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Comment by littlecranky67 | Hacker News Reader

> “free market” in the US gets more corrupt by the day

The US has a strong history of antitrust laws and splitting up companys for free markets sake. The globalization as well the digital markets change this, and its perfectly rational for the US to do nothing. Breaking up big tech would be in the interest of the consumer due to increased competition, but its not in the interest of US citizens. In the digital world we live in, competition could come from within the EU or China and that's worse, also due to geopolitical interest of the US. It is just smarter to live with the few oligopolists, as long as all of them are American.

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Out of interest, when was the last time a company was split up in the US? I can’t think of one in the last ten years.

I think AT&T in 1982 was the last company actually broken up. It seems like the DOJ tries to keep companies from getting too big in the first place now, with mixed results. In recent times Penguin/Random House/Simon & Schuster was blocked, AT&T/T-Mobile was blocked, but Microsoft/Activision succeeded

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

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/01/judge-blocks-penguin-random-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobi...

With China coming up decimating many USA companies in eastern side, all these doesnt matter much. Do you matter what happen to Japanese or German companies? Bankrupted and outcompete by Chinese companies in the last 5 years? Well same thing now happening to many American companies on that side and European too. So having American companies splitting up at this point would give the Chinese side even more advantage to outcompete with way stronger resources in Brics.

Well my point was, globalization and digital markets lead to US companies making revenue (and abusing their market powers) worldwide. This has been going on for longer than 10 years - so doesn't make much sense to ask for a timeframe of the last ten years. If you go back 20 years, what Megacorp existed back then that needed to be broken apart?

Microsoft, honestly.

So the US is becoming more like china where all big companies are inseparably tied to national interest?

it has always been that way though, hasn't it ?

whether from boeing, howard hughes, lockheed, at&t, ford and general motors.

the pharma companies.

case in point united fruit company -- resulted in many coups in latin american countries due to banana wars

Interesting take, thanks for sharing. Wouldn't this behaviour (neglecting smaller companies) not hurt the US in the long run?

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