Posted on 04/09/2017 6:54:39 PM PDT by Monorprise
“’Declare them common carriers.”
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For all intents purposes, that’s what they are.
I’m going to Xerox this and fax it to all my friends!
Teddy Roosevelt and Taft were the big monopoly busters of our times. Neither were conservative stalwarts.
I would like to see conservatives outcompete these tech giants rather than outlaw them. The New York Times are (slowly) losing their sway.
Exactly. Antitrust is for when a monopoly or trust is preventing competition, not merely for there being a monopoly or trust. How are Facebook, Google, or YouTube preventing anyone from creating similar sites?
Breaking up those companies would set a dangerous precedent that the federal government may break-up Internet companies based on how those companies operate on the web. We should be in favor of keeping federal bureaucrats' hands off the Internet.
There’s merit in what you say but it is far from reality. Once companies become behemoth monopolies, there’s no winning. Microsoft has become one of the most ruthless, anti-social behemoths ever. Don’t see it’s demise coming any time soon.
How do you propose to do that?
What do you want to do, force Facebook to split itself into different websites?
I don’t think we can compel them to follow any particular policy, for that simply substitutes their poor judgement for the poor judgement of thoses already in power.
Instead they should be simply broken up in to many competing companies in the hopes at least one of them will permit the speech that the others in effect suppress, while all still being small enough as to not completely crush other new commers.
I recognize that name brand value is a natural cultural power of monopoly that is very dangerous to an economy particularly so in the information business as Google is in.
Such a cartel dominance could be maintained almost indefinably, or at least until the natural forces of corruption that inevitably take over without viable competition drive them into such a state of dysfunction as to render competition viable even without such resources dominance.
Both Google and Facebook should be broken up in to many competeting companies all with a claim upon the same shared resources and technology that has initially made them so successful. As a computer engineer i can tell you this is very plausible and easy to do. Googles primary technical advantage can be copyed and split up very easly.
Deciding who gets the brand is the real problem as that company will have the leg up over all the others, and may have to be split up again in decades time.
I don’t have a problem with breaking up Amazon too. I don’t think any one company should control more than 30% of any given market nationally or 50% of any given market in any given state.
Again the same problem with google and Facebook is name branding, while splitting up the technology and rights of the company can easily be done and would produce a bunch of smaller similar companies. Who ever gets the name will have a huge leg up on the others, and may have to be split again in decades time.
A republic built buit with democratic tools, we still require a division of power in the market for it to be healthy just as we require a division of power in the Government for it to remain healthy and stable.
In general breaking up a company is not a bad thing, as the owners haven’t lost property, the property has simply been divided among many different companies of their choice.
As for Anti-trust violations Both Facebook and Google have commited quite a few such incidents in limiting people’s access to their competition.
They need to be broken up because their market share is too large for them to be accountable.
Basically all of theses sites are are built upon a code base maintained by a programmer base(the company), with an information basis(What they draw upon).
The company can be broken up while the assets(the code and data base) can be duplicated into several different sites.
As I said the name brand is perhaps the most valuable asset of them all and would be rather indivisible. But nonetheless overtime could be weaken in its dominating position were all the other assets duplicated with competing companies utilizing similar to different names to offer identical services that can be built upon their copy of the original code base and data.
Multi-national corporations should be illegal.
Publicly traded companies should be required to get votes from stockholders supporting any partisan activity, with huge fines and civil legal penalties for violating this, including being subject to civil suits by stockholders who are not being represented.
The boardroom leftists are using the retirement accounts of conservatives to wage war on us. It’s just like the leftists politicians who use our tax dollars to attack us and funnel campaign dollars back to themselves.
Tyrants need to have their heads on pikes.
And why do you think the government should be involved in that?
“And why do you think the government should be involved in that?”
Because the market is imperfect, and Google has already used its superior size, and political influence to suppress its opposition. Simply Google and Facebook are too big, too powerful, and not playing buy the rules.
Indeed under the last administration they got preventual treatment under the law that gave them even more of a competitive edge against any upstart challenger in terms of having the freedom to utilize and sell other people’s information that no other company had.
This of course had Greatly benefited the Democratic party in terms of enabling them to target voter groups for manipulation using political campaigns shaped to take advantage of their habits and interest.
You want to know how Obama is so successful politically even as his policies fall apart? The answer is they know precisely what to say and have the means to say that to only the people who need to hear it.
All this comes from the information they have collected upon everyone who has used their services. Turned first to use to sell us stuff, and 2nd to sell political ideas to us.
Its really not that hard, the hard part is managing and collecting all that information, which of course Google and Facebook do for a living, and have had the uniquely protected right to do so for many years under Obama.
They need to be broken up, they are not playing fair and frankly their initial Government sponsored advantage had put them in an even more advantageous position.
You sound like a progressive statist with that post. “Google and Facebook are too big” is classic Marxist analysis.
They are big because they provide services people want to use. And because a LOT of people want to use them, they can charge a lot for advertisers to reach that audience.
No company should get prefereential treatment, and to the extent possible, it should be undone. But you can’t punish them for being big, which is what you seem to be proposing.
This is not the proper role of government.
These companies are violating anti-trust laws, their own CEO’s all but acknowledge it. They need to be broken up.
As for the Government’s role in them being too dominate, i would point out that a lot of that comes down to the U.S. Government’s ridiculous copywrite and trademark terms.
It is fair to retain exclusive for a limited time to recoup R&D costs, say 20 years max, but not life + 70 years!
Theses kind of laws give big companies with big pockets enormous technological and financial advantages over any and all competitors with effective monopolizes on key and offend foundationaly broad Technologies.
Apple would copywriter the wheel if they thought they could get away with it, indeed they probably already tried.
It is the US Government that allows theses companies to do this enforcing their claim and suppressing their competition for them. In China where there are almost no copywrite laws theses companies struggle for business. Indeed Google has basically been driven out of business in China.
We don’t need to be as extreme as china, but we do need to have reasonable copy write laws that actually give people an incentive to keep innovating, while prohibiting them from obtaining a permanent position of dominance in a market.
Charging theses companies for their Anti-Trust violation is a important first step, they should be broken up for a healthy market.
How are they violating antitrust laws? By being big?
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