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Apr 23, 2020 Robert B. Reich

伯克利—十九世纪晚期的美国镀金时代始于一系列创新——铁路、钢铁生产、石油开采——但成就于“强盗大亨”所拥有的巨型信托，这些资本家用他们的财富和权力驱逐竞争对手，并腐化美国政治。

现在，我们处在第二次镀金时代——半导体、软件和互联网的镀金时代——一小撮科技巨头成为新的强盗大亨。如今，Facebook和谷歌主宰着在线广告市场，而报纸、电视网络和其他新闻媒体的广告收入不断下降。

谷歌占了美国互联网搜索量的三分之二，“谷歌一下”早已成了常用动词，其主宰力可见一斑。2006年，谷歌收购了世界最大的视频网站YouTube。Facebook则在大约15年的时间里收购了70多家公司，包括Instagram和WhatsApp这样的潜在竞争对手。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 9 Comments on this article

Ben Piper Nov 13, 2020

About time this conversation was started.
Preferential treatment of the IT sector to retain an economic edge over less developed economies may have helped us weather post industrial decline in the western economies -but giving carte blanche for companies to essentially ‘pollute’ and distort our cultural and political ecology is just as bad as letting mine tailings pollute rivers or railway bosses to exploit cheap labour-different times -different industries -same problems that need addressing with updated versions of the same remedies - anti trust worked before -it needs to be re-booted to work again.
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Leo Arouet Oct 22, 2020

One of the best articles written. Facebook has withheld information on Russian manipulation in the US elections. If you talk about China in their network they censor you, however they do not censor false content or foul language. Google spies on you.
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soozward May 18, 2020

Big tech is only one of the areas that have lacked antitrust enforcement. Big banks, big airlines, big pharma and hospitals are other areas that require antitrust enforcement. Big tech can be regulated as a public utility.
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Michael Public May 18, 2020

A foolish idea. They function on the network effect. If there were 22 different Facebooks they would be near useless. Unless you cut the undersea cables, US users will just migrate to foreign firms without such restrictions.
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New Cavendish May 18, 2020

Generally speaking, this is exactly right. Monopoly power per se was historically the target of the Sherman and Clayton Acts, and should be again (i.e. antitrust law should be de-Borked). It may be that Amazon and Facebook are natural monopolies, in effect utilites; if so, and that requires more analysis -- and perhaps more attempts at competition after breaking them up ? -- they should be strictly regulated as monopolies, not allowed to go into businesses competing with users of the monopoly, and generally subject to public scrutiny, much as other types of utilities were regulated in the '50's. But it should be stressed that the deficiency of antitrust law today is not just (or even primarily) a matter of the tech companies: it's a pervasive problem throughout the economy and thus new measures should be of general application, not just aimed at tech. Concentration is a problem in many industries, including meat (as we have learned!); pharmaceuticals (including abuse of patent monopolies and appropriation of public development investments); physical retail (Walmart, etc.); and airlines (if any survive). This is part of the overall need to re-regulate the economy after the destruction of regulation (including environmental, health and safety, workplace, nursing homes, public lands, etc.) by the Trump administration.
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Dallas Weaver, Ph.D. May 18, 2020

I don't understand. Institutions with much greater power of government-created absolute monopoly and total control over huge sectors of the economy and technology development have demonstrated their evolution of institutional incompetence with political impunity. If you want to see an institution that has "amassed a dangerous amount of economic, political, and social power, owing to their sheer size and market dominance" while evolving into institutional incompetence just note the FDA.

The FDA is abusing its monopoly power to maintain their fiefdoms and power by slowing, preventing, and legally shutting down rational responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus issue. Even the New York Times has noted how the FDA's shutdown of testing in the state of Washington may be harmful to our society.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/coronavirus-testing-seattle-bill-gates.html?smid=em-share
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Joe Ryan May 18, 2020

The cases are distinct.

Pipelines like internet service providers are natural monopolies that should be strictly regulated as if they were government-owned.

Facebook as a forum comes close to being a natural monopoly since the network externalities are so strong, but competition from a public option is an alternative to regulation or ownership as a public utility. Perhaps an inferior option, however, as is being discussed in the case of single-payer medical insurance.

Amazon as a forum for vendors is a great service but is impossibly compromised by conflicts of interest. Here is where anti-trust policy is appropriate. As in the case of Microsoft, the best policy relative to Amazon is to forbid the manager of the forum from selling anything on the forum. (Of course, when the Bush-Cheney administration came in, remedies went soft in the Microsoft case, but the record of the private discussion is there to support thinking about Amazon.)

Google's search facility and browser have plenty of competition but bear monitoring for restraints of trade behavior. A credible threat of treble damages should do the job, in principle.
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