Giant companies are the security holes of capitalism. The more centralized industries get, the more they attract socialist political activists. The Bolshevik Revolution was a violent version of this vs. railroad stations, newspapers, etc. Now activism is focused on tech giants.
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Replying to @NickSzabo4
Capitalism would provide security and competition, but just as with unions these big corporations only exist as a result of violence backed government favor. The socialists sense a real problem - corruption, but their solution is more corruption and government power.
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What is the barrier to entry to compete with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube... Can we really blame the state here? Isnt the network effect more significant?
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Replying to @_willish @WeathermanIam
It very well could be. The blame game is not nearly as important as the reality of the vast and dangerous political power now in the hands of the tech giants, and the fact that this power is attracting censorious activists and regulators whether that violates principle or not.
4 replies 8 retweets 66 likes -
Replying to @NickSzabo4 @WeathermanIam
Oh I totally agree. In a way, I hope this gets worse so that it weakens their own dominance. We need open platforms and a reason to switch. Also saw this as an opportunity to contest JW's point of view that monopolies can only exist with state backing.
1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes -
Replying to @_willish @NickSzabo4
Publicly traded companies can buy smaller companies and instantly have the revenue of the smaller company 10x more valuable. Why? Because public companies benefit from many government favors. For more on why monopoly requires government violence see:https://mises.org/library/human-action-0 …
2 replies 0 retweets 20 likes
This is a huge factor, glad you brought it up. Googl fb aapl all have made over 100 acquisitions each in the last few years. This oligopoly is actually detrimental to the PPF in terms of total possible market cap. Consider if ig, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc were public.
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