Hacker News Reader

Comment by neel8986 | Hacker News Reader

There are other companies including Walmart or Amazon having larger revenue. But what truly exceptional is Apple's net income. Trailing 1 year is almost 100B !! Only Saudi Armaco can touch that

View on HN

Its fascinating to watch US corporate sector catch up to state sponsored or partially nationalized entities. Like wow, what a powerhouse. Taking hundreds of years of the corporation concept to do it, but make a country whose culture is only that and its working in that regard.

Apple, Google and Microsoft are all arguably partially-nationalized entities. They aren't literally owned by the government, but our government does wield it's unfathomable economic power to push US-based tech companies to every corner of the globe. It's a sad, perverted form of imperialism, but I consider it partial-nationalization none the less.

This is a really bizarre take on what a nationalized or even "partially-nationalized" might mean. I could argue Apple is more impeded in its capabilities and growth by the US govt (anti trust concerns, labor relations concerns, tax liabilities, etc) than it is directly boosted. If it's just a benefit from being a US based corp... that's not at all nationalized?

Can you give an example of how the US government has made other countries use products from those 3 businesses?

Not sure if it counts, but one of the main reasons US big tech is big is bc it was largely sponsored by federal reserve stimulus over the past 14 years.

Did the tech companies in question receive federal reserve stimulus over the past 14 years?

I find it hard to believe that the businesses selling the highest profit margin products and posting the highest profits received stimulus funds.

A likelier explanation for how big tech got big is that they delivered something of very high utility to people around the world and it has low marginal costs and high barriers to entry for competitors.

Stimulus isn't a huge part of it, but it's hard to deny that the US has ample safety nets for domestic business. The larger problem is our Laissez-faire attitude towards tech regulation and already predatory consumer practices. The US government has had considerable oversight over Big Tech for at least a decade, but it refuses to roll out consumer protections when Democrats or Republicans are in office. The European market balks at the stuff Google and Apple get away with, and rightfully so. Our regulators, legislators and executive leaders all turn their backs on software distribution and internet regulation because it makes us so much money! The US lives or dies on the health of it's economy, it should be no small secret that our leadership will keep these companies on life support as long as they can.

This is utter nonsense

That's more subtle than that, and probably closer to how French treat their wine business for instance.

An example of gov intervention: banning Huawei as it was rising as a global phone maker, international tarriff negociation (the whole stupid tarriff war happened as China was rising as high end device exporter), protecting Apple's business when challenged on anti-trust grounds (Apple's open stance to the judge was "we need extortion to make money, let us keep brinig money in"). In doubt, look back at these photos of Tim Cook cringing next to Trump because he can't just say no.

How is that an example of US government influencing other countries’ purchasing decisions?

The US has been pushing and is very vocal about its partners not using Huawei.

They might be right, but it's super hard to determine where good intentions stop and self interest starts.

The push against Huawei started in Australia as we started to deploy 5G. Our government essentially banned our telcos from installing Huawei equipment.

The UK had set up a different approach where Huawei exposed their entire stack to UK security authority scrutiny.

The "Five Eyes" security alliance (US/CA/UK/AU/NZ) basically then decided that they didn't want Huawei "inside" the 5G network, partially because of oversold promises of what 5G would enable.

There is a new "cold war" between the US (and the "West") and China and a realignment of alliances since the 2nd term of Xi began and he started rolling back the opening up of China's economy.

This has accelerated after the crack down in Hong Kong and the sabre rattling about Taiwan.

That's a pretty straight example: https://www.cnas.org/press/in-the-news/u-s-campaign-to-ban-h...

(Original source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/us/politics/huawei-ban.ht...)

They’re partially actually owned by the Swiss central bank which literally creates francs just to purchase tech company shares with that form of funny money

And yet, I don't say these companies are anything else than they are

There are many forms of sovereign ownership and influence in them, who cares

I actually agree with you. The point I'm trying to make is that these companies all have strange benefactors with their own agendas. Some people are out to make money, other people barter for power, and larger institutions yet make bids for surveillance capacity and government contracts.

It's beyond the understanding of your or I, and probably anyone. The relationship between these stakeholders is too complex to accurately dissect, but their actions speak louder than press releases.

Aramco

Reply on news.ycombinator.com