
Big Tech: The New Predatory Capitalism - uoaei
http://prospect.org/article/big-tech-new-predatory-capitalism
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sharemywin
enegry, food, healthcare? is there a segment of the economy that couldn't use
a little less market concentration.

~~~
nathanaldensr
I believe that's the _real_ issue. Anti-trust enforcement has all but vanished
in the past couple of decades. It seems government is simply no longer
interested (or perhaps _paid_ to be disinterested) in breaking up big
companies. I'll go further and say that they are actively encouraging monopoly
in certain cases (read: healthcare). The disastrous effects of this lack of
enforcement are now becoming quite clear.

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djhworld
> _A potentially bigger shift involves making data portable. Guy Rolnik and
> Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago proposed in a recent New York
> Times op-ed that social media users should be able to re-route all their
> messages onto any platform, the way phone calls are re-routed regardless of
> whether AT &T or Verizon is the provider_

> _In the 2001 AOL-Time Warner merger, the FCC forced AOL’s market-leading
> Instant Messenger (AIM) to be compatible with chats from rivals._

I'm not sure how this would work these days. Looking at my Dock right now I
have Slack (some open source communities use this for some reason, I also use
it at work), Textual for IRC (freenode), Discord (some other open source
communities use this, and gaming communities), WhatsApp (personal use), Skype
etc

I remember common protocols like XMPP back in the day, but it looks like the
closed systems have won hearts and minds

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memco
I know with Slack there is an IRC bridge option (though I've never used it as
I only recently started using slack for work). I think there's possibly
bridges for discord too. Point being that if you want to consolidate you
probably can. Back in the day I used to Adium, which consolidated all of my
relevant messaging services into a single app. I didn't use AIM or MSN or
iChat's apps ever; I simply added credentials to Adium whenever I needed.
Perhaps third party services could fill the gap here as well. They don't all
have to use the same protocols so long as they all have similar levels of
access and someone is willing to support the integration.

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testouts
Most advanced healthcare , most surplus of food, variety and abundance of
energy. Capitalism has made the most abundant and highest quality of products.
Its ok if people cant afford certain things, its called costs. Surgeons are
not slaves.

~~~
dopamean
I love this idea that asking people to not become filthy rich off of needed
services is somehow equivalent to enslavement.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Everyone has their motivations for their career choices and for some that
motivation is being rewarded with wealth. Would we end up with a surgeon
shortage if they were expected to only do it out of a sense of duty to their
fellow man? Unfortunately the only way to truly know is to risk a reduction in
the number of surgeons by removing wealth rewards. The obvious problem is that
if the result is indeed less people motivated to be surgeons, healthcare
outcomes for many will suffer.

~~~
dopamean
My one off comment doesn't really do justice to how I actually feel about the
issue. I'll explain. No one should feel obliged to work for less than what
they're worth. This is something my wife and I talk about lot actually. I just
have a strong distaste for the hyperbole used when someone does suggest that
someone else work for less. Particularly, if the person being asked to give
something up has so much to begin with.

To address your example about surgeons. Perhaps they wouldn't need to same
amount of "wealth rewards" if somehow we made it cheaper for them to become
surgeons in the first place? Could the cost of their training be addressed?
Changes to how malpractice insurance works?

