[HN Gopher] House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for "a ...
___________________________________________________________________
House lawmakers release anti-monopoly agenda for "a stronger online
economy"
Author : rbanffy
Score : 156 points
Date : 2021-06-13 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cicilline.house.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (cicilline.house.gov)
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| The anti-monopoly movement has been a struggle for the past 70
| years, but has managed to notch some wins. However, the digital
| economy has only recently come into focus that aligns with past
| understand of monopoly (legal). As a result, the anti-monopoly
| movement floundered in the start of the 21st century. Here is a
| great overview from the Harvard Business Review:
|
| https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...
|
| The reason why this committee is bipartisan, I believe, is
| because social progressives on one side and free-market
| conservatives on the other are finally seeing the problem with
| today's monopolies. (Unfortunately this is just one giant problem
| out of many giant problems facing modern government, so maybe
| let's not position it as, "well if they can't fix X they
| shouldn't bother to fix Y and Z.")
|
| I'm most interested in the platform monopoly legislation. There's
| an entire new legal vocabulary required to even talk about this.
| Or so I think.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Who was consulted when drafting these bills and why are they
| "good"?
|
| "Online platforms" == operating systems according to the first
| linked.
|
| If that's the quality of legislation... I'm unsure how to
| proceed.
| Growling_owl wrote:
| This will serve them well.
|
| Ever since the GFC big tech has not produced anything which
| actually improved the quality of life of the avg. citizen.
|
| And the last huge leap was Windows 95, the rate of innovation
| slowed down since then, we just barely managed to collect Google
| and Facebook along the way.
|
| It was Windows 95 which should have shown big tech companies the
| way. If you stop innovating, then people begin to look at the
| marketcap of the company and the net worth of the founders as
| well as the pay of CEOs and sure enough hatred among the public
| opinion starts mounting pretty fast. People get accostumed to the
| quality of life provided by big tech in a very fast manner, if
| the rate of innovation slows down then people will turn on
| innovators because of the wealth inequality that they see between
| themselves and big tech companies' insiders.
|
| Microsoft was fighting for its survival a mere 5 years after the
| release of Windows 95, not because of competitors, but because of
| the public hatred against them had mounted and that emboldened
| the DOJ to sue them. It wouldn't have happened if the next
| iteration would have been as transformative as the jump from Ms-
| Dos to Win95.
|
| Big tech has to understand that as complex as they are as
| companies, they are not much different than a bike, you can only
| slow down so much before you tip over and disaster happens.
|
| They have their 300B cash warchest, they have their AAA+ credit
| rating, they have interest rates at an historic minimum. They
| have no excuse for the technological stasis
| gsmo wrote:
| Hard to tell from the summaries. I hope this addresses ISPs too.
| Comcast, AT&T seem to operate like a cartel.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| It doesn't.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Spoiler: they don't! The ACCESS act, for example, applies only
| to services with > 50 million MAU and either sales or market
| caps over $600 billion. Since there has never been any company
| with $600 billion annual sales, it applies to only 7 companies
| in the world, and really only 6 because I don't think Saudi
| Aramco really qualifies.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Since there has never been any company with $600 billion
| annual sales
|
| I wonder if someone clever might exploit this loophole to
| kill the reverse repo market, which is _almost_ hitting $600
| billion daily. And technically it 's run by the fed, which is
| technically a private entity. This is obviously an outlier
| within an outlier and God knows the government wouldn't let
| it's magical money maker come under fire, but it seems like
| with the right set of circumstances this going in front of
| SCOTUS could completely undermine how our entire concept of
| debt and lending works in the US economy.
|
| Everything I'm saying is purely speculation. This actually
| happening is about as likely as the US admitting it invaded
| Iraq for oil (and a bunch of other more nuanced reasons).
| It's not about honesty; it's about money.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _technically it 's run by the fed_
|
| The Fed executes repos and reverse repos. It does not run
| the market. Primary dealers execute these through tri-party
| repo agents, which practically is like two banks.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Personal opinion? Good.
|
| The restrictions and remedies here seem fairly harsh. Of the
| sort you'd only want to cover monopolies (but-we-don't-want-
| to-prosecute-you-as-monopolies).
|
| Telecom definitely needs its share of modernizing, but it
| should probably be more targeted.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The fact that ISPs don't even come close to those numbers is
| a good example of why tech companies are a much bigger
| problem than ISPs. ISPs are the monster under the bed big
| tech has been paying people to scare you with so you don't
| look too closely at them.
| wbl wrote:
| The competition for my ISP is not a click away.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Neither is Google's, their marketing to the contrary.
| Installing another app store on their phone OS (which has
| no competition) requires several steps involving
| disabling so-called security protections and then side-
| loading the store. Search is largely protected by the
| fact that every business must do business with Google if
| they're to have any customers at all, etc.
|
| Obviously, physical infrastructure is a bit harder to
| switch, but I have three major wireline ISPs here, four
| major wireless ones, and I believe two satellite services
| are an option too. Meanwhile, most Google services have
| no meaningful competition that isn't incredible niche.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It's safe to say that the main revenue driver, Google
| Search, has easy-to-switch-to competitors like ddg or
| bing. Android is an indirect revenue driver since it
| defaults to Google search but it's far from the majority
| way people get to Search.
| [deleted]
| mahogany wrote:
| > Obviously, physical infrastructure is a bit harder to
| switch, but I have three major wireline ISPs here, four
| major wireless ones, and I believe two satellite services
| are an option too.
|
| Okay, but tens of millions of other Americans have only
| one broadband choice (if they have one at all). There is
| clearly a monopoly issue there.
| elzbardico wrote:
| For the vast majority of people on dense urban areas, it
| is.
| plandis wrote:
| Interestingly enough the main sponsor for one of the bills
| (Jayapal) represents pretty much all the tech workers that work
| at Amazon in Seattle.
|
| Wonder how they will feel knowing their representative is
| proposing legislation will likely hurt their financial well-
| being.
|
| Edit: Why the downvotes? I think it's an interesting dynamic
| between constituents and their representative.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > Wonder how they will feel knowing their representative is
| proposing legislation will likely hurt their financial well-
| being.
|
| If you're a rank-and-file employee in those companies and
| legitimately think these bills will significantly affect your
| financial well-being, you've successfully been brainwashed to
| believe that your stake in the company actually matters.
| rsynnott wrote:
| How would it do that? It's not like Amazon is going to go "oh,
| well, if we can't be an abusive monopoly we'll just close
| down". They (or their fragments) will presumably still need
| employees, who they'll have to pay market rates to.
| azinman2 wrote:
| > Big tech has routinely suppressed conservative voices and
| violated consumers' privacy," said Rep. Gooden. "We must rein in
| their destructive behavior and preserve the constitutional rights
| of all Americans."
|
| First, this whole suppressing conservatives voices thing is just
| totally unhinged from reality. The few tiny examples of this
| violate clearly defined platform rules (which pale in comparison
| to the giant gain of misinformation aimed at the right that's
| free flowed). These companies and their products aren't the same
| as a phone call, and you absolutely don't have any constitutional
| rights if speech to it! They're private platforms and anyone (eg
| Gab) can go and create their own.
|
| If any company violated consumer's privacy in accordance with
| constitutional rights, then current day lawsuits would win
| without any additional amendments.
|
| This is both sides looking for a new boogie man, and will
| ultimately make America less competitive globally compared to a
| place like China where not only do their tech companies have
| massive integration across so many products (hello WeChat), but
| they have actual state support.
|
| This is just populism aimed at all of those who didn't make money
| in tech over the past 20 years, many of whom are jealous their
| industries got outsourced and therefore mad.
| Layke1123 wrote:
| Do you hear yourself? You are full of yourself. An economy that
| doesn't work for everyone won't work for anyone.
| zephyr1 wrote:
| I thought you meant banning speech of your political enemies is
| unhinged from reality until I realised you meant the opposite
| azinman2 wrote:
| https://cyber.harvard.edu/node/99982
|
| Just one of many analyses that have showed how the right in
| the US has majorly gained from being able to share
| misinformation and live in filter bubbles by platforms like
| Facebook and Twitter. The idea that Twitter/FB have political
| enemies is not supported by how they've been used, and is
| inviting an over-politicization of American life. They're
| private businesses... not political affiliates.
| jayd16 wrote:
| It is though. Imagine if every online forum was forced to
| promote government propaganda. That's not free speech. So to
| some degree, forum discretion is speech.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Just imagine if every telephone companies was prevented
| from discriminating on the basis of the speech....
|
| Oh wait, that is literally how common carrier laws work.
| They are basically, forced to sell to everyone, and have to
| allow anyone to make speech over their network.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Not everything is a common carrier and I don't think it
| should be.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > where not only do their tech companies have massive
| integration across so many products
|
| Why can't tech products have integration across each other,
| without tech giants buying up every small startup that comes
| across their way?
| azinman2 wrote:
| Because integration is very difficult to achieve in one
| company (just look at Google vs Apple products), let alone
| across multiple. I don't see how that has anything to do with
| buying small startups.
|
| However since you mentioned that, preventing M&A will not
| only prevent our bigger tech companies from being globally
| competitive by restricting their access to talent, it'll shut
| off one of the main exit routes that's made doing a startup
| far safer. It'll mean failures will end up in $0 for
| everyone, less money in returns to a VC, which will mean less
| money in returns to the retirement funds and whatnot that
| invest in VCs (which is bad for all of our 401ks), so VCs
| will be even more careful about who they invest in, which
| means less capital going around for startups generally. That
| will reduce American competitiveness.
| mavelikara wrote:
| You seem to suggest that few giant companies are optimal.
| If so, why not take that to the full extend - have just one
| player in the market by the government nationalizing all
| tech companies and merging into one?
|
| (I am not suggesting that as a credible alternative).
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Because competition is good, and monopolies are bad. It's
| just that we don't actually have any monopolies in the
| tech industry, and people who say we do are wrong and/or
| pursuing an agenda that has nothing to do with market
| competition.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > Because integration is very difficult to achieve in one
| company (just look at Google vs Apple products), let alone
| across multiple.
|
| This is clearly false. All sorts of industry defined
| standards work quite well. When companies don't create
| interoperability it isn't because it is too hard...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Because economies of scale, automation due to use of
| software, and near zero marginal costs mean the bigger you
| are, the more you can offer customers at a lower price.
| neither_color wrote:
| I won't comment on your first point but I will say it's weird
| you argue for private companies' rights and then use a country
| where most of our tech companies are de facto banned(Twitter,
| Facebook, Google, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, Pinterest,
| Youtube, Twitch, etc), where anonymous internet usage isn't
| possible(must show ID for even an internet cafe), and where
| mass topical censorship is legally required. What we had in the
| US/Europe is debate over what extreme edge cases and fringe
| ideologies meet the minimal threshold to be considered
| dangerous enough to society to stamp out, and even then every
| instance is met with great debate and pushback. Some people
| make "careers" out of making hateful replies to politicians
| we're objectively much freer here and better off for it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Not to mention a country where tech moguls are under far more
| heat than they ever could be in this one.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27448998
| throwkeep wrote:
| I'm a liberal and it's clear that big tech is suppressing
| dissenting voices. It's not targeted at conservatives
| specifically, but it captures them in larger number because
| tech and corporate media is mostly liberal and progressive. As
| such, conservative is by default a dissenting voice.
|
| Edit: See the lab leak hypothesis where big tech was
| suppressing and even banning people last year for questioning
| the approved narrative. And here's an example just yesterday
| with old school progressives being silenced:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27493994
| Layke1123 wrote:
| Well denying science isn't really a selling point to have the
| same platform as those who don't deny science. Conservatives
| don't offer anything of substance to the conversation.
| verall wrote:
| > Managing director of Thiel Capital
|
| > posted a paper describing Geometric Unity online and went
| on Joe Rogan's immensely popular podcast to discuss it
|
| What makes someone an old school progressive, in your
| opinion?
|
| I'm having trouble finding anything progressive about this
| person. His crackpot "theory of everything" has apparently
| been around since about 2013.
| COGlory wrote:
| What's wrong with having a theory? When did science start
| to mean scientism?
|
| The guy is clearly very bright. Perhaps you missed where he
| talked about the same theory with nobel laureate Roger
| Penrose.
|
| Just because he might not be right about an extremely
| complex and hard to follow idea doesn't mean he shouldn't
| be studying it, discussing it, and engaging about it.
| throwkeep wrote:
| > What makes someone an old school progressive, in your
| opinion?
|
| Those who were known as progressives prior to about 5 years
| ago. Eric and his brother Bret were self described
| progressives for decades.
|
| > I'm having trouble finding anything progressive about
| this person.
|
| Listen to his podcast The Portal to see. That he works with
| Thiel simply means that he is able to work with people who
| have different opinions. Guilt by association is lazy, as
| is dismissing a theory as crackpot, especially from a
| serious intellectual with the credentials (eg Harvard) to
| back it up.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Please give us a specific example of "big tech suppressing
| dissenting voices". I can certainly see how you could lay
| that charge on the Hearst Corporation, for example, but I
| have a hard time seeing how it applies to companies who will
| record and disseminate your writings, photos, and videos
| worldwide without charge and _almost_ without regard to the
| content thereof.
| SamiPerttu wrote:
| Google Admits to Censoring the World Socialist Web Site
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html
|
| Facebook Purges Left-Wing Pages and Individuals
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/23/pers-j23.html
| jeffbee wrote:
| Google returns that site as the #1 result for "world
| socialist", and "world socialist web site" and the
| Facebook accounts that were supposedly "purged" are all
| online, for example https://www.facebook.com/iyssesdsu.
| So, again, please provide specific examples of accounts
| that were suppressed for dissension, and apparently also
| I need to ask you to think critically about whether and
| how such suppression was achieved.
| azinman2 wrote:
| https://medium.com/cybersecurity-for-democracy/far-right-
| new...
|
| Where is the evidence? Because by in large, the use and
| effectiveness of these platforms in study after study goes
| the other way.
| [deleted]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| This seems more and more like the end of an era. This used to be
| a place where if you didn't like the rules you could just move
| over to the next lot and it would be the frontier again.
|
| With these bills it seems like we are getting closer and closer
| to closing that frontier, and closing it for good.
|
| Usenet is deader than dead (I have subscribed to some groups in
| thunderbird, but some of these haven't seen a post in several
| years), reddit is useful only in some small subreddits.
|
| It seems like the end of an era. Maybe I should just, I don't
| know, log of?
|
| Anybody else feels the same? Or better yet, know where the magic
| can be found these days?
| foolfoolz wrote:
| the problem with "breaking up big tech" is it only breaks up
| american companies. it has a long run impact of letting foreign
| companies take over american market share
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| Maybe I'm taking you too literally here but none of the bills
| in the article talk about splitting companies up. The bills
| mentioned limit acquisitions of their competitors, increase
| funding for merger investigations, require data portability,
| limit self-preferencing on platform, and limit self-
| preferencing across business areas.
|
| At least this is what is stated in the article. I have not read
| the bills.
| aerosmile wrote:
| "Breaking up big tech" or "throwing monkey wrenches into
| their gears" is related enough that it might be worth paying
| attention to the OP's overall point - we're applying these
| rules only to American companies which will automatically a)
| help Chinese companies like Tik Tok compete against Facebook
| and Snap, and b) disincentivize them from opening US offices.
| Why isn't there a 6th bill saying something like: "because we
| cannot control Chinese companies directly, we'll control them
| indirectly through American app stores or what have you." I
| know it's a pipe dream, but we better dream quickly or those
| companies will get so big that we'll be all using a Chinese
| OS soon enough and then that last ability to control any
| aspect of their business model will be gone.
|
| EDIT: someone posted that these bills will equally affect
| American and international companies. I don't see how that's
| possible. Eg:
|
| > The "Platform Competition and Opportunity Act" prohibits
| acquisitions of competitive threats by dominant platforms
|
| Who is going to prevent ByteDance from acquiring every
| competitive Chinese company? Once they start doing that and
| we see some massive consolidation in China, ByteDance will go
| from being the most profitable private company worth $140B to
| being close to Facebook's $1T market cap. This is not some
| fiction scenario, it's literally how American companies got
| big as well. While I wish the American consolidation never
| happened, I am not sure if the right solution is to just
| prevent it domestically.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > Who is going to prevent ByteDance from acquiring every
| competitive Chinese company
|
| China's social platform ecosystem probably has more
| diversity than the US. This hypothetical doesn't work great
| since Tencent(WeChat) is it-least twice the size of
| ByteDance...
|
| I do agree with the premise that regulation on American
| companies does have an effect on how competitive they are
| globally.
| treis wrote:
| They de facto require a break up. The wording is so broad
| that it makes it essentially impossible to operate multiple
| lines of business. The only real option is to split up/divest
| enough to get under the market cap limit.
| rsynnott wrote:
| In practice, large countries can regulate companies which
| operate within their borders. It's normal for mergers of
| multinationals to seek approval from US authorities, the EC,
| and sometimes Chinese authorities today, over competition
| issues. Today, the EC is typically the fussiest, but it doesn't
| seem that out there to imagine a world where the US gets
| stricter.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > operate within their borders
|
| That can be a problematic concept for online businesses with
| no local presence.
|
| You can try and apply tariffs on imports, but policing
| imports, especially of services, is hard.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Do you think American internet companies are following the
| GDPR in their European operations just for fun? Or Chinese
| rules in their Chinese operations?
|
| In practice, most multinationals are not too comfortable
| blatantly violating the law in large markets.
| toast0 wrote:
| I can't think of any foreign companies in a
| monopoly/monopolistic position in the US that don't have a US
| counterpart in a similar position.
|
| T-Mobile is/was German and is in a monopolistic position, but
| it doesn't have any specific advantage over AT&T or Verizon,
| and is subject to the same type of regulatory scrutiny over
| aquisitions, etc.
|
| There's a lot of foreign pharma corps, but afaik, they don't do
| anything more monopolistic than US pharma corps. Same with oil
| and chemical companies.
|
| Would be happy to consider something I missed, however.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Historical parallel: a movement to abolish patents in England
| in 1850-1880 foundered because it would enable cheap imports,
| threatening local manufacturing jobs.
|
| But big tech employs proportionately few, and pays no tax.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > the problem with "breaking up big tech" is it only breaks up
| american companies.
|
| I understood it as targeting companies whose products are used
| by Americans.
| [deleted]
| jayd16 wrote:
| If the premise is it makes the companies stronger through
| competition, this isn't a concern, right?
| rblatz wrote:
| That isn't the premise at all. It makes the market stronger
| through competition. Typically it makes the company itself
| weaker since it no longer can leverage power in one market to
| corner another.
| jayd16 wrote:
| We agree. I said companies, plural, as a whole as in the
| whole economy.
| rblatz wrote:
| Oh missed that. My bad.
| chitowneats wrote:
| From where? Not Europe, where they don't have any of these
| companies, and have even more stringent regulations.
|
| China or Russia then? Easy, just ban their services like they
| do for ours.
| fridif wrote:
| Everything you touch or use has a component going through
| china
| chitowneats wrote:
| We are a market for them. If you're suggesting they would
| stop selling us anything in response to us blocking a few
| of their services online, I think you're overestimating
| their likely response.
| oblio wrote:
| I used to think the American leverage over China was not
| that great (I'm not American).
|
| Then Huawei was put on that Entity List (or whatever it's
| called) and prohibited from doing business with US
| companies.
|
| Huawei was the world's #2 phone producer after Samsung and
| rising rapidly, I think the forecast was that within 2
| quarters it would be #1, overtaking Samsung.
|
| One year later, with the ban still ongoing, Huawei fell out
| of the top 5, its sales having shrunk 60% or more (https://
| www.gsmarena.com/sa_smartphone_market_surges_24_in_q...).
| fridif wrote:
| I would buy a Huawei phone running a Huawei operating
| system that operates as wifi/data only, purely for the
| meme factor.
| simias wrote:
| Do you have a particular example in mind or is it a theoretical
| concern?
|
| I can definitely see how it could benefit foreign competitors,
| but at the same time the American tech giants are so largely
| ahead of the competition that it's hard for me to imagine a
| foreign competitor managing to overtake them. It might level
| the playing field a little bit, but it's not necessarily a bad
| thing, even from a US-centric point of view.
| aerosmile wrote:
| You should take a look at Tik Tok. Companies with large
| marketing budgets and focused on digital channels spend the
| majority of it on Facebook and Google. Traditionally, the
| rest went to Pinterest and Snapchat, but Tik Tok has 1) built
| a huge audience and 2) built a good enough ad platform (which
| only continues to improve) that they went from nowhere to
| choice #3 in a shockingly short amount of time. Sound
| familiar? Yes, that's exactly how to Facebook surprised
| Google as well, only much slower.
| tmotwu wrote:
| If we were to break up Facebook or Google, it would be of
| the granularity of YouTube or Instagram, which is actually
| what TikTok competes with. I cannot see how YouTube or
| Instagram could suffer or lose market share.
| aerosmile wrote:
| > The impact TikTok has had on the social media landscape
| is undeniable. This year, it is projected to reach 2.1
| billion users, and its success hasn't gone unnoticed by
| other key players, most notably Instagram. [1]
|
| > in addition to gaining more users than Instagram,
| TikTok is also earning the attention of top power users.
| [2]
|
| [1] https://digitalagencynetwork.com/tiktok-vs-instagram-
| who-is-...
|
| [2] http://instagram-tiktok.com/tiktok-vs-instagram-
| which-one-wi...
| tmotwu wrote:
| I am not exactly sure what you are trying to prove here.
| As far as I am concerned, Google and Facebook have not
| been broken up into pieces of YouTube and Instagram yet.
| How does this in any way demonstrate what would happen if
| we broke up big tech? Sounds like further evidence they
| need to be released from their mismanagement.
| shakezula wrote:
| Historically, breaking up monopolies has been very good for the
| end consumer. Bell Labs and Standard Oil both ended up being
| good things.
|
| Instead of breaking them up though, we should simply be more
| stringent with anti trust hearings and merger approvals. There
| have been a few mergers recently that absolutely shouldn't have
| been approved.
| lend000 wrote:
| The Standard Oil claim is historically false. Kerosene prices
| fell dramatically during Standard Oil's tenure [0]. The
| competition did not benefit from Standard Oil, but consumers
| benefitted dramatically.
|
| A malevolent monopoly needs government support to sustain
| itself for long (like today's telecoms/internet companies).
| All of the natural monopolies that have existed without rent
| seeking either greatly benefitted the consumer (Standard Oil,
| Google, Amazon), or became less consumer friendly and lost
| their monopoly (Microsoft).
|
| That isn't to say that the government shouldn't take extra
| steps to ensure powerful companies are upholding the spirit
| of the law (labor laws and liability laws, for example, at
| Amazon), but most of the anti-monopolist positions such as
| some described in the article seem horribly misguided and
| likely to have unintended consequences. Especially preventing
| acquisitions (how many talented founders start companies with
| the hopes of having an acquisition option) and preventing
| horizontal integration (would we have AWS and the rise of
| easy cloud computing if this law passed 20 years ago?)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Standard Oil is also a special case because a monopoly on
| the supply of environmentally harmful stuff is actually
| _good_ for the environment - by the very action of charging
| a higher price, it helps compensate for a negative effect
| that would not be priced in otherwise. Breaking up Standard
| Oil was just a bad idea, all around.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > by the very action of charging a higher price, it helps
| compensate for a negative effect that would not be priced
| in otherwise
|
| that is charitable interpretation to say the least.. Once
| monopoly revenue is passing hands, who is to say that
| safety, service and responsible behavior strengthens?
| There are manifold examples of a whole range of outcomes.
|
| A defense of oil monopoly markets is particulalry
| distasteful in light of a global, literal crisis due to
| oil consumption by the billions of barrels, right?
| [deleted]
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| In both of those cases, consumers were being overcharged for
| good and services in a variety of concrete economic ways.
| It's not analogous to the current situation, I don't think.
| It's not like a broken up Google or Facebook would cease
| showing ads or show fewer ads. If anything, they'd show more,
| as we can see from all the random clickbait news sites that
| are more ad than material. It seems possible that a broken up
| version of these would be better for ad buyers, but (with my
| consumer hat on), I don't really care about ad buyers that
| much. It's hard to picture the broken up sites offering
| better services.
|
| It will be interesting to see! I'll be fascinated to see the
| degree to which congress is willing to take on these
| companies, and the degree to which their views on what should
| be done are congruent between the parties. I wonder the
| extent to which differing views on that subject could scuttle
| any legislation that would really address the concerns.
| tacotacotaco wrote:
| > ... but (with my consumer hat on), I don't really care
| about ad buyers that much.
|
| Ad buyers are the consumers. You are the product.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| No, ad buyers are businesses. As much as business
| interests have been trying to redefine negative impact on
| consumers as including out-competing rival companies,
| that's not what it means.
| dantheman wrote:
| Not actually true - Bell Labs was a government created and
| enforced monopoly, so the break up definitely helped people
| but it did not earn its 'monopoly' status.
|
| As for Standard Oil at the height of it's market dominance
| the price of oil went down drastically, and by the time it
| was broken up it was nowhere near as dominant - iirc it was
| in the high 60%s of market share.
|
| The only monopolies that ever seem to truly exist and cause
| harm, are those that are granted special status and favors by
| the state.
| Retric wrote:
| The big benefit was long distance calling. Breaking up the
| bells quickly resulted in dramatic price drops.
|
| Technology clearly helped, but you can adjust for that by
| compare to other countries telecoms which had the same
| benefits.
| mech422 wrote:
| >>Breaking up the bells quickly resulted in dramatic
| price drops.
|
| I can't remember how different my bills were, but I do
| remember all the jokes about how breaking Bell up made
| things worse.
| Retric wrote:
| Local rates went up before stabilizing, long distance
| rates quickly tanked.
|
| _In May 1984, AT &T implemented its first rate reduction
| in 14 years, knocking an average 6.1 percent off
| interstate long-distance prices._ Long distance prices
| fell 38% by 1988 ignoring inflation. And continued to
| drop in the years afterwards.
|
| Now how much this was a net benefit at the time really
| depended on how much you used long distance calling.
| Longer term it paved the way for people to call long
| distance ISP's which made a real difference in early
| internet adoption.
| mech422 wrote:
| Heh..I actually did the long distance thing for BBSs with
| my lil C64 and a 300 baud modem. QuickMail with BlueWave
| offline reader, and TradeWarz2000! Heaven! :-)
|
| I don't remember having to call long distance for an ISP
| though - dial up/shell ISP's sprang up in every lil nook
| and cranny :-)
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> Historically, breaking up monopolies has been very good
| for the end consumer._
|
| Historically the US was the largest economy with the largest
| monopolies, so yes that was true then. It's not necessarily
| true now or going forward since the US govt can only break up
| US monopolies but not their foreign competitors.
|
| That said, it sounds like this bill 1) does not break up US
| big tech, and 2) is applicable to any enterprise operating in
| the US, similar to how GDPR applies to all companies
| operating in EU.
| zepto wrote:
| > Bell Labs and Standard Oil both ended up being good things.
|
| These are nothing like the current tech companies. Their
| monopolies were based on commodities. Oil hasn't changed
| since standard oil was broken up. AT&T's monopoly was based
| on access to real estate to build a network.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >Instead of breaking them up though, we should simply be more
| stringent with anti trust hearings and merger approvals.
| There have been a few mergers recently that absolutely
| shouldn't have been approved.
|
| Recently? Competition bureaus have been green lighting
| consolidation in key industry sectors for bullshit reasons
| with bad evidence for decades.
|
| Also, if we acknowledge that bureaus have allowed the over-
| consolidation of a number of industries, then why wouldn't we
| break them up?
|
| The harm to competition is already done - we already have
| titans accumulating the lucre of uncompetitive margins. The
| market's health cannot be judged in respect of what margins
| currently are; they have to be judged in respect of what they
| would be under situations of proper competition.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, and the focus on tech is a red herring distraction du
| jour. every company over $100MM should be scrutinized for
| breakup into smaller entities. m&a should be default deny,
| with extraordinary evidence required for approval, with
| penalties that pierce the corporate veil for not meeting
| stated fair market objectives.
|
| that would actually encourage competition and functional
| markets without harming substantive efficiency/productivity
| gains from economies of scale, which, despite the popular
| conception, tend to be sublinear rather than superlinear.
| that's because coordination problems scale superlinearly
| with size (a la mythical man month), which in turn is why
| there is a optimum firm size both for the firms themselves
| as well as for the markets they compete in. markets
| (independent actors loosely coordinating via price signals)
| actually specifically arose to solve these very
| coordination problems.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > yes, and the focus on tech is a red herring distraction
| du jour. every company over $100MM should be scrutinized
| for breakup into smaller entities.
|
| Or we could just levy punitive corporate taxes on large
| companies over $100MM, and let market participants figure
| out the most efficient breakup arrangement. Come to think
| of it, this doesn't look all that different from what the
| Biden administration seems to be planning re: global
| corporate taxation.
| clairity wrote:
| i'm absolutely in favor of progressive tax functions
| (minus the numerous loopholes, e.g., tax shields) for
| corporations. in fact, there's no reason to have
| differing corporate and individual tax functions
| (smoothly varying, as opposed to discontinuous, stepped
| rates), especially when corporations have gained favored
| personhood status, and are treated better and more
| deferentially relative to actual people. note that the
| biden global tax is a tax floor, and discontinuities just
| beg to be gamed.
|
| moreover there's no reason to preclude one for the other.
| let's do both, and more, to make markets competitive and
| work for the common welfare, rather than decidedly
| favoring consolidation and capital-holders.
| rossjudson wrote:
| I wish basic IRS functions could be get the same level of
| attention as these efforts. What would be particularly good
| for consumers would be bringing some level of fairness to the
| tax system.
| javert wrote:
| Why hurt the middle class to help "consumers"? Nah.
|
| If you wanted to make the tax system "more fair" it would
| mean lowering the outrageously high taxes on the middle
| class, but that's not within the Overton window and not
| what you're talking about.
| darksaints wrote:
| Bullshit. We have the same anti-trust power over foreign
| companies operating in America. We've never used it because
| we've never needed to. For the companies that don't operate in
| America, but import into America, we can and regularly do
| impose import restrictions and quotas.
| paulpauper wrote:
| i don't see why this would be the case or why it would be bad.
| maybe consumers would benefit from foreign competition rather
| than US tech giants having so much control and power.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Antitrust enforcement on large _platforms_ should be done by
| enforcing vertical separation and interoperability, not by
| simple breakup. Even the AT &T breakup didn't create a
| plurality of incompatible landline networks; the resulting
| companies were all connected in a single phone network, and
| could seamlessly interoperate. A large interoperable platform
| can easily preserve its _total_ market share over any foreign
| competitor aspiring to a monopoly of their own, since it
| derives greater benefits from network effects.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| We are talking about the big tech companies...
|
| Name one that is an ACTUAL monopoly? Facebook? Apple? Google?
| Amazon? Vertical integration is NOT monopoly, and thats what many
| of them are doing.
|
| I see a lot of arguments about these companies that are
| tantamount to "I didn't know how the world worked till I saw them
| do it and now I'm unhappy".
|
| After starting to dig a bit further than this article into what
| some of these would contain, someone with some tech savvy needs
| to get themselves to the capital and educate our legislators.
| CodeMage wrote:
| > I see a lot of arguments about these companies that are
| tantamount to "I didn't know how the world worked till I saw
| them do it and now I'm unhappy".
|
| Just out of curiosity: which aspect of those arguments do you
| object to, if any? I'm not trying to be confrontational, just
| trying to understand your point of view.
|
| There was a time where monopolies were "how the world worked",
| until the society collectively decided that it's not how the
| world _should_ work. If Google and Amazon aren 't actual
| monopolies, then maybe we need a new name and a new set of
| rules.
| caymanjim wrote:
| When Standard Oil was broken up, it wasn't a 100% monopoly. Nor
| was AT&T. I'm not sure what your criteria are, but if you're
| just being pedantic, it doesn't seem to have any historical
| bearing. The great monopolies of US history that prompted legal
| change never had complete control. They just had de facto
| control due to outsized influence and predatory (or at least
| anticompetitive) behavior.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| Ah yes, Amazon isn't a monopoly. That's why I often use the
| alternative online shopping site that has nearly every mass-
| produced item imaginable at low prices and low or free
| shipping. Same with Facebook: it's good thing there's that
| competitor of theirs that nearly everyone is on, catching up,
| organizing local events, buying and selling stuff. And man, I
| don't know where I would be without that other Internet search
| engine that rapidly and intelligently indexes almost everything
| online as soon as it's up and has been so fine-tuned over more
| than a decade that it has an almost psychic ability to
| correctly interpret even the most vague, misspelled and
| deranged search queries. It's truly amazing that humanity
| managed to make such a wonder of technology not just once, but
| twice!
|
| Really, I don't know what the lawmakers are thinking.
| Competition is alive and well on the Internet! Innovation has
| never been higher! Absolutely nothing has gotten worse since
| 2008! Boy I can't wait for the next version of Firefox. It
| totally won't be even more like Chrome this time.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Google has some where around 80% of the search market in the US
| which is possibly enough to qualify as a monopoly.
| mtkhaos wrote:
| Better phrasing now a days is the elimination of middle man
| industries in favor of public infrastructure projects.
|
| As ultimately what these companies represent is toll road to
| the content others create.
|
| As what these companies do is common sense. My own father
| created what became the modern search paradigm and was
| subsequently kicked off the project that later became yahoo.
|
| So from my perspective what these companies do is not
| innovative.
| cortesoft wrote:
| You don't need to have a full monopoly to be considered a
| monopoly under the law in the United States. You can be
| considered a legal monopoly if you have significant market
| power and can charge overly high prices for things.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
| elzbardico wrote:
| Instagram was a probable competitor for Facebook. Facebook
| bought it. Facebook was feeling threatened by the success of
| WhatsApp on instant messaging? bought. if it doesn't look to
| you like a monopoly, or at least something seriously and
| credibly moving to become a monopoly, by the time they meet
| your criteria, it would be too late to do anything about it.
| dean177 wrote:
| When Instagram was purchased by Facebook it was not viewed as
| a competitor at all, it was widely viewed as a terrible
| decision with FB massively overpaying.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I wonder if this an inadvertent dark pattern used by Congress.
| Doesn't this fundamentally set up lobbying infrastructure? You
| set up a racket where you start regulating a business, then said
| business reacts by funding massive lobbying toolkits to buy the
| crooks in Congress off to curtail regulation.
| sircastor wrote:
| "This is a nice little multi-trillion dollar industry you got
| here... it'd be a shame if anything happened to it."
| jeffbee wrote:
| You think David Cicilline knows a thing or two about shaking
| down businesses? Why, that's a repugnant attack against
| Italian-Americans!
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Links to the individual bills:
|
| American Innovation and Choice Online Act
| https://cicilline.house.gov/sites/cicilline.house.gov/files/...
|
| Platform Competition and Opportunity Act
| https://cicilline.house.gov/sites/cicilline.house.gov/files/...
|
| Ending Platform Monopolies Act
| https://cicilline.house.gov/sites/cicilline.house.gov/files/...
|
| Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service
| Switching (ACCESS) Act
| https://cicilline.house.gov/sites/cicilline.house.gov/files/...
|
| Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act
| https://cicilline.house.gov/sites/cicilline.house.gov/files/...
| EastSmith wrote:
| One of the bills (The "Ending Platform Monopolies Act")
| specifically targets companies with $600 billion market cap
| (AAFG), and misses Walmart by around $200 billion (it currently
| has market cap of less than $400 billion).
|
| It will be really funny if Walmart stock rises due to Amazon
| being split, and hits the $600 billion.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I noticed that too. I read the language to imply that
| momentarily touching it would be enough to classify any
| business as a covered platform (assuming the other 2 tests are
| met also).
|
| _"... at the time of the Commission's or the Department of
| Justice's designation under section 2(d) or any of the two
| years preceding that time, or at any time in the 2 years
| preceding the filing of a complaint for an alleged violation of
| this Act... "_
| octopoc wrote:
| In 100 years, $600 billion market cap is going to be more
| common due to inflation. I think this way of setting the limit
| could be really good for future generations.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The limit is indexed to CPI.
| stadium wrote:
| What's to stop Amazon from splitting it's retail business into
| separate legal entities entities by category to stay under the
| arbitrary limits? Or increasing 3rd party GMS, decreasing
| Amazon direct sales, and decreasing the 3rd party sales
| royalties to capture market share and stay under the revenue
| targets?
|
| Companies with strong financial engineering competencies will
| have no problem working around these limits.
|
| Instead of the government picking winners and losers, how can
| the rules be structured to level the playing field for
| everyone?
| salawat wrote:
| In the presence of financial engineers, you can't have it any
| other way.
|
| This is how politics is supposed to work. You pick one
| organization (your government) that you bend over backwards
| to give everyone the ability to input to. Anything that
| starts to get too big for their britches, you implement
| controls for.
|
| Then the regulatory arms race continues.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What 's to stop Amazon from splitting it's retail business
| into separate legal entities entities by category to stay
| under the arbitrary limits?_
|
| This doesn't work. Beneficial ownership and common control
| would trace through the legal entities. If Amazon actually
| splits up its business, on the other hand, that's fine!
| That's good! No need for anti-trust action; they did it
| themselves!
| LatteLazy wrote:
| They'd be given a waver, they've paid their bribes unlike FAANG
| etc.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| No one seems to agree on what they want or how to get there with
| big tech. Until their is some consensus laws will be at best very
| disappointing.
| gfodor wrote:
| I fundamentally distrust these people (on both sides) which will
| make it hard to not presume there are perverse incentives in
| these bills, but I'm open to it.
|
| My sense is that antitrust is as wrong a model for correcting
| this as the prior regime was that led to the creation of
| antitrust laws.
| syshum wrote:
| Anti-Trust is not the best path
|
| Better action would be reforms in contract law to limit binding
| Arbitration, make ToS unenforceable if they do not have at
| least SOME provisions in favor of the users (i.e stop allowing
| unconscionable contracts as Terms of Service), and stronger
| enforcement of Truth in Advertisement
|
| For ToS, one thing that should absolutely be require for a ToS
| to be enforceable is a mandate that Vendors are required to
| provide exact justification for them terminating the agreement
| (i.e banning you). They should have to clearly define what
| EXACT terms you violate, and WHEN exactly you violated them.
| There should should be a mandated review process
|
| For Truth in Advertisement, many of these companies and
| services use Bait and Switch tactics all the time, advertising
| their platforms as "Free Speech" or "welcome to all person"
| only to then clearly and objectively favor one political
| convention
|
| One final thing I would prefer to see over Anti-Trust is some
| kine of provision that kicks in if the platform accepts
| "official Government Messaging" i.e if Twitter wants to allow
| an official government account on their platform then their
| should be additional requirements as that now does become an
| equality under the law concern if people are blocked for
| official communications.
|
| If they do not want to have those additional strings on their
| platform then they can simply refuse in the Terms to allow for
| any Official Government Communication
| mLuby wrote:
| I trust them to respond to incentives, chief of which is to do
| things they think will keep them in office.
|
| The problems come when doing right by their constituents is no
| longer the biggest thing that keeps them in office (e.g.
| instead of outspending opponents on marketing). Or when there
| are incentives that are hidden from the public.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > do things they think will keep them in office.
|
| You do know that for many of them they have a virtual lock on
| their seat and the incentive no longer aligns right?
|
| For some/most, the primary driver can be characterized as
| self advancement.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I have the same feeling. I do not trust the "except for
| organizations operating thematic parks" from Florida
| republicans nor do I trust the Democrats who have collaborated
| both at party and official level with the very people they
| claim to fight against.
| pope_meat wrote:
| Good cop bad cop routine.
|
| You can insert team blue or red in to either role depending
| on your political bias.
|
| Either way though, you're under arrest xD
| efnx wrote:
| They are not equivalent, though.
| pope_meat wrote:
| of course not, the side you like is obviously a little
| less evil, and thus worth supporting.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Maybe not at specific points in time but, over the long
| term, they make exceedingly similar choices.
|
| The GOP backed No Child Left Behind which was an abject
| failure. Back then, it was easy for the left to claim
| that they would do better when given the opportunity.
| However, now the left is pushing Critical Race Theory in
| schools which is equally stupid and damaging.
|
| You _can_ point to the left as doing a much worse job _at
| this particular point in time_ but the reality is that
| both sides have made roughly equally stupid choices over
| the long run.
| efnx wrote:
| No, full stop. The two American parties are not
| equivalent in their modern forms.
|
| You can use "over the long term" to further any point you
| like because at one point the Republican Party was the
| liberal, progressive party before it adopted the original
| southern strategy.
|
| Studying race and systemic racism in school is absolutely
| not "as damaging" as dictating the terms of school
| funding in a way that disadvantages the poor (and
| subsequently non-white people).
|
| Also your argument is about the two parties being the
| same over the long term, but then you give a very short
| term anecdote, and one that isn't very compelling.
|
| I'm sorry to appear so argumentative but it seems you are
| falling into the trap of false equivalence on multiple
| levels.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _I fundamentally distrust these people (on both sides)_
|
| I know it sounds cliche, but that's the sign of a good citizen.
| You should distrust. Particularly since so much money is at
| stake. Anyone who doesn't distrust, is either being naive, or
| more likely, collecting on the graft.
|
| I also share your concern that they want to have some
| convoluted anti-trust regime, rather than a simple,
| straightforward law that says no sharing of any user data for
| any commercial purpose at all, ever. With draconian penalties
| for any infraction. That would stop all this in its tracks, so
| you have to wonder why they let the privacy stuff go relatively
| unmolested?
|
| The only answer I can come up with is that they fully intend to
| keep violating privacy. Maybe with different companies this
| time? Or different people collecting the money? But in the end,
| we the people are still getting shafted.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It doesn't have to be the way you're describing.
|
| There was a bill a while back to force bill contents to be
| narrowly scoped (I.e. no pork barrel spending). It failed, but
| that doesn't mean we can't push for its passage in the future
| anyway.
| vmception wrote:
| Odds any of it gets out of committee?
|
| It seems a greater priority of this Congress is social reforms
| and the President and VP also have other priorities that are
| keeping Congress' attention
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The EU has a very similar outlook on antitrust and competition
| policy. Some U.S. states are also pushing for enforcement of
| antitrust policies wrt. large Internet platforms.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Pretty good, actually. It's a rare area of agreement between
| the parties that Big Tech has too much power.
| sircastor wrote:
| I think that's the problem though. The parties agree that
| tech has too much power, but they disagree about the how and
| the why, and as a result they're seeking different solutions.
|
| I suspect this will end up like Florida's embarrassing law to
| reduce deplatforming of candidates with weird exemptions
| carved out for favored businesses.
| eplanit wrote:
| Now the negotiations start -- which means FAANG paying off, and
| playing one off the other, each party to water down the actual
| legislation. If they manage to get this passed and signed,
| politicians get to claim "bipartisanship" (or not), FAANG will
| get the regulatory capture they're seeking, and the media will
| convince the public that everything has been done in the
| public's best interests.
| wnevets wrote:
| Regulate ISPs because they have an actual monopoly? Nope, that's
| socialism
|
| Regulate "Big Tech" because they banned inciting violence on
| their platforms? Absolutely, that's freedom.
| tristan957 wrote:
| Strawman arguments like this are entirely pointless, especially
| on HN. Please refrain from making them because it's obvious you
| aren't interested in real conversation.
| wnevets wrote:
| Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were the official HN
| arbitrator on what is pointless or not.
| Thorncorona wrote:
| Regardless, you're being needlessly antagonistic.
| wnevets wrote:
| How so? Ken Buck is against regulating ISPs. My comment
| wasn't strawman, its literally his position.
|
| > When asked about Pai's work to unravel net neutrality
| rules, Buck said: "I support Chairman Pai's efforts to
| free internet providers from burdensome regulations that
| stifle innovation and increase costs for Coloradans." [1]
|
| > The Far Left is attempting to enact their socialist
| agenda by tearing down statues and rewriting America's
| history. > The United States of America will never be a
| socialist country--and we need to celebrate the Founders
| who made our nation so great. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.denverpost.com/2017/12/14/colorado-
| congress-net-...
|
| [2]
| https://twitter.com/RepKenBuck/status/1301540179208007681
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