The movement to breakup big tech

Joel Kotkin:
If ever any group had it coming, it’s the giants of the tech industry. The recent decision by the Trump administration to look into monopolistic practices by the tech oligarchs—talk about collusion!—represents a welcome change from over two decades, under both parties, of sucking up to these firms as they bought up competitors and consolidated market positions that would put the likes of John D. Rockefeller to shame.

As in the gilded age a century ago, the tech industry epitomizes capitalism run amok, with huge concentrations of wealth, power, and control over key markets, like search (Google), cellphone operating systems (Apple and Google), and social media (Facebook/Instagram).

We have been accustomed to think of technology entrepreneurs as bold, risk-taking individuals who thrive on competition but now we know that it is more accurate to see them as oligarchs ruling over an industry ever more concentrated, centrally controlled and hierarchical. Rather than idealistic newcomers, they increasingly reflect the worst of American capitalism—squashing competitors, using indentured servants from abroad, colluding to fix wages, and dodging taxes while creating ever more social anomie and alienation.

The Valley, as one observer puts it, has taken a “reprieve from the bogeymen in the garage.” That is, while the tech giants peddle the tired meritocratic myth that there’s some genius in a garage this close to replacing them—if that genius could still afford a garage in the Bay Area, at least—in fact, they simply buy out or price out new competitors.

The industry’s influence flourished most under President Obama, where Google’s presence, for example, was all but ubiquitous, with nearly 250 people shuttling one way or the other between government service and Google employment, and dozens of others going between the search giant and his campaign operations. Needless to say, the search giant had little to fear from corporate lawyer Eric Holder’s Justice Department, which was more interested in delivering politically correct homilies than protecting consumers or small businesses through anti-trust actions.
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There is more.

The tech industry lost support from the right when it started using its monopolistic power to squash conservative speech.  That has happened at both Facebook and Google.  The only real question I have is whether breaking them up will open their platforms to free speech by conservatives.  That might require regulations and if Democrats came back to power would they use the regulations to suppress speech of conservatives?

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