[HN Gopher] Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech? - B...
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Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech? - Big by Matt
Stoller
Author : Jerry2
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-06-25 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mattstoller.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mattstoller.substack.com)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very
| global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are
| broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just
| provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those
| ecological niches?
|
| The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished
| nothing but enabling foreign replacements.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.
|
| Couldn't the US President just decide that they should be
| banned if they don't sell to an American company?
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/21/915043052/trumps-tiktok-deal-...
| deegles wrote:
| This sounds like a great conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, I
| think this is one of those cases where incompetence is a better
| explanation than malice.
| reidjs wrote:
| Don't you think monopolies are bad, though? Maybe they're
| convenient, but it's better to spread wealth around, right?
| [deleted]
| WalterBright wrote:
| What if the result of breaking up US monopolies is their
| replacement by non-US monopolies?
|
| How is that better?
|
| I'd think very, very hard about crippling US companies in a
| global marketplace. So far, I don't even see any discussion
| about it.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Considering how many of those big tech companies rely on
| pushing ads, does it really matter whether they're based in
| the US or not? Either way, they're revenue is from selling
| out their users.
| Jcowell wrote:
| For tax reasons , probably yes.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If foreign monopolies take over then the US government
| should ban or regulate them in the same way that domestic
| companies are regulated. Foreign monopolies may (or may
| not) dominate global markets, but I think that concern
| should be lower priority than the health of our own markets
| and the well-being of our citizens.
| majormajor wrote:
| So this assumes that most of the the prospective component
| companies themselves are not very competent, and that their
| size and leverage from the dominant units is all that gives
| them market power.
|
| That, I think, is probably a pessimistic view - Gmail being
| split off from Google Display Ads and Google Search wouldn't
| make me any less likely to use Gmail, say. But it would also
| open the door for US companies to replace them, not simply
| foreign ones. It's not like countries that crack down on the US
| services have produced many _better_ companies good enough to
| compete in the US to date.
|
| I'd accept the risk of some new dominant players from other
| countries in exchange for limiting the risk of misuse of market
| power and increasing the chance of new US competition to arise.
| Competition from inside or outside the US should make the
| encumbents better. Stagnation is what will let them be replaced
| by disruptive newcomers.
|
| EDIT: I think a more likely risk is that we lose some money-
| losing "free" services that are basically loss-leaders, maybe
| even some vanity project ones. I would LOVE to replace some of
| those with paid products that a more healthy company could grow
| around, with better user-facing incentives.
| pydry wrote:
| I assumed people generally thought the opposite was true - if
| you let them grow fat and bloated US tech monopolies will lose
| their ability to compete internationally.
|
| Relative to its size, the highly consolidated US car industry
| isn't a great exporter, for example, and even required bailouts
| to survive.
| dundarious wrote:
| I'm highly skeptical of that prediction. The EU are hardly
| slouches with respect to anti-monopoly actions. Chinese and
| Russian companies are subject to intense fear-mongering (not
| that every criticism is invalid) and are unlikely to take the
| place of FAANG. And I don't foresee other Asian, African,
| Middle-Eastern, or companies from UK or the Americas achieving
| huge monopolies before actions could be taken against them.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| What do you think about ByteDance? The crown jewel of social
| media no longer belongs to the US.
| majormajor wrote:
| TikTok is a curious one. The Chinese service appears to be
| a completely separate content silo. And Musical.ly grew in
| the US without needing antitrust action against FB or Snap
| or anyone else, in the same way that those companies
| displaced others. The bar to entry to that marketplace is
| already low, I don't think it's really relevant to
| discussions around Amazon or Google or MS or even Apple.
| dundarious wrote:
| Are you referring to TikTok as the crown jewel? I don't see
| how that description fits. Regardless:
|
| * Where's the monopoly? TikTok is one slice of the social
| media pie, unlike Facebook's ownership of
| Whatsapp/Messenger, Facebook.com, Instagram (with its
| Snapchat lite features).
|
| * What are ByteDance doing with TikTok that's different
| from what US companies do with their social network data?
| e.g., Twitter. As a side-note one could argue Twitter aqui-
| killed Vine, setting the stage for TikTok.
|
| * If desired, couldn't the Biden administration immediately
| return to the Trump-era policy of requiring ByteDance to
| sell a substantial part of their TikTok business to a US
| company? Which is a remedy that US companies complain about
| when China does it.
|
| I see far fewer problems with TikTok's associations with
| China than I do with Facebook's ownership of many slices of
| the social media pie, never mind that the US has many
| 3-letter agencies hoovering up data from US owned social
| media networks, even about US citizens (at the very least
| all it takes is an interaction with a non-US account for
| the US account data to be considered fair game).
| zsz wrote:
| Chinese entities seem to be treated like a special case /
| emerging market/industry, by even the most senior E.U. member
| states. This is in contrast to the U.S. / U.S. entities,
| which are viewed / treated as a mature (i.e. low/no-growth)
| market.
|
| The linear outcome of this ongoing state of informal
| submission is a rise in effronteries / audacious behavior at
| the official, international level, such as
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/12/philippines-
| wi...
|
| "China has said it will not accept a ruling against it in a
| key international legal case over strategic reefs and atolls
| that Beijing claims would give it control over disputed
| waters of the South China Sea.
|
| The judgment by an international tribunal in The Hague came
| down overwhelmingly in favour of claims by the Philippines
| and is likely to increase global diplomatic pressure on
| Beijing to scale back military expansion in the area. By
| depriving certain outcrops of territorial-generating status,
| the ruling from the permanent court of arbitration
| effectively punches holes in China's all-encompassing "nine-
| dash" line that stretches deep into the South China Sea."
|
| Five years later, it appears the case was quietly forgotten
| by all.
|
| * * *
|
| Or how about this, more recently:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
| france...
|
| "... members of the French Senate demanded answers at a
| hearing with the foreign minister as to why an article they
| said was fake and cast them in a bad light was still up on
| the Chinese embassy website [...] In the post, an unnamed
| diplomat suggests that careworkers in Western nursing homes -
| using the French term EHPAD - had abandoned their jobs,
| leaving residents to die."
| cryptica wrote:
| Because this tired old argument has been made far too many
| times.
|
| These companies have become bloated and become a liability to
| the US and the dollar... Soaking up all the newly printed money
| and wasting it on bureaucracy whilst depriving everyone else
| from capital. Monopolizing user attention for the benefit of
| other aging, rotten, decrepit, bureaucratic corporations. They
| were producing big nominal gains through hoarding of newly
| printed money but rotting the economy from the inside. Good
| riddance.
|
| If the reserve banks want to restore faith in the US dollar,
| they have to prove it works.
| zepto wrote:
| > Because this tired old argument has been made far too many
| times.
|
| Perhaps if people listened, then it wouldn't need to keep
| being made.
|
| > They were producing big nominal gains through hoarding of
| newly printed money but rotting the economy from the inside.
|
| It isn't obvious how this statement relates to tech companies
| in any way.
|
| How for example is Apple hoarding newly printed money?
| creato wrote:
| I think this is a pretty absurd take. These companies are
| highly profitable and highly visible to the average person,
| but in terms of revenue, they aren't outliers among the
| largest companies. They aren't disproportionately impacting
| "the US dollar".
| djrogers wrote:
| > . Soaking up all the newly printed money and wasting it on
| bureaucracy whilst depriving everyone else from capital
|
| The total market cap of all of these companies is far less
| than the 6-8T that's been printed in the past year alone, so
| I don't see any evidence of that assertion.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| This all sounds nice, but it still has to make it through the
| rest of congress
| novok wrote:
| Wish these bills would kill clauses like "most favored nation" as
| far as pricing goes, anti-steering laws and forcing side loading.
| Making the pricing premium for using a platform naked would give
| a direct financial & choice to consumers to go towards the most
| price efficient venue.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| Democrats don't like big tech because it's composed of big
| companies, and big companies are bad. The bigger a company gets,
| the more bad stuff it can do by sheer accident, that all gets
| attributed to malice.
|
| Republicans don't like big tech because the employees are
| overwhelmingly liberal, and they have idiotic notion that these
| companies are suppressing their views - when in reality,
| companies (looking at you, Facebook) have bent over backwards to
| allow conservatives to spread lies and hate on their platform.
|
| Seems like a no-win scenario. The second these representatives do
| anything at all about the telecoms I'll believe this is anything
| other than politically motivated. Hope you are all ready for us
| to cut off our nose to spite our face, and cripple the global
| competitiveness of the only American industry we lead the world
| in.
| veerabadhra wrote:
| The anti trust break up of AT&T led to disruptive innovation,
| like mass produced cell phones. I personally can't wait for the
| AI revolution that will occur when Google is broken up. The Big
| Tech incumbents need to die out, because innovation stagnates
| in these monopolies.
| wittycardio wrote:
| Google and Facebook are amongst the most important sponsors
| of scientific research in the world. Why would you want to
| destroy that. The internet is a winner take all industry ,
| all things considered the current winners are pretty good.
| Why ruin that for narrow political goals
| iammisc wrote:
| > all things considered the current winners are pretty good
|
| Quite literally, the representatives of >50% of the country
| disagree with you.
| wittycardio wrote:
| Yeah for the political reasons outlined by the original
| posters. I happen to think those are bad reasons , me
| being in the minority does not necessarily make me wrong
| dnissley wrote:
| How much consideration do you think the average
| representative put into their decision?
| dantheman wrote:
| AT&T was a government granted monopoly - it was illegal to
| compete with them, it's not at all relevant.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The government made it illegal to compete with AT&T. Their
| monopoly position was not the result of free market
| capitalism.
| jessaustin wrote:
| That "break up", especially when considered together with the
| Act of '96, was a long con. Outside investors poured billions
| into "competitive" telcos, yet today the replacement for Ma
| Bell is two Daughters Bell plus a few scattered also-rans. In
| the meantime they got rid of common carriage, lots of PUC
| rules, limits on broadcast monopolies, etc. The monopoly
| profits they stole on the wireline side funded their anti-
| competitive merger spree on the wireless side. We don't have
| to wait for the inevitable merger between ATT and VZN to call
| this a giant failure.
| snicker7 wrote:
| We also lost Bell labs.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > innovation stagnates in these monopolies
|
| Bell Labs managed to come up with a couple of interesting
| things, though.
| dnissley wrote:
| If there's one thing to be said for the incompetence of our
| government, it's that at least they will be unable to actually
| follow through with this plan. Truly ludicrous.
| thih9 wrote:
| I wonder how the "break-up bill" would be applied in practice for
| specific companies.
|
| Does that mean that e.g. Apple Music would now have to become a
| separate entity?
| snicker7 wrote:
| It means that "Apple Music" cannot rely on an "online platform"
| (large online service) owned by Apple.
|
| A more practical example is that Google can't run its ad-tech
| services in GCP. And Amazon cannot run its online store in AWS.
| They could, however, use each other's cloud. But not their own.
| Mirioron wrote:
| So Google has to run a second cloud service that's only used
| internally?
| ehnto wrote:
| That's interesting. I would say we wouldn't have AWS if
| Amazon couldn't have built it by scratching it's own itch.
| But also, couldn't Amazon just spin up an "internal" AWS
| style system, instead of using a competitors cloud service?
| [deleted]
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| This is clearly needed, even if late, considering that antitrust
| laws are not a new thing.
|
| There is hope, we tend to forget after only a few generations,
| but if politicians are moving now this is because the collective
| opinions about big tech progressively shifted during the last
| decade.
|
| I might be naive, but I think that HN played a role.
|
| And of course this is not over yet.
| dantheman wrote:
| This is clearly not needed.
|
| The citizens of the US are being harmed in education both
| primary and secondary, medicine, and in housing. These are
| heavily regulated industries that recieve large amounts of tax
| dollars - why are they not being addressed?
| mrDmrTmrJ wrote:
| Strongly agree. We're seeing legislation target the sector of
| the economy with some of the highest productivity ever seen
| in human history.
|
| Congress needs to look at the sectors with the lowest
| productivity growth! Home construction, infrastructure,
| health care, and eduction.
|
| Here's a great place for congressional investigators to
| start: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-
| american-c...
|
| Though, in reality, many those industries are high cost
| _because of congress_
| fmajid wrote:
| The Tech monopolists are not the entire Tech sector, in
| fact they are a very small portion of tech employment (and
| thus productivity). Their rent-seeking behavior stifles
| innovation and competition, and they coast on the hard work
| of non-monopolists, e.g. Apple's outrageous 30% cut on app
| developer revenues.
| LarryEt wrote:
| IMO "monopoly" is possibly an outdated idea.
|
| The real problem here is the natural preferential
| attachment that emerges with tech companies at this
| scale.
|
| "A preferential attachment process is any of a class of
| processes in which some quantity, typically some form of
| wealth or credit, is distributed among a number of
| individuals or objects according to how much they already
| have, so that those who are already wealthy receive more
| than those who are not."
|
| I don't know how we deal with this in the modern world.
| IMO we need to at least start with network science on the
| table and realize we do not have the answers if using
| outdated ideas.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| You just defined what a monopoly is without using the
| word and proposed banning it after saying banning
| monopolies is outdated.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'm sticking my head out a bit here given that this is
| HN...
|
| But I largely attribute the high productivity of tech to
| the simple nature of software as opposed to the tech
| industry being comprised of the most productive workers and
| efficient management.
|
| The flexibility and efficiency of software is _insane_
| compared to even just the hardware side of it, much less
| medicine or home building.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Sure, but what does it matter? The US played its cards
| right and got a thriving tech industry, whereas many
| other countries did not. Whether it came from individuals
| or regulation or the nature of software isn't super
| important.
|
| Being in the position of having dominant global tech
| conglomerates be American has immense value. Do we want
| to preserve that, or destroy it?
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| I agree. It's also "new," so there is more room to find
| opportunities to improve productivity.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Tech companies currently have more more influence over the
| mental and emotional education of our children than any
| school could.
|
| You seem to be misunderstanding the issue as "these
| businesses are doing poorly" instead of "extreme
| concentration of power in the industries that control huge
| swaths of people's lives is bad."
| oliwarner wrote:
| Big Tech is in every pocket. They monitor and influence the
| 3-12 hours a day of screen time the average adult subjects
| themselves to. They can themselves, and can be paid to
| influence the way we think, shop and live, in ways we keep
| refusing to acknowledge or confront.
|
| Yes, other things are also broken! Let's fix those too.
| aurizon wrote:
| Perhaps they saw how the big national monopolies, like Siemens
| and BASF and Samsung, and Sanyo and . became stultifying
| nepotistic monopolies in various fields, and when faster and
| quicker more innovative US companies came along that ran past
| them - and seeing this, decided to have a way to limit these
| monopolies. Look up Standard oil monopoly for some aspects,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil That is the wiki and
| here.... https://www.investopedia.com/insights/history-of-us-
| monopoli...
| tk75x wrote:
| That's a nice sentiment, but I don't believe politicians and
| regulators have enough foresight to see past their nose.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Targeting the FANGs and not the banking system and telecoms is
| super annoying.
|
| The amount of damage the banking system can do to the economy is
| orders of magnitude greater than FANGs can, as we recently
| witnessed.
|
| And the telecom regional monopolies that suppress competition and
| block municipal broadband have much stronger competitive moats
| than the FANGs do.
|
| The government needs to address those first, but they seem better
| at lobbying than the FANGs are.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is a distraction / what-about.
|
| The focus is not on damage to economy from FAANGs.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Banking and Telecoms pay their lobbying tax and their old-media
| advertising tax. Its a pretty simple protection racket they
| grew up with. FAANG thought they'd be allowed to operate
| without it. They're not. As soon as they pump some money into
| both parties and buy some ads they'll be fine.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _The ACCESS Act mandates that big tech firms have to make their
| systems open to competitors and business rivals, in the same way
| that AT &T customers can talk to T-Mobile customers, or users of
| different email systems can communicate with one another._
|
| Okay, this is plausible, but it can turn into all kinds of mess
| as federated systems aren't simpler to design, build, or operate.
| For example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact
| with say, Facebook Messenger? They'd have to do a matrix.org
| style bridges, which is going to be super tricky to maintain, at
| their scale. Hardware is doomed: USB-C for all inter-connects...
|
| > _The merger bill makes it harder for big tech firms to buy
| rivals._
|
| Well, the race to $2T market cap just got harder. Can get behind
| this. I can do without Zuck in my WhatsApp, or Satya in my
| GitHub. Such a restriction may, instead, result in a marked
| increase in venture investments from BigTech, which may not be as
| bad a thing, after all?
|
| > _The nondiscrimination bill is intended to ban the ability to
| big tech firms to preference their own products, the way Google
| substitutes its own reviews for Yelp reviews, even if Yelp's
| reviews are better._
|
| Much needed. Looking at you "Amazon's choice".
|
| > _The break-up bill is supposed to split apart big tech firms by
| prohibiting platforms from owning any line of business that uses
| that platform._
|
| Affects tech companies ranging from AWS and Stripe to platforms
| like Android and iOS? This bill can be the straw that breaks the
| camel's back, imo, if they get the details right. Either the
| incumbents remain entrenched because of the loopholes, or they no
| longer wield undue advantage, leaving some breathing room for
| upstarts. Unsure if this is good or bad for software engineers.
| They've enjoyed higher salaries for a while on the back of some
| of the most ridiculous growth ever seen, driven in no part by
| unabated monopolistic practices.
|
| > _And that is truly stunning._
|
| Indeed.
| ehnto wrote:
| > Hardware is doomed: USB-C for all inter-connects...
|
| I am down for a standard, it doesn't matter which one it is, so
| long as it's consistent. Mostly it's for power distribution, I
| want every single one of my devices to be able to draw from a
| USB battery bank.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Either the incumbents remain entrenched because of the
| loopholes, or they would no longer wield undue advantage,
| leaving some breathing room for upstarts. Unsure if this is
| good or bad for software engineers.
|
| There are always unintended consequences, but it seems like it
| would be good in that if there are more upstarts there should
| also be more jobs for software engineers. The pay may
| (probably) won't be like what it is in FAANG companies, but not
| everyone can work for a FAANG company.
| ehnto wrote:
| Not everyone would want to work at a FAANG company either. I
| have quietly hoped for a redistribution of software resources
| for a while, it's not a practically thought out hope. I just
| feel like the worlds software talent could do better work in
| more interesting and varied fields.
|
| I also think it would lead to more innovation. How many
| engineers aren't working on their own ideas because the
| insane salaries at big tech would be stupid to give up? I
| don't blame someone on 200-500k a year for just sitting tight
| and soaking up the dollars. 500k a year is as much or more
| than a successful small business owner, and you don't have to
| take on any of the risk.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| As someone who has never worked for a FAANG company, nor
| wants to (FB recruiter email I got this morning will go
| unanswered) the mind boggles at these $200K-$500K salaries.
| If I were making a salary in that range I'd think it would
| be possible to retire after about 5 years if one was
| frugal.
|
| > I just feel like the worlds software talent could do
| better work in more interesting and varied fields.
|
| Agreed, but I'm not sure how these measures will do
| anything to provide more interesting work. It would
| probably just be more of the same, but more different
| companies doing it.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >If I were making a salary in that range I'd think it
| would be possible to retire after about 5 years if one
| was frugal.
|
| We have our fair share of 30 something's on here already
| eyeing their exit. Nice mountain home, fun side projects,
| and perhaps some consulting here or there.
| rpmisms wrote:
| > For example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee
| intact with say, Facebook Messenger?
|
| I think a judge is going to have to do a _lot_ of homework on
| this law to come up with a realistic interpretation.
| jasode wrote:
| _> as federated systems aren't simpler to design or build. For
| example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact
| with say, Facebook Messenger? _
|
| You may have used Signal as a random example but as side
| trivia... The _non-profit_ Signal Foundation 's Moxie
| Marlinspike did not want others to federate with Signal
| servers:
| https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
|
| He said others could re-use the Signal source code and create
| their own ecosystems but to not federate with Signal's servers.
| He cited _costs_ was one issue.
| cobookman wrote:
| > how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact with say,
| Facebook Messenger?
|
| Couldn't you use Public Key Cryptography? Kind of like what
| we've done for encryption between the Web Browser and Service
| Provider using PKI+TLS (HTTPS).
|
| Such-as...say each chat network having a certificate authority
| which crypto-signs each end-user's Public Key. With PKI used to
| encrypt messages between users. A 4096 PKI key can transmit
| 4KiB of data, which should be enough for most chat networks.
| For attachments or very large messages, can just copy how TLS
| uses PKI to transmit an AES key for decrypting a larger
| payload.
|
| The user's Private Key(s) can remain on phone/browser. To keep
| traffic e2e encrypted.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Does the ACCESS act require sane pricing/lack of technical
| hurdles?
|
| For example, AirPlay requires HW chips that aren't actually
| needed and could be done in SW. This gives Apple a non trivial
| economic advantage in the BOM of their products.
| [deleted]
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >For example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee
| intact with say, Facebook Messenger?
|
| Would it be the worst thing if these went away and were
| replaced with open protocols that do the same thing? I say go
| back to systems that work together and tear down the walled
| gardens.
| Jcowell wrote:
| >> > The nondiscrimination bill is intended to ban the ability
| to big tech firms to preference their own products, the way
| Google substitutes its own reviews for Yelp reviews, even if
| Yelp's reviews are better.
|
| Oh god please no. I've been waiting years for Apple Maps to
| lose drop the gosh forsaken existence that is Yelp into a
| burning sun.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| One of the things that I would love to see would be the ban of
| all those acquisitions that those large firms do. Yet alone the
| 9bn USD MGM takeover by Amazon was not understandable.
|
| Amazon is already too huge. Why are those aqcuisitions allowed?
| wvenable wrote:
| MGM is dying so they really needed to be acquired or otherwise
| invested in.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I hear what you are saying and agree but wonder if this would
| have the effect of stifling the creation of new companies as so
| many people start a company with the hope of being acquired.
| viraptor wrote:
| Oh no, what will we do without the companies running on
| funding, without a viable business model, trying to get more
| monthly active users by any means. /s
|
| I don't think this approach has been healthy for quite a
| while. It may be an actual good thing that companies think
| more about long-term independent survival.
| fmajid wrote:
| Stoller makes the excellent point that Congress will also need to
| rein in the judiciary and notably the Chicago School
| "interpretation" (neutering, really) of antitrust law perpetrated
| by Judge Robert Bork (he of Nixon's infamous Saturday Night
| Massacre) in a stunning act of judicial activism and caprice:
|
| https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/robert-bork...
|
| (this is a conservative publication, by the way, hardly one you'd
| expect to be unfavorably biased against Bork).
| psychlops wrote:
| They weren't tithing enough money to the right people?
| musicale wrote:
| Just imagine what the internet would be like if we hadn't broken
| up the AOL/CompuServe monopoly on online services!
|
| As they said in 1997, "The reality is that AOL is cyberspace."[1]
|
| This is an interesting perspective btw on how the Microsoft
| settlement set the stage for the rise of Google, etc.:
|
| [1]
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/6/17827042/antitrust-1990s-m...
| zsz wrote:
| How will breaking up the biggest U.S. tech firms not make them
| more vulnerable to Chinese influence -- where, notably, the
| biggest firms like ZTE and Huawei have already since at least
| 2012 (i.e. based on E.U. agencies reports at the time) been
| receiving tens of billions (in USD) of funding, specifically for
| the purpose of outcompeting foreign (i.e. primarily western)
| contenders? Notably, at the time (I believe around 2012) it was
| found that Huawei and ZTE were backed by $30 billion and $15
| billion in government financing (via central bank), respectively.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| I don't understand this movement at all. It seems very, very
| short sighted and also misdirected. The most toxic marketplace
| and social elements of some of these companies is their business
| model, not their scale/size.
|
| Breaking them up into pieces doesn't fix their deleterious
| business models and only opens the door for non-US entities who
| remain scaled/vertically-integrated to become the dominant forces
| in the market. Either that or this will necessitate passing
| future protectionist legislation to keep out foreign competition,
| which I'm both skeptical is actually a good idea in general or
| that the US has the actual resolve to do so.
|
| What problem is supposed to be solved by breaking these companies
| up? It doesn't make any sense to me, and I say this as someone
| who is generally deeply disturbed by much of what is enabled by
| some of these firms, so this isn't an endorsement of these
| companies. It's an indictment of the approach.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| Clearly needed and a positive, but I see zero impact on stock
| prices of those companies. Does that mean the expert consensus is
| that this will simply not pass the next levels, or that it is all
| ineffective?
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