilsHobbyShop.com already communicates with Amazon using the Marketplace Web Service API? In fact, the reports and feeds on "Seller Central", Amazon's web application for third-party sellers, are a fairly thin layer around MWS.
Anyone who wants to can already compete, so what exactly do you think would be different? Do you really imagine that there are, today, people who say "we cannot compete against AWS because Amazon also has online shopping?"
That wasn't as clearly the case while Amazon still owned the 1-Click patent.
A monopoly exists when, and only when, there is some specific reason for your success that your competitors are not able to use.
And that "specific reason" was US Patent 5,960,411. From September 1999 (grant) through September 2017 (expiration), Amazon held a legal monopoly on 1-Click ordering in the United States.
A medallion taxi company, though minuscule in comparison to Walmart, is a monopoly because it is illegal for any other ride for hire company to compete in their city.
Different taxi companies can compete for different cities' franchises, much as with electric power, water, natural gas, and other public utilities. Amazon's patent was nationwide.
The solution to a voluntarily grown monopoly is a violently imposed monopoly. Makes perfect sense.