It's inevitable: whenever I talk about the need to curb concentrated power in the tech sector, someone comes along to ask why I only care about tech - why not do something about concentration in telecoms or entertainment?
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That's not wrong, but it's not right either. Yes, telecoms and entertainment are grotesquely concentrated and abuse their monopoly power to the great detriment of the rest of us.
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But no, gunning for Big Tech does NOT mean that we're not gunning for Big Content and Big Telco, too.
The idea that these monopolized industries are somehow keeping each other in check - rather than colluding to screw the rest of us - is wrong. Google did an anti-Net Neutrality deal with Verizon. And all the tech and content companies illegally fixed wages between 'em.
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I fully believe that some of the money and energy for breaking up tech is coming from astroturf campaigns run by ISPs and movie studios and record labels - but they're betting that if we break up Big Tech, that'll be the end of it.
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Like trustbusting is Thanksgiving dinner, something that leaves you so satiated that you can't even think about going back for second.
That is so wrong. If history teaches us anything, it's that trustbusting is like potato chips, and once you start, you can't stop.
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"If we're gonna make it through this monopolistic era of evidence-free policy that benefits a tiny, monied minority at the expense of the rest of us, we need to demand democratic accountability for market abuses...
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"Demand a pluralistic market where dominant firms are subjected to controls and penalties, where you finally realize birthright of technological self-determination."
eof/
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The "Tragedy" hoax said that moving land from collective ownership "rescued" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who cared for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":
Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.
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But *unsubscribing* from Prime? That's a fucking *nightmare*. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave.
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Even Google admits - grudgingly - that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business.
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Today, results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):
Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner" is manufactured far from the company's Seattle headquarters, in a non-union shop in Charleston, South Carolina. At that shop, there is a cage full of defective parts that have been pulled from production because they are not airworthy.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Boeing's 787 "Dreamliner" is manufactured far from the company's Seattle headquarters, in a non-union shop in Charleston, South Carolina. At that shop, there is a cage full of defective parts that have been pulled from production because they are not airworthy.
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Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Monopolies are intrinsically destabilizing and inevitably implode...eventually. Guessing *which* of the loathesome monopolies that make us all miserable will be the first domino is a hard call, but Ticketmaster is definitely high on my list.
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It's not that event tickets are the most consequential aspect of our lives. The monopolies over pharma, fuel, finance, tech, and even beer are all more important to our day-to-day.
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