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Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

Probably because unlike 25 years ago, US lawmakers and enforcers, realized a large chunk of their economic dominance is dependent on big-tech abusing their market position as gatekeepers, so they intentionally look away when they see how much of their GDP these companies bring in, not to mention aiding the US dragnet mass-surveillance capabilities being the icing on the cake.

What else are they gonna do to earn $? It's not like the world is lining up to buy their ultra reliable and high quality cars and planes.

Sorry for the tongue in cheek.

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> big-tech abusing their market position as gatekeepers

No no, you see, that is called “innovation”. And whenever the EU does anything to try to curtail those abuses of power, what they are doing is stifling innovation. Because as we all know, the one thing that matters in life is growth growth growth, particularly company growth, and there’s nothing more innovative than coming up with ways to exploit people’s privacy and attention for profit. And if you can get the ones exploited to rally in your favour, you’ve hit the jackpot. All hail corporate America, let’s raise a glass to the obscenely rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else, that is working out great.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

> the one thing that matters in life is growth growth growth, particularly company growth, and there’s nothing more innovative than coming up with ways to exploit people’s privacy and attention for profit.

But wait, there's more! The only reason growth is pushed for so hard is because most of the investors are retired or retiring soon and don't want to work any more. If the companies stop growing then their stock prices might go down. They gambled hard when they removed pensions from US companies and they can't lose the game before they die!

> They gambled hard when they removed pensions from US companies and they can't lose the game before they die!

Defined benefit pensions and 401k get invested in the same thing.

The difference is that if the stock market dips, you still get paid a pension for the set amount of time (paid out of company profits if it has to). With a 401k, you can watch years of your retirement disappear.

If the stock market dipped permanently, those pensions would not pay either because they are all invested in the same equities.

Hence why the government repeatedly provides a backstop whenever things start to take a downturn.

> most of the investors are retired or retiring soon

Where are you getting this? Baby Boomers are smoothly transitioning their share of stock ownership to younger generations [1].

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

I don't know if you are making a joke, because the data says the exact opposite.

When the silent generation had 55% of the "total wealth" (and declining), boomers had 40% of the remainder, but now boomers have 55% (and climbing, instead of declining), and the younger generations only have 26% (combined).

It looks like they are still hoarding (for lack of a better term) wealth than relinquishing it.

> When the silent generation had 55% of the "total wealth" (and declining), boomers had 40% of the remainder, but now boomers have 55% (and climbing, instead of declining), and the younger generations only have 26% (combined)

One, stock ownership, not total wealth.

Two, boomer share is declining after peaking around 2020. It’s flat-ish as they begin retiring. Gen X got screwed, but the pick-up among Millenials looks like a return to the norm. (Look at the Boomer/Silent share in the 1990s.)

Three, the generation on the precipice of dying, the Silents, are not the chief stockholders. Boomers still have decades to live. They’re not looking to eke out another year or two of growth at the long-term expense of anything, they need that decades-on value to bank on.

Why did GenX get screwed? I though millennials got screwed by the 2009 crash.

Weren't millennials a bit too young to have significant (or even any) amounts invested in the market back in 2009? And then they got live through one of the biggest stock market booms in history (which unlike dot.com didn't just blow up)?

OTH Gen X got a chance to lose their savings during the latter stages of dot.com and then again in 2009.

Many millennials graduated from college and couldn't get a job due to the market crash. So, not only did they not have savings, they couldn't save if they wanted to. Then, by the time a good chunk could have savings and start investing, inflation slapped them in the face. Now, grocery shopping for a house full of kids is downright expensive. Not to mention, the amount of monthly bills a household is expected to pay is 4-500% of what their parents had to pay while wages have largely stayed the same, housing costs are through the roof because boomers want to make sure they get their "investments" back, and so on.

Is the status quo -- US and to a lesser extent, Chinese technology dominance -- preferable for Europe?

All I can think of is where we'd be as a species now, at least technologically, If Microsoft, Apple, IBM or even Commodore and Atari had similar abilities since the 70s to restrict what kind of software developers can make and publish for their platforms...

There have always been walled garden software platforms. Nintendo is a very successful example from the Commodore/Atari era.

Nintendos are specifically gaming devices, though. Smartphones are general purpose computing platforms.

This is an artificial marketing distinction that you’ve bought into. And insofar as any particular apps exist or don’t on switch, it’s purely a result of gatekeeper decisions on the part of Nintendo - Nintendo keeps there from being an email client or an office suite and that’s the reason you perceive it as “just a gaming device”. They’ve gatekept successfully.

This is the problem, there really isn’t a coherent threshold between switch and iPhone or a reason console vendors shouldn’t be equally considered general purpose devices other than marketing. You could plug in some usb peripherals and run office suites on a PlayStation just fine.

> This is an artificial marketing distinction that you’ve bought into

No, nobody buys a nintendo to do banking on them. I bought a phone since I needed it to do banking. This is a real difference, not just a marketing distinction.

> it’s purely a result of gatekeeper decisions on the part of Nintendo

Yes, and that gatekeeper power ensures Nintendo isn't a general purpose device. If they allowed it to be a general purpose device like Apple did with phones then things would be different.

Controlling such a major share of general purpose devices like Apple does is a serious issue. Controlling a share of gaming computing like Nintendo doesn't matter nearly as much, so therefore lawmakers aren't going after them to the same degree. It doesn't matter if technically they are the same, in practice one doesn't cause issues for society while the other one does.

But the most powerful general purpose computers we have are all wide open for development. A lot of us here write software on our laptops and desktops all day and can download and install whatever we want.

I too think it is funny that there is so much attention paid to a mobile device, but then am forced to remember for so so many of today's youngest "users" that mobile device is their only compute device. While you and I might look at the mobile device as just an additional thing that only gets used when away from keyboards, more and more people don't even have a keyboard to be away from.

I'm also much more sane about how retail works, and realize that MSRP vs retail pricing is how the world works. Expecting to earn full retail pricing while selling your wares through someone else's store is just farcical. Developing a product that can only work on someone else's product and then complains about the rules of that other product's maker puts in place is also just hubris.

That's a nice sounding story, but what actually happened was that George W. Bush was awarded the Presidency after a 5-4 Supreme Court vote stopped the recount in Florida, and the Bush DoJ announced a slap on the wrist for Microsoft just a few days before 9/11, which wiped the story off the map, and everyone forgot.

(I'm not suggesting a 9/11 conspiracy, by the way.)

So Bush is to blame for the war on terror AND for failing to regulate Microsoft? Wow, just when I thought that being a war criminal was enough of a reason to be hated, now comes the cherry on top.

I hadn't considered that people might still be complaining about Florida in 2000 in light of 2020.

I don't know what you're referring to by "in light of 2020", but in any case it wasn't a complaint, merely an observation.

The point was that there wasn't a "change of heart" about the Microsoft monopoly between 1999 and 2001, merely a change of power, and one that didn't necesssarily reflect the will of the people, who indisputably voted more for Gore than Bush, regardless of the Electoral College numbers.

It appears that the original comment by FirmwareBurner that I was replying to was edited substantially afterward to change the meaning, perhaps in reponse to my reply, which unfortunately removed some context that made sense of my reply.

what happened in 2020?

accusations by Trump of getting the election stolen from him.

Personally, I think there were shenanigans going on and we should be investigating them but I also feel like the hanging chads was a far bigger issue than the shenanigans that happened in 2020.

I don't believe the election was stolen but I also don't believe it's everyone's imagination that some shady shit was going on in places. I suspect that kind of crap happens every election.

Every election will have some shady stuff going on from all participating parties if it's big enough. But it's important to remember that every election has even more stuff going on that can look shady from the outside, but is absolutely normal on further inspection.

2020 was special because the sitting president (who has accused others of election and voter fraud against him in AFAIR every election he's been part of) has primed his emotionally invested base to expect fraud everywhere. They saw a bunch of things they thought were shady, part of which were caused by unrealistic expectations (e.g. "I can just show up and be Poll Watcher without registering beforehand"). If you are aware of shady going-ons that have not been investigated I'm open to hear them, but all the occurrences I've seen have been investigated and explained - but since many people aren't open to normal explanations, the fraud idea keeps and keeps on festering.

this is a contradiction.

If every election has some shady things happen then it's not possible for every bit of shadiness to be explained as anything other than shadiness.

So was there shadiness or wasn't there?

A lot of it can be explained away, which is why I said the hanging chad issue was a bigger problem. but ALL of it? I don't think so, even at the time there were a few things that gave me pause.

> this is a contradiction.

> If every election has some shady things happen then it's not possible for every bit of shadiness to be explained as anything other than shadiness.

> So was there shadiness or wasn't there?

I didn't say that there was absolutely no shadiness, but I haven't seen evidence that there was more shadiness than in any other election. The "evidence" brought forth for Trumps position that I've seen hasn't held up to scrutiny.

> A lot of it can be explained away, which is why I said the hanging chad issue was a bigger problem. but ALL of it? I don't think so, even at the time there were a few things that gave me pause.

You're free to share them if you'd like. All I'm saying is that I'm not aware of evidence brought forward that holds up to scrutiny, which leads me to believe that there was no significant deviation from the norm - the simpler explanation is that being primed for months by somebody with a lot of sway, combined with the strong distrust in non-partisan media, has led to these heaps of non-evidence (again, as far as I've seen, I'm happy to be proven wrong).

Usually, I would not engage with this kind of conspiracy theory like comments but I think that this particular case has some merit.

We are solid in a gray zone where we have to decide where are priorities are. Fair market vs tech dominance in US is a great example. Another one is carbon neutrality vs strong industry in EU. I’m sure there are so many others.

It is just important to keep that in mind when building your business because we can easily slide from one side of this gray zone to the other.

It's not a conspiracy theory, i'm not quite sure even how that term could possibly apply -- since this describes the ordinary practice of politics.

The modern republican party does not support anti-trust enforcement, or indeed, most executive enforcement of anti-corporate regulations. So when they are in office, there isnt any.

There's been some increasing bipartisan support for anti-tech anti-trust because republicans perceive them to be (largely accurately) biased towards the cultural left.

> modern republican party does not support anti-trust enforcement, or indeed, most executive enforcement of anti-corporate regulations

The MAGA GOP is unsettled on antitrust. Its defining elements, however, are loyalty and a strong executive, so presumably there would be support for antitrust action against those deemed disloyal.

The Republicans would be exposing the thinking that has resulted in them losing almost every culture war battle in the last ... I don't know how long. The bureaucracies enforcing anti-trust will lean left. Eventually there will be a bias of anti-trust action used to break up any companies that look to be helping Republican candidate elected. It'll be these Donald Trump court cases all over again.

What actually works for the right is free markets. Turns out if they just leave YouTube alone they get Rumble. If they ignore Twitter they get X. If Amazon makes a habit of booting right-wing sites, there will be a right wing version of Amazon. There are more than enough right wing media consumers for a free market to reward right-leaning content. Anti-trust will eventually lead to overregulation and lock in of companies hostile to the right in general and republicans in particular.

There is a much better argument for anti-trust to try and defuse the risk of a vast an hasty flash-mob forming and doing something stupid, but as a political response it just isn't going to be effective.

: The Republicans would be exposing the thinking that has resulted in them losing almost every culture war battle in the last

Conservatives always lose cultural battles in the end, that is why they are called conservatives they are the past the future is always progressive. Conservatives have short term victories but long term the conservatives become todays progressives, it is in the definition of the words.

In the sense that civilisations eventually fall, yes. But as a practical matter until someone comes up with a better idea we should all be conserving capitalism, free markets, liberty and equality. Because the alternatives are much worse.

Just because progressives want to change things and change is technically inevitable doesn't mean we can't push the bad ideas out beyond the life of anyone breathing right now.

>What actually works for the right is free markets.

Have this "free market" thing ever been tried?

Take a look at e.g semiconductor industry.

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