
The Monopoly-Busting Case Against Google, Amazon, Uber, and Facebook - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/5/17805162/monopoly-antitrust-regulation-google-amazon-uber-facebook
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ethbro
_" The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that
property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who
insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the
master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must
effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into
being.

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political
activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy
task, but it can be done."_

\- Theodore Roosevelt, "New Nationalism", delivered at the dedication of John
Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, Kansas, 1910

[http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/new-
nati...](http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/new-nationalism-
speech/)

Less easy-to-use and more expensive products are a small price to pay for
freedom and democracy.

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tynpeddler
>Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has introduced a bill that would place an outright ban
on acquisitions by any company with a market cap higher than $100 billion.

This is devious and simple. While I'm sure there are some crazy hoops
companies will go through to dodge the prohibition, I think this is a great
idea. I would prefer to see the market cap dropped to a lower value, and have
the number expressed as a multiplier of the median household income.

That being said, I think a lot of these cases still need work. The uber one in
particular stands out to me. Uber isn't part of a conspiracy to fix prices
with their drivers. They simply hire the drivers for a short term contract to
transports uber's customers. It's also difficult to imagine why uber is a
monopoly, they still face plenty of local competition and in many cases have
been driven out of markets by legislation specifically created to ensure that
uber doesn't disrupt local monopolies.

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mikhailt
I don't think banning the monopolists from buying other companies will work
nor is it fair. It shouldn't be a thing at all, it should be considered as
unfair punishment for natural monopolists. Not to mention, most startups will
fail on their own anyway without being bought out.

One idea I have (or maybe I misunderstand the laws) is to modernize these
patent laws to discourage buying companies simply for their patents. We need
to reduce the length of patents, ban software patents, outlaw the patent
trolls (patents need to be produced or lose it), and for both natural and non-
natural monopolists, make patents globally licensable from them with no
exceptions.

Apple grows and improves its technologies through buying companies, it would
never be able to produce TouchID/FaceID without buying companies that has
patents on the said technologies. If Apple has a hold on the market, it must
be forced to license the said patents to anyone at a fair price.

I'm sure there are cons to this approach but it is not like the remedies shown
in the article don't have problems either.

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moate
The whole idea of breaking monopolies and now allowing a free market is that
after a certain point, you don't want these companies improving their product,
because their "product" just becomes "a whole market segment that large chunks
of the population need".

The natural progression of any company is to get larger and buy up more and
more of the market in order to improve its product, prevent its competitors
from improving their products, and widen its reach. This is the basis of
capitalism. The problem is that because these companies have so much money,
they're able to buy legislation, solely determine market conditions, and
generally stack the odds in their favor (which isn't "wrong" per say, but
isn't always in the common good). They may even do this will continuing to
produce the best product in their sector. The issue always comes down to the
idea of "Who do you trust more to represent the general human population,
corporations or government" and there's good arguments for/against both sides
being the one who SHOULD be the determinate.

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mikhailt
But you can’t be sure that splitting the companies doesn’t prevent them from
doing it again alas Ma Bell > ATT + larger mergers of Bells over times.

I just don’t understand how it helps. It would be nice if you can recommend
any resources I can look at on this topic.

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Apocryphon
Here's one possible case study, Standard Oil:

[https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee120/node/226](https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee120/node/226)

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topkai22
Interesting take on remedies, but I wish it had linked out to a serious
exploration of why the consumer harm standard isn’t sufficient and what would
be future legal grounds to justify regulatory action.

Just outright banning any big company from acquiring another company seems
terribly distortive and unwise.

~~~
UncleEntity
> ...but I wish it had linked out to a serious exploration of why the consumer
> harm standard isn’t sufficient...

Because being a monopoly isn't illegal and (from TFA) companies like Amazon
benefit consumers through lower prices.

Basically they have to invent a crime to fit the deed.

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ethbro
Such is the fallibility of laws written by humans.

The writers of the relevant laws (~1900 - 1950, from memory) were all pre-
digital networking, just as the writers of the Constitution were pre-
corporation (~1850, royal charters ignored).

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jnordwick
Amazon is almost the opposite of a monopoly - they literally seek out highly
competitive markets with the slimmest profit margins.

Uber has plenty of competition in Lyft and current taxis. You can't
simultaneously complaint about Uber driving down prices and then call for
anti-trust regulation of them.

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mc32
Yes and no for Amazon. If Walmart/Jet would offer some competition.

Facebook, not sure they can be broken up reasonably (what parts?) but perhaps
they should be regulated as a utility, to some degree.

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topkai22
You could break off the network itself from all the other businesses,
including the ad business. The network would then have to provide a regulated
interface to all advertisers, with strong regulation of what data they are
allowed share and target.

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mc32
That’s not a bad thought, though i doubt it’ll come to fruition.

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jnordwick
And Apple doesn't make the list? The millennial rag says it is because the
firm is "too much of a conventional retailer".

BS. It didn't make the list because the guy writing the column probably has an
iPhone and iPad. Amazon is far more of a conventional retailer than Apple.

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nappy
Agreed - a ridiculous omission. Imagine if Microsoft in the 90's tried to
exert an appstore level of control over all software that could be installed
on Windows? And took a 30% cut of revenue!

~~~
favorited
Microsoft had a monopoly on the PC market in the 90s. Apple doesn't have a
monopoly on the smartphone market today.

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rohit2412
How about premium smartphone market? Apple is worth a trillion for a reason,
it is a monopoly.

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gregknicholson
Apple isn't a monopoly. You can very easily avoid using their products and
services if you want to.

It's much more effort to avoid Google, Apple and Microsoft all at once.

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mothers
Is there a word for the strange behavior many have around defending large
corporations? I know there's Stockholm syndrome but this appears to be more
nuanced.

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xky
I like how the Google products I use work together and worry that a broken up
Google would worsen my user experience.

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mrep
Also, if you cut off things like youtube and maps, I'm pretty sure they would
collapse in bankruptcy as they are almost certainly not net profitable by
themselves.

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lovich
Do we want company's to dominate an industry because they are pumping in money
from their domination in another industry? A unprofitable business is a
failure and should be replaced by other firms with better business models

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Apocryphon
It's almost as if antitrust is pro-competition and pro-capitalism!

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gregknicholson
> pro-competition and pro-capitalism

Surely those two are incompatible.

Capitalism is the principle that you need capital to pay for things. If you
have more capital than a competitor, you can sustain losses for longer, until
your competitor runs out of capital to pay for things like food and has to
stop competing.

The principle of capitalism leads to competition, but it's necessarily only
temporary. Eventually, capitalism inevitably leads to lack of competition.

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adamnemecek
I was always intrigued by the word antitrust. It was first used in 1890 in the
US. Is it possible that someone screwed up and didn’t realize the word for
this is distrust?

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ISL
A trust is a thing. Antitrust is a contraction of anti-trust.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_\(business\))

~~~
toomuchtodo
It's also helpful to understand history, and therefor the origin of antitrust
law.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antitrust_law)

