Libertarians.
They’re the tools of Mr. Burnses of the world.
The problem is, these companies would not have gotten so large without government preferences. Government restrictions are an attempt to undo government mistakes - but rather than heavy-handed anti-trust breakups, companies like Facebook and Twitter simply need to lose their preferences.
I despise Amazon’s politics but they do run a good mail order store
and there are many competitors so i believe they should not be broken up
but AssBook and Twit and especially GooGoo all have very little effective competition in their main core lines of trade ......and should definitely be split up per our nation’s antittust laws, imho
So much for having confidence we can win on the battlefield of ideas.
“It’s the oddest thing. The more America’s Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have contributed to keeping America’s economy afloat during the coronavirus lockdown, the louder the voices get to break them up or to tie them up into regulatory knots.”
How much did these companies contribute to making the lockdown happen via advocacy and propaganda in order to gain market share?
Amazon, for example, runs the Washington Post.
This influential newspaper advocating for the close of businesses and lockdown in turn brings greater market share to Amazon by closing down its physical store competitors and making people ordered to stay at home more dependent on Amazon.
How many people may have bought from Amazon for the first time ever because they had to?
Take away the h-1B visa cookie jar.
Bust the lefty big tech trusts—they have turned into racist anti-white institutions, vicious censors—and they are the ones who need to be canceled.
Amazon, Google, Twitter, and other Big Tech companies often engage in anti-competitive and abusive practices that subvert the free market and damage the country. Unfortunately, many conservatives are so committed to laissez-faire that they are willing to accept such ills as somehow conducive to business and economic growth.
“The more America’s Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have contributed to keeping America’s economy afloat during the coronavirus lockdown, the louder the voices get to break them up or to tie them up into regulatory knots.”
Counter point: the bigger those companies get, the more they erroneously believe they are entitled to or have rights to restrict what people think say see or know.
Well, while I’m generally sympathetic to this kind of argument, these companies have a virtual monopoly over the flow of information. That cannot be allowed.
I say break them apart. Who knows how much money Amazon spent bribing politicians to keep retail stores closed so that they can make a killing with mail order retail.
Did Netflix and other streaming services conspire to shut down movie theaters to drive up demand for their services? I think so.
“High tech isn’t swallowing up small businesses; it is saving them. A new report from the Connected Commerce Council, which analyzed the impact of internet platforms and digital tools on small companies in the COVID-19 crisis...”
Unfortunately, Mr. Stossel, all the small businesses that have already been put out of business by the likes of Amazon were unavailable to answer the survey.
This reminds me of the old arguments why the government shouldn’t breakup the Bell Telephone Company.
In short, the technology was very stagnant, and the monopoly prevented any number of other companies from doing a better job of things. But when Bell was broken up, it indeed cause some degree of chaos in the market, but so do most “gold rushes”.
Bell ran on a vast amount of thick copper cables, which couldn’t support digital, and they wouldn’t let anyone else put up their lines, even for things like cable TV.
When Bell was busted, after a brief pause there was an explosion in technology and what we see today.
And how about what had been a near monopoly for the USPS? Once it could no longer suppress package delivery, the market got USPS, FedEx, etc., etc. a LOT faster and better.
So other than possible fears that *something* bad might happen, what potential exists for after a breakup of these tech companies?
.
Half Big Tech could do it just as well, and offer COMPETITION to keep them honest and improving.
More companies doing the same thing allows the Consumers to “Vote with their Feet” to correct a business. Monopolies simply laugh and go on doing their abuses.
.
Anti-Trust laws have been on the books for a very long time.
EVERY Silicon Valley employee has gone thru Anti-Trust training.
I did it 4 times I think while working for Intel.
The law was setup to keep any company from controlling a market.
If FB and Google refuse to follow clear law setup 50 years ago, why have a law?
Break ‘em all up!
“ Washington’s assault against America’s trillion-dollar companies would aid and abet Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts.”
Idiotic position. These companies, most of them, are run by anti-American Marxist wannabes who are so aligned with China’s communist ideals that there’s hardly a dime‘s worth of difference between the two from an ideological perspective.
They only disagree on who the leaders should be.
Break them up soon.
Stossel often makes good points, but he couldn’t be more wrong on this one.
Amazingly uninformed.
Google SHOULD be broken up.
Specifically, they need to sell-off their operating system business from their data collection and advertising services.
I also never thought I’d say this, but the USA needs to have consumer protection laws enacted similar to that of the EU’s GDPR. Right now, Americans have no control over how their data is used, nor what data is collected and sold. This includes PII (Personally Identifiable Information) such as credit card number, date of birth and social security number, all of which can be used by criminals. Even HIPPA has been watered down to the point where personal information CAN be sold.
As an IT professional, I can say that GDPR is a pain to deal with, and in Germany, the German Workers Council has even stricter rules, to the point that we cannot identify which users are visiting websites using their employers Internet services and computers without special permissions.
But it DOES allow the user to take control of their personal data, and restricts what can be accessed, sold or distributed.
Mark
Another thing, since Google IS a publisher of content and they make editorial decisions based on the content of others, providing or denying them access to the public, they are NOT acting as a neutral platform, like a telephone company.
They make active decisions, making them a publisher of content, and need to be treated as such, rather than being given blanket immunity by congress.
That immunity and protection must be removed.
Mark