It's kinda funny, because it's effectively saying that they want to nationalize tech companies for being successful.
https://blog.scorchedweb.com/technology/supreme-court-on-con...
Was that because they got big, or was it because they were granted a government monopoly?
The first one. Natural monopolies exist. This libertarian talking point of "there wouldn't be monopolies without government intervention" is lunacy.
Can you provide the legislative history that supports this? According to wikipedia airlines, cell phone companies, cruise ships, and shipping companies operate as common carriers, even though none of them are controlled by monopolies.
> Natural monopolies exist. This libertarian talking point of "there wouldn't be monopolies without government intervention" is lunacy.
I'm not a libertarian, but I can still see the difference between "it would be really expensive to lay another set of phone lines" and "the state forbids you from laying another set of phone lines".
No, I'm not a lawyer/historian.
> According to wikipedia airlines, cell phone companies, cruise ships, and shipping companies operate as common carriers, even though none of them are controlled by monopolies.
Airlines, cruise ships, and shipping companies, do not own the 'land' (in the georgist sense) that they traverse, so they're just completely irrelevant to the discussion.
As for cell phone companies, you may remember that a certain company known as AT&T was famously broken up into dozens of smaller companies (that have since re-congealed). Also those companies are legally required to interoperate with each other, ie: your T-Mobile phone will "roam" on AT&T's network.
> I'm not a libertarian, but I can still see the difference between "it would be really expensive to lay another set of phone lines" and "the state forbids you from laying another set of phone lines".
As far as I'm aware, the state, does not forbid anyone from laying another set of phone lines or railroad lines or roads, for the same reason that it doesn't forbid anyone from violating conservation of energy.
Got big.
But why would it matter? Govs suck at accountability, I wouldn’t expect that to factor in now.
However, I also don't count any current social media entity as a monopoly.
This seldom aligns with the public's interest. For many (most?) companies, only the rich have any voting power, whereas the majority of the population just has to follow along.
Publicly traded companies are like a democracy where you get more votes the more money you have. The implication here is that your voice/needs are only important if you're rich, and are unimportant if you're average or poor (which kind of explains why the US is the way it is).
But, the actual incentive structure of "who controls the corporation?" is not shareholders, whose ownership is a) so diffuse as to be unknowable, sans documentation from a stock exchange b) very often held by proxies, with voting rights exercised by those proxies as well [1], c) nearly impossible to coordinate, even when the majority of shares in in private hands, and d) frequently bought back and owned by management itself. Looking at this structure, one can say that the actual control of the corporation is held a) by the people that manage it, b) by the people that capitalize it (not the same thing as stockholdership) and c) by the people that regulate it. c) is very clearly the government. You could make a very good case that b) is indirectly the government as well, since it comes from banking institutions who receive money to lend from the federal government, or rather, the ability to create debt.
My point is that, given the diffusion and non-coordination of ownership of a publicly traded company, combined with the effect of regulation, (and if you know anything about regulatory capture), the coordination of regulation with the large interests being regulated, public corporations may be treated, quite reasonably as public.
[1] Something to the tune of a fifth of all shares of Fortune 500 companies are held by Blackrock, Fidelity and Vanguard, as a part of how they issue index funds. These financial institutions are the ones who execute the voting rights on those shares, not the people who bought the index funds. See: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/11/the-new-power-bro...
In any case, I've never received anything other than json, xml and csv. Jag är inte svenska, though.
It's not saying that at all (nationalising companies is a very specific action that doesn't have anything to do with what you described).
That said, I don't agree with your premise which appears to be that this is bad. Converting something that is basically a utility already (i.e. everyone uses it and everyone expects to be able to. It's almost unthinkable to have daily life without it) to a nationalised company would be a good thing.
I am part of that group. I am willing to accept a free-for-all till a company reaches a certain size as far as its user-or-customer base is concerned: something between the population of New Zealand and that of Australia. Beyond that it should be answerable to the people.
I also think supranational corporations should either be banned or very tightly regulated.
Oh very much it is. Come to the lovely Eastern Europe and see for yourself how good national owned companies are. Full of useless bureaucrats put there to ensure voters so the ruling party can continue ruling. Also in huge debts which are paid by more taxes so the working people pay for the lazy.
Unless the human race somehow chains itself to selflessness, nationalization + democracy is a sure way to destroy any organization. Now privately owned is not much better but in theory can be replaced with a competitor. Not so much for a national organization.
Source: Living and suffering daily in Eastern Europe.
Privatisation of the British railways was a disaster, and the creeping privatisation of the National Health Service is a disaster in the making as well. As far as I'm concerned, when we're talking about well-understood, national-scale services, private sector almost always starves the service out of greed or is outright incompetent.
The US has basically been a communist country since the 70s when it passed the ADA requiring businesses not only to serve the disabled but spend money to make sure disabled people can access their services.
There’s basically no difference between the US and the USSR ever since.