JD Vance's populist plans to break up Big Tech monopolies

The Blaze ^ | July 18, 2024 | Ethan Xu

[Twotone]

The new VP candidate has made enemies and allies in Silicon Valley, while on a quest to regulate the tech cartel.

Last night, Sen. JD Vance officially accepted the Republican nomination for vice president at the 2024 Republican Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sending optimism to Silicon Valley and the tech community.

A right-wing populist, Vance has been critical of the old right’s market fundamentalism in favor of the new right’s pro-worker economic nationalism — one that calls for antitrust crackdowns on Big Tech. A New York Times article described Vance as “pro-labor, a fan of crypto and the F.T.C.'s Lina Khan, and says Big Tech is too powerful.”

Last February, Vance called for government action against Google, tweeting, “It’s time to break Google up,” since Google is “an explicitly progressive technology company“ and “a threat to democracy.”

“In October and November, as millions of undecided voters consider their choice for president, they will go to Google and ask 'Did Donald Trump say X?' 'Is Biden too old to be president?' The results they see will be explicitly biased towards Democrats,” Vance tweeted. A conservative trustbuster?

Vance has drawn criticism from the libertarian right for bucking the GOP’s free-market orthodoxy and praising Biden-appointed Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s aggressive trust-busting revolution against Silicon Valley and private equity. As FTC chair, Khan has battled various big multinational businesses by cracking down on corporations who make bogus “Made in America” claims, going after a private equity firm’s plan to “drive up the price of anesthesia services provided to Texas patients,” and suing Kochava for selling geolocation data and violating Americans’ privacy.

At RemedyFest, an antitrust conference organized by Y Combinator and Bloomberg, Vance told conference attendees that he “look[s] at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration who ... is doing a pretty good job.”

Following Vance’s VP announcement, Reason, a libertarian publication, put out a story attacking Vance’s “love” for Khan’s “anti-free markets” and “anti-innovation, anti-tech, anti-big business, and anti-consumer agenda.”

“A second Trump administration may mirror some of the tactics of Khan and the Biden administration but turn them against policies and companies that left-leaning types support. No matter who wins the election this November, we're looking at four more years of aggressively anti-free market policies coming from the FTC,” Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote.

Some, like libertarian journalist Brad Polumbo, have also likened him to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), claiming Vance “has more in common with [her] on economic policy than Ronald Reagan” due to his open willingness to go after large corporations, raise their taxes, and “do whatever else is necessary to fight these goons.”

Others, however, are pleased with the GOP’s populist trajectory. Oren Cass, chief economist at American Compass, tweeted, “Exceptional VP pick. @jdvance1's conservative economics and dedication to American workers captures perfectly the Republican Party’s transformation over the past eight years.”

Little Tech vs. Big Tech’s agenda

Vance’s support for aggressive trust-busting and regulations creates an interesting dynamic within the GOP. With the exception of being pro-crypto, Vance holds many ostensibly anti-tech stances, putting him at odds with some of his biggest supporters — tech billionaires and venture capitalists.

It was reported that Elon Musk and tech investor David Sacks helped push Vance over the line for Trump’s VP selection. Furthermore, Vance first got into politics through his exploration into venture capital. He initially worked at Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital after briefly working in corporate law. And a couple of years later, he started his own venture capital firm, Narya Capital, where he raised $93 million from several tech billionaires, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.

After his spell in venture capital, Vance shifted his eyes to holding public office. Vance went on to win an Ohio Senate seat even after a hotly contested GOP primary in large part due to Peter Thiel’s record-breaking $15 million donation. Thiel also helped garner large donations from wealthy individuals, including David Sacks.

Considering the tech sector’s increasing support for Trump and Vance’s ties to tech billionaires and venture capitalists, some are starting to think the 47th administration might go soft on Big Tech and “switch on Lina Khan now.”

Fortunately, Vance is not likely to. After all, Big Tech’s agenda isn’t always in the interest of America’s tech sector because “their interests are often at odds with a positive technological future as they are more interested in regulatory capture and preserving their monopolies. As a result, technology startups need a voice,” venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote in a blog post.

Startups, also referred to as “Little Tech,” are at the heart of the American tech sector and could turn the 21st century into the American century. In Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s Little Tech Agenda, they highlight Little Tech’s role as "the vanguard of American technology supremacy." They say, “From Edison and Ford to Hughes and Lockheed to SpaceX and Tesla, the path to greatness starts in a garage.”

Vance’s endorsement of Khan’s antitrust revolution serves as a net positive for America’s tech industry since Little Tech faces huge disadvantages by having to “go up against incumbent companies that have overwhelmingly superior brands, market positions, customer bases, and financial strength — incumbents that are out to strangle startup competition in the cradle.”

The Little Tech agenda could be the catalyst that recaptures American supremacy. The Trump/Vance ticket must not back down from Big Tech. Andreessen and Horowitz don’t explicitly endorse Khan’s trust-busting, but without tough antitrust legislation against Big Tech monopolies and pro-innovation regulatory reform, Big Tech will continue to enjoy its “wall of laws and regulations that protect and entrench their positions and that new startups cannot possibly scale.” Breaking up Big Tech, on the other hand, will empower startups and foster an innovative environment.

As Andreessen and Ben Horowitz write, “The glory of a second American Century is within our reach. Let’s grasp it.”

[Vigilanteman]

Exactly correct. There is a reason that the Clayton and Sherman anti-trust laws were enacted under conservative administrations and that reason was to protect the free market from government favored monopolies.

We need to STOP calling the left "progressives" and start branding them as the "regressives" which they are. They want top-down one-size fits all big government with government owned or government favored monopolies to ensure that they perpetually remain in power.

We real progressives want government power and their favored business entities dispersed and fragmented to check each other and limit the one size fits all top down control model of the regressives.

[pierrem15]

"could turn the 21st century into the American century"

It's libertarian "free trade" policies, including tech transfer by big multinationals, that are turning the 21st century into the Chinese century.

The management of American companies is essentially stupid and parasitical. They're bean counters looking to temporarily goose profits to cash in, even if it means cutting core R&D and proficiency in basic manufacturing tech or services, transferring tech abroad which aids foreign competitors, or (like Boeing) slashing QA "costs" even if it kills people.

The main thing they look at is reducing labor costs, which means forcing American wages down, outsourcing, and flooding the country with illegals.

It's much more effective to slap tariffs, restrict imports and immigration and keep Americans employed at good wages than pay for welfare and deal with the social ills like addiction and crime that come with low wages or unemployment.

[Racketeer]

KHADAA (Kamala Harris And Democrats Against America)

[Twotone]

Sometimes there’s a need for gov’t to intervene. These companies have become so powerful, they can now dwarf the gov’t with their activities - which are not all benign. In general, I have no problem with billionaires. But when they use their great wealth to involve themselves with politics & send the country into radical directions not tenable with our Founding documents, then something needs to happen there, too. I’m not sure what, but SOMETHING!

[pierrem15]

That’s why current “woke” progressivism is just corporate fascism in blackface.

[ProgressingAmerica]

You both misunderstand.

What has desertfreedom765 ever done? What has Twotone ever done? That’s the issue. I’m not talking about Mr. Elon Musk, the people behind Parler, or any others.

I’m talking about you, desertfreedom765, and Twotone. What have you personally done? You personally right there at your desk, in your home, that is the issue.

[100%FEDUP]

I’m more concerned about the stranglehold BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street have on EVERYTHING!

[Twotone]

Done? In what way? I’ve been an upright, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen. I vote, I write to my representatives, I donate to what I believe are good organizations. I volunteer, I’ve been involved in campaigns of people I believed were worthy of certain political positions. I’ve never been greatly ambitious & have not amassed great wealth. I suppose I could’ve done more. But what has that got to do with anything?

We are faced with corporations (& individuals) that have accrued great wealth & power & they are using it to undermine the constitution & our way of life. Someone, somewhere, somehow, needs to throw a monkey wrench into their machinations. I assume it will be done constitutionally, else-wise the malefactors will take them to court & stop the action. For that matter, these people are using lawfare to bankrupt our side, & the courts are no longer reliable protectors of the nation.

Once again...how are these people to be stopped?

[Texan5]

I agree with you-After the dept I worked in at MHMR was cut out of the budget, I went to the private sector-got a job in HR at Bell-it was almost as bad as the public sector-until the happy day the breakup came, and all the baby Bells were in competition with others and each other. Some in management were tearing their hair and ripping their garments, but the rank-and-file of us were celebrating like we had been let out of prison. My personal phone bill went down, along with LD service-even the price of a telephone, etc all because of competition. And those huge, monopoly-creating companies do not treat their workers well, either-more like you are an indentured servant. I left Bell soon after to be a workers comp case manager-no monopoly there...

[Vigilanteman]

Good one and spot on!

[wildcard_redneck]

I hear you. I have been in similar situations myself.

DoodleBob is a crypto-leftist that holds a contrary opinion to the beliefs of 80% of the Freepers here.

[desertfreedom765]

“I often advocate that we as conservatives need to get the hell off of these big tech platforms - and start using Linux. Linux on our computers, and Linux on our cell phones.

We can absolutely, on our own, without big beloved government, defeat these big tech companies.”

—

You have no idea of what you are talking about.

Before I retired, I installed/ran multiple Linux servers at my old company. I have been using Linux since the mid/late 90’s (long before it was cool).

While Linux helped break Microsoft’s monopoly they are still dominate in business and on the desktop and that will not change in our lifetime.

It certainly won’t change the media/information monopoly that is controlled by leftists oligarchs.

Anti-Trust is a legitimate tool to restore balance to the economy and media.

[DoodleBob]

Thank you for your input. This is important stuff.

The question ALWAYS should be: is this with fidelity to the Founders and the bases of life, liberty, and property on which this nation was founded and refined?

Modern jurisprudence, contemporary morality and ethics, or feelings, don’t matter.

If SCOTUS held that the 2nd Amendment was a collective right in line with many lost Americans’ thinking, it would NOT change the truth that Americans have a pre-existing right to self-defense.

It’s the same with Anti-Trust law. Like the collective right model of the 2nd Amendment, it has no basis in the Constitution. It rests on a corrupt and patently wrong and expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause.

Justice Thomas maintained that the original meaning of “commerce” was limited to the “trade and exchange” of goods and transportation for this purpose.

Don’t take Thomas or my word for it. Take James Madison’s word via The Federalist Papers : No. 42:

“The defect of power in the existing Confederacy to regulate the commerce between its several members, is in the number of those which have been clearly pointed out by experience.

“To the proofs and remarks which former papers have brought into view on this subject, it may be added that without this supplemental provision, the great and essential power of regulating foreign commerce would have been incomplete and ineffectual. A very material object of this power was the relief of the States which import and export through other States, from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter. Were these at liberty to regulate the trade between State and State, it must be foreseen that ways would be found out to load the articles of import and export, during the passage through their jurisdiction, with duties which would fall on the makers of the latter and the consumers of the former. We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice would be introduced by future contrivances; and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquillity.

“To those who do not view the question through the medium of passion or of interest, the desire of the commercial States to collect, in any form, an indirect revenue from their uncommercial neighbors, must appear not less impolitic than it is unfair; since it would stimulate the injured party, by resentment as well as interest, to resort to less convenient channels for their foreign trade. But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain. The necessity of a superintending authority over the reciprocal trade of confederated States, has been illustrated by other examples as well as our own. In Switzerland, where the Union is so very slight, each canton is obliged to allow to merchandises a passage through its jurisdiction into other cantons, without an augmentation of the tolls. In Germany it is a law of the empire, that the princes and states shall not lay tolls or customs on bridges, rivers, or passages, without the consent of the emperor and the diet; though it appears from a quotation in an antecedent paper, that the practice in this, as in many other instances in that confederacy, has not followed the law, and has produced there the mischiefs which have been foreseen here. Among the restraints imposed by the Union of the Netherlands on its members, one is, that they shall not establish imposts disadvantageous to their neighbors, without the general permission.”

There is NOTHING here about breaking up the East India Trade Co.

There is Nothing Here that would give anyone with reading comprehension a hint that Madison would give a cheery two-thumbs up to Congress busting up the business of Facebook, Amazon, or Twitter/X, etc.

Indeed, Madison was VERY clear that emotions cloud judgement in these matters: “But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.”

Big Tech screwing with speech etc. is repulsive. Their collaboration with the Biden Admin to quash debate was IMHO criminal. Many Tech Bros are some of the slimiest people around. It’s understandable that people want to tear them to pieces.

That’s also the leftist way.

In this fullness of context, if any man or woman claims to be a conservative, that is in lockstep with the founding principles of America, and total fidelity to the Original Intent of the Constitution, the entire edifice of Anti-Trust law must be rejected.

I also understand the feeling of “well, we have to beat them and they cheat, so we have to cheat and bend our morals to beat them.” That’s like saying “we have to sin to beat the devil.” Morality doesn’t shift with time. Truth and right and wrong are constant.

Finally, let’s consider the reality of breaking up a firm. The Justice Department would be in charge….they’re about as competent as your local DMV and as honest as the Secret Service. Do you REALLY want to let them sort this out? By the time they’re done, we will be FORCED to have a Facebook account AND a chip in your head.

To those who say, “we can’t just sit here and do NOTHING.” For openers, don’t use FB, Amazon, etc. Going further, the market is way more efficient at breaking up firms. Netscape, General Electric, Citigroup, General Motors…they are shells of what they were previously. The entire economic history of the planet is littered with boom to bust stories. Sure, it won’t happen as quickly as you want. But remember, we are men and women of reason and it is the leftists are emotional.

Thanks for listening. Have a great day.

[pierrem15]

First, I don't think your argument is correct: all these companies are engaged in interstate commerce and international commerce, and Congress has a pretty free hand in regulating both.

I would also point out that most of them are, technically, not even American companies: the actual owner is a corporation in Dublin, because Ireland has very low corporate tax rates. There is a holding company here owned by that corporation that runs their US operations. American shareholders probably hold only American Depository Receipts for the foreign corporation, since trading directly in foreign stocks is forbidden.

Second, this is not normal politics. If you want a restoration of the original Constitution, then like a piece of bent steel, the country has to bent back more to the other side and not the midpoint to make it straight again.

These companies not only need to be broken up, their management needs to go to jail for conspiring with government officials against civil rights. As Metternich said, principles are not a fixed gun but a turret that needs to be pointed in different directions.

[DoodleBob]

Congress has a pretty free hand in regulating both.

The discussion is about breaking up companies, not regulation. There is a big difference. Please tell me where is Congress’ enumerated power in this regard.

On your second point, you’re saying, in effect, we have to act like liberals. That is like saying we have to become commies to defeat the Soviets. Indeed, this is PRECISELY “the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.”

Once you become like them, then there is no distinction except which pet pork project is preferred. No truth, no morals, no ethics, Just “I want MY free s*** before he gets HIS free s*** because he’s really bad. I’m not as bad. Just kinda bad. Besides he sucks.”

I will follow Madison. There are flights to Austria all the time.

[pierrem15]

LOL They can just change the law to limit market share to any company engaged in interstate or international commerce, including in the aggregate. That would force the companies to be broken up.

[ProgressingAmerica]

desertfreedom765: "While Linux helped break Microsoft’s monopoly they are still dominate in business and on the desktop and that will not change in our lifetime."

The Bud Lighting has not yet occurred, they still have immunity. When the Bud Lighting happens, the domination will end.

Twotone: "Once again...how are these people to be stopped?"

The big tech companies are the most deserving of a Bud Lighting, and the least to receive it.(unfortunately) I really wish I had the power to get the Bud Lighting started, but alas I do not. We cannot vote our way out of these problems. The only way out is to activist our way out.

I hope you both have a good day and good week.

[Twotone]

The Bud Light boycott was a success because there were so many other options. I recently replaced my desktop computer. Since I’m not a coder, Linux wasn’t an option. Stuck between Apple & Microsoft I ended up with Microsoft. The computer folks I worked with also gave me Libre for some things.

Without multiple good options, we are really STUCK, & the market doesn’t allow us to avoid bad actors.

Enjoy your week as well. :-)

[ProgressingAmerica]

"There is NOTHING here about breaking up the East India Trade Co."

This.

The Founders did not give us economic tyranny, they tried to protect us from economic tyranny.

The Federalist Papers (version 2) free open source audiobook

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4056741/posts

[GailA]

Big Ag, Pharma, and grocery chains are more dangerous.