Elizabeth Warren vows to break up tech giants if elected in 2020 | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Warren vows to break up tech giants if elected in 2020

bbc.co.uk

35 pointsedward23 comments

Ugh. I am a person who accepts that government sometimes has an appropriate role in regulating things. Sometimes.

And I am not an unquestioning fanboy of any of the three mentioned companies.

But she seems to be aiming in the wrong direction.

First, we should err on the side of letting markets be free.

But if there is anything that deserves intervention, broadband monopolies are a much bigger problem imho than getting Amazon out of Whole Foods. And even worse, the combination of broadband companies getting control and ownership of content, to the extent that they are no longer dumb pipes, but they become interested in using content to extract top dollar in every scenario, with consumer unfriendly practices like bundling and walled gardens.

The fact that we can't have decent broadband at good prices in the US is, to me, a much bigger problem than Google owning Waze. Or Facebook owning WhatsApp -- which actually seems like a good thing, since it being in house could get Facebook on a faster path to good encryption, assuming their professed interest in that is sincere.

If you want to regulate Google, regulate their privacy practices. If you want to regulate Facebook, regulate the way they enable hidden players to influence elections. If you want to regulate Amazon, well, just keep them out of the broadband business because owning both the pipes and the content is bad for consumers.

So tired of having clueless candidates.

I don't think she's clueless, because you can't take what she's claiming at face value. She's saying what's fashionable with the Democrat voting base. Anti-business has long been part of the platform.

That’s a cheap political shot and even if it were true (democrats are actually pro business, they’re just pro sustainable business) then the whole point you are missing is that the choice of which businesses to target could be better imho.

At this point, it looks like they are going to say anything that appeases even the slightest subset of voters. It's sad really.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with big companies. The problem occurs when those companies begin to lobby for exemptions and loopholes that minimize competition at the expense of the general public.

I have a dark fantasy in which politicians need to post collateral for their campaign promises.

For example, "I'll break up Google while in office, or else I'll have my right arm amputated."

In that fantasy, politicians would think much more carefully before knowingly making hollow promises.

Then they'll produce a gun on their right side and saw it off when caught in a lie. That's politicians for ya.

If nothing else, I see that as the future of game shows- win the Hawaiian vacation or lose your house. Not to self-promote, but I suspect you might lovelovelove some of my points here, because I explored comparable logic:

https://nilskidoo.blackblogs.org/monkey-wrenching-the-americ...

Or they could put money in escrow. Which reminds me, I keep wondering why Trump doesn't just pull some of his own billions out of the bank to fund his wall, since Mexico won't pay (surprise). If it's true that he wants to keep his promise, and it's true that he's so rich, he could do it. Apparently one of those two things is not true.

By breaking the up the US tech giants, don’t we just get stronger tech giants from Asia? So in the global sense, we’d just have even bigger giants.

Yes, it would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

While I agree with her that some giants have too much power over users and may deserve some regulation or provide access to competitors and while she may find sympathetic ears in some of employees, I’m afraid this is a bit quixotic against management of said behemoths.

Since - in a fair system - they also only get one vote, it should work out. Of course, we know that with unlimited political spending, the system is not fair.

This is interesting because it's a classical liberal proposal, but I'm not sure who's really in favor of it.

There's the traditional anti-monopolistic liberal argument for it, but then there's also an anti-elite populist argument that I think has greater strength on the right than the left.

I suspect that many of the people who believe this is a good idea would basically never vote for Elizabeth Warren.

This proposal is strategic. We are currently in the run up to the primaries. In the general election, she would lose if she stuck to such a platform. But in the primaries, she is only competing for Democratic votes. With the rise of AOC and others like her, the evidence shows that anti-capitalist ideas are playing well among Democrats.

So the Democratic primaries in today’s environment are a race to the far edges of the left, and this seems like a reasonable strategy to win that race. She would have to use a different strategy in the general election, and my guess is she will quietly abandon this platform if she wins the nomination.

There's something decidedly unsavory about a politician promising to break up media companies. Some of the companies she's threatening play a huge role in the modern election cycle.

That seems like a really big target to paint on your back this far out...

True, but considering how crowded the Democratic presidential field has become staking out some high-profile positions might be a good idea.

She’s using the Trump strategy of extreme policy proposals as a way of drawing out a base that is sufficient to win in a highly crowded field.

Was there ever anything similar done? Only thing I recall was the weird AT&T split [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

Standard Oil is probably the classic example, and also somewhat similar in terms of a monopoly position having coercive effects on markets (although in this case it's oligopolies rather than a monopoly). Anyway, that one comes to mind, but I am fairly.confident that if you look it up, you will find a good deal of examples of antitrust and antimonopoly laws being applied.

Does the presidency have a legal instrument to actually accomplish this?

Absolutely- antitrust actions have split up large companies before. If Warren appoints people to the DoJ who want to do this then it can happen.

For some historical precedent check out the Bell System breakup-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

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