Posted on 03/28/2019 11:47:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
It's no secret that firms such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have extraordinary levels of power and influence. For example, most voters (55 percent) believe that Facebook has too much power. To some in the political world, this is a problem that only government intervention can solve.
But, that's not the way the public sees it.
There is very little public support for breaking up the tech companies or having the federal government regulate the platforms. That reluctance comes partly from the reasonable fear that giving such power to federal bureaucrats would make things worse rather than better.
Additionally, voters clearly recognize that consumer choice and marketplace competition exert more control over large companies than any government agency could impose. Looking out over the next 25 years, 87 percent of voters believe Facebook will have to deal with significant competition that challenges its dominance. In fact, a majority (52 percent) believe it is likely the social media giant will actually go out of business during that time.
Facebook is perceived to be in more trouble than the other tech giants, but voters overwhelmingly expect that Google, Amazon and Apple will also face significant competition over the coming quarter of a century. However, most believe those companies will survive. Just 26 percent believe Apple will go out of business; 23 percent say the same about Google; and 20 percent think Amazon will disappear.
Still, even though most believe these companies are expected to survive, the serious competition they face will hold them accountable.
This reality is often missed by people who look at the world as it is and can't believe anything will change without political action. The current debate over tech companies is simply the latest version in an ongoing saga.
In 1967, General Motors sold 49 percent of all cars purchased in the United States. John Kenneth Galbraith, a political economist, wrote that GM's position was so dominant that it could no longer be constrained by either consumers or competitors. Galbraith, who served in four presidential administrations, believed that the auto firms would never compete with each other because they shared a common interest in soaking the consumer by raising prices.
Eleven years later, Galbraith repeated his claim that no other auto company would be foolish enough to take on GM.
Why?
"Everyone knows that the survivor of such a contest would not be the aggressor but General Motors." The auto giant's market share was still a remarkable 46 percent at that point. It never again reached such lofty heights. In fact, GM's share of the market declined for 29 of the next 36 years, eventually leading it into bankruptcy and a government bailout. It went from selling 46 percent of all cars in 1978 to 35 percent a decade later, 29 percent a decade after that, and just 17 percent in 2014.
It's difficult to picture how large and seemingly invincible companies will someday fail. Still, as voters recognize, it's likely that many of today's tech giants will suffer the fate of General Motors. That's the way a dynamic economy is supposed to work. And, it's a system that puts power in the hands of the people rather than the politicians.
If a business loses customer, it has put itself out of business.
USA (HUD) V. Facebook
Weblining.
Tech giants are even more vulnerable than industrial giants. At least GM had a bunch of real estate and industrial capacity to list among its assets.
Facebook is a software platform that a small group of people with programming skills can probably replicate in a garage over a long weekend. Is it any wonder that the company is allegedly worth over $470 billion but has never paid out a single penny in dividends?
Remember MySpace? Remember Blockbuster and Nokia? Blackberry? Heck IBM in its glory days?
NO ONE stays in dominance by standing pat.
Kids today call FB “fogey book” and say they only use it to communicate to their grandparents.
May it die a quick and painful death and take twitter with it.
Only if everybody stops responding to ads.
Its to bad they own Instagram.
I humbly disagree.
Social media has proven to be hugely powerful. It has society-warping tendencies that must not be ignored. And it is in the hands of political partisans, intending to use that power to advance their own agenda.
What was good enough for Ma Bell is good enough for Facebook. Bust ‘em up. NOW!
Article gives most stupid of all examples to prove point.
The competition that brought GM down was foreign car makers operating in their ow countries and own economies.
Detroit’s downfall came from Japanese makers who found ways to make vehicles cheaper, more efficient and eventually safer.
The “Big Three” U.S. automakers conspired to introduce new features to the market slowly so as to have something new to sell each model year. They withheld safety and ergonomic improvements until they needed something new to market.
The Japs came in and immediately offered these improvements that Detroit wouldn’t feature and sliced a thick chunk of Detroit’s competitive advantage.
Facebook has no product. Consumers are their product. Same with Twitter. Both are extremely vulnerable to the same fate as MySpace. Amazon is essentially the Wal-Mart of the Net and I doubt they will die off anytime soon. Apple also has a product to sell. Google is hard to project.
The politicians who call us a Basket Of Deplorables and want to turn us into slaves.
The ego to Intelligence ratio in this culture is far too overwhelming for that risk....
FakeBook will not be around after 10 years. Younger generations will look at Facebook as a platform for old geezers. Zuckerberg will be considered a total loser.
Social media like Fakebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram are the toilet of the internet. Don’t swim in it, FLUSH IT down the shitter where it belongs.
The goal of a business ought to be to develop in a way that provides the max return over time to its investors (and this means that the customer is king). It is clear that while that may be "a" goal of Facebook, there is another overriding goal (influencing U.S. politics) which gives the appearance akin to having an alien parasite attach itself to Facebook.
As the Good Book says, one cannot serve two masters.
Facebook has to decide. Is the customer king or not?
I call it Anti-Social Media
With all the negativity and bullying it could die horrible death as far as I am concerned
I’m not sure about that, but I do see some flaws in the GM argument. For one thing, GM’s market share had already dropped over the five years preceding the 1967 year cited in this article. And it was Ford and Chrysler — not foreign competitors — who were gaining as GM declined in that period.
"Those who helped" in this case appear to be from within the CIA Deep State.
Facebook seems to be wrestling with its internal demons and this has forced it to take its eye off the goal of customer satisfaction (and, thereby, investor satisfaction).
FB is kinda like an interactive CNN... it caters to the world...not American or conservative sensibilities.
Remember Sears, JC Penny, and Montgomery Ward? They were the retail equivalent of today’s tech companies.
And a better example is the Dutch East India Trading Company. They were the original monster megacorporation. They had their own standing army and navy. But they, too eventually collapsed.
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