It's entirely possible to have utility-importance non-monopoly gatekeepers, which is part of the legal issue.
The US regulates monopolies.
The US regulates utilities, defined by ~1910 industries.
It doesn't generally regulate non-monopoly companies that are gatekeepers.
Hence, Apple/Google/Facebook et al. have been able to avoid regulation by avoiding being classed as monopolies.
Imho, the EU is taking the right approach: also classify sub-monopoly entities with large market shares, and apply regulatory requirements on them.
I'd expect the US to use a lighter touch, and I'm fine with that, but regulations need to more than 'no touch'. It'd also be nice if they were bucketed and scaled (e.g. minimal requirements for 10-20%, more for 21-50%, max for 50%+).
I’m really hoping the pendulum swings back to sanity in the US rather than becoming a Russia-like mafia business state.
It’s possible the only hope is a painful one: a major market crash caused by greed and excessive consolidation, the kind of crash that would trigger a 21st century new deal.
> So in the end, no value a corporation espouses is genuine, unless it's making money.
This is the ultimate rub.
There are constructions that corporations can implement in order to enforce values, but they fundamentally mean giving up control.
Because at root, control by people prioritizing making money above all else is what causes these decisions to be reevaluated. Aka when following principles has a serious financial cost.
Public benefit corp, non-profit, independent board, etc. are options.
Google, Facebook, OpenAI... at this point it shouldn't surprise anyone when 'you were saying something about best intentions' goes awry.
Hell, OpenAI's wriggling to get out of its charter (and honestly, its difficulty in doing so) and NewsCorp's attempt to forcibly assign control counter to trust planning should point out that 'Yes, you can make it harder to be evil.'
If someone becomes successful, it's common to pay it back by helping out the steps that might have led to that success.
Brin didn't go to every high school: he went to the one he did.
And maybe he had a terrible experience and thought it contributed nothing to his success... but that's kind of a dick perspective at a certain level of wealth, especially if a school has needs (and they always do).
> I think small scale entrepreneurship might be a solution to the current corp craziness.
That would mean breaking up big tech and prohibiting firms above a certain size from buying competitors.
Otherwise, there're huge swaths of the economy that used to be accessible to entrepreneurs that now aren't economically viable (without an attached unrelated business pumping in cash).
You missed the part where those workers power large sectors of the US economy.
You think produce gets picked, meat processed, and/or construction completed without immigrant labor?
If the plan is to clamp down on illegal immigration, then immigration reform to loosen the legal pathways for low wage labor needs to be passed at the same time.
Folks spend so much time talking about second+ order effects of immigration, but it's the economy that's primarily important.
I don't know too many nativists / nationalists who agree with the statement 'I am fine with my country being poorer and worse off economically in exchange for getting rid of immigrants.'
Their political champions bill is as though removing immigrant labor will somehow make the economy better.
Because, yes, when has a smaller, more expensive domestic labor pool ever helped a country's economic competitiveness? /s
The US regulates monopolies.
The US regulates utilities, defined by ~1910 industries.
It doesn't generally regulate non-monopoly companies that are gatekeepers.
Hence, Apple/Google/Facebook et al. have been able to avoid regulation by avoiding being classed as monopolies.
Imho, the EU is taking the right approach: also classify sub-monopoly entities with large market shares, and apply regulatory requirements on them.
I'd expect the US to use a lighter touch, and I'm fine with that, but regulations need to more than 'no touch'. It'd also be nice if they were bucketed and scaled (e.g. minimal requirements for 10-20%, more for 21-50%, max for 50%+).
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