Hacker News Reader

Comment by vtange | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't a breakup/decentralization of Google, or any American multinational for that matter, just hand Chinese tech giants a massive advantage since the Internet as it is now heavily favors large, centralized organizations? I don't see people arguing for the breakup of the tech giants across the Pacific even though they hardly have a better reputation when it comes to privacy, etc.

By the way, I highly anticipate that the above argument will be made by said multinationals to prevent said breakup/anti-monopoly moves.

View on HN

> By the way, I highly anticipate that the above argument will be made by said multinationals to prevent said breakup/anti-monopoly moves.

Zuckerberg made that argument months ago, surprise, surprise:

https://www.recode.net/2018/7/18/17584482/mark-zuckerberg-ch...

> Mark Zuckerberg says breaking up Facebook would pave the way for China’s tech companies to dominate

Not a surprise, this is the same argument the oil industry has used for decades to oppose any kind of anti-oligopoly legislation. Basically they state that the US curbing the size of oil companies will adversely impact national interests in the Middle East and in other regions.

does that invalidate the argument?

It is a fallacy. If having a oligopoly is bad for the economy, it doesn't matter what other countries may want to do. Why weakening your economy, to satisfy the desires of an oligopoly, will be any better?

For the local national economy, an oligopoly seems possibly worse. On the international stage, it seems blindingly obvious that breaking up your local oligopoly to compete with larger foreign oligopolies or stated owned corporations is worse.

Fundamentally, this is all about negotiating power, and the whole point of breaking up a monopoly/oligopoly is to reduce its negotiating power. But that's clearly a problem when interacting with foreign companies not subject to the same anti-trust action, and will have much greater negotiating power.

This is complicated, and the argument is not a fallacy.

Following your reasoning, we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries... In other words, lets kill the competitiveness of the local economy, so that other countries won't be able to do just that. This is similar to the soldier who decides to commit suicide so that the foreign army won't have the chance to do so!

I believe you just described South Korea.

You have a point. I'm just pointing out the argument you responded to is not a fallacy, it's a real concern as well. I honestly don't know what I would do if I had decision making power on this issue.

> we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries...

This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them. In part, precisely because most of their competition is fragmented and paralyzed by infighting.

> This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them.

if that is the case, then the US has no grounds on requesting the Chinese to open their markets for US firms! If the US is itself committed to empower their oligarchic companies, we should not be surprised if the Chinese create their own mega companies and close their market to the American ones.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that if we go the path of supporting mega companies, then we should just throw away the illusion of free market and understand that other countries will do the same, because they're not stupid.

> If the US is itself committed to empower their oligarchic companies,

I think this is a silly strawman and you probably know it. This argument exists on a wide spectrum, at one end is "not acting to break up large companies", and at the other is "outright state owned enterprises with unlimited funding to compete abroad". The fact that the argument applies to both does not make them the same.

It is not a strawman when we're talking about the US trying to "protect" giant and unhinged companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, ExonMobil, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs. In fact what happens is the opposite, these companies are in large part controlling the country, which puts us in a similar situation as the Chinese.

It's not binary like that. having an oligopoly in O&G is a negative for local economies, but it allows for more effective pricing in international markets. not only does that mean more American O&G is purchased, it means less (Russian or Syrian or Venezuelan) O&G is purchased, which is a strategic goal and may be more important to American goals than competition within local markets

The same may or may not be true of search engine or other technologies, but to look at it from a black and white perspective is not helpful.

To echo the point that decentralization of big tech might be an advantage to foreign powers, wouldn't multiple companies be harder to monitor in their exchange of IP across state lines?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com