So what do you think is the main issue here? And what’s the most likely solution(s) to work? Is it a matter of regulation or consumer awareness? Do we need more laissez faire in our capitalism?
Curious to see what people think, and why.
One thing that's frustrating and perhaps part of why it gets posted about so often is that it does not have to be that way and the underlying internet itself is not that way. So if you grew up on the early internet you have some (perhaps rose colored) memories of a better way. Or even looking at models like Wikipedia, (or for some people crypto but I tend to be suspicious of toll booths cropping up in that ecosystem too.)
Problems like this can theoretically be regulated away? It's hard for me to imagine.
Unsophisticated regulators working on nuanced problems often write policy that unintentially stengthens incumbents. Maybe if you had some really good regulation you could do it that way.
The other option, I think the better option. Is for people (some of which I'm sure are on this very website) to build software that does what it says on the tin really well rather than exploiting people (like Wikipedia).
The other thing you have to do is come up with a survivable revenue model. Here, you unfortunately have to be an idealist. Wikipedia for example takes in massive amounts of money in donations every year. However, that is a tiny amount of money compared to what they would make....if turned on ads on Wikipedia for one day (thanks for not doing that Jimmy!)
Another way would be to not settle for idealism and find a better revenue model than advertising and toll roads. This could really be it's own undertaking to solve the problem. Don't estimate how hard that is though or just how profitable those models are.
But that's not the question; if you want to remove them, here is what you do
As with everything, if something costs more, people will do less of it.
Tax the rich (seriously, 50-80% tax rates for major companies like Amazon and Google), and fund the poor. All our portfolios will shit themselves but we'll get good roads, no homeless, and healthcare. If you started to get into the higher tax rates, we might even see free college and a UBI
Some of the big tech companies are sort of an open secret in this area. People make extravagant salaries for jobs that are perhaps less than extravagant in terms of value.
Multi-billion dollar companies are little command economies and fail in similar ways. They’ll grow into AT&T style behemoths and fail. I’d venture to guess that Amazon will be first - they hide lots of turds in growth and have massive capitalization requirements. Once that growth slows, boom.
2. It's the government's responsibility to check on monopoly and break them if needed.
[0]: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S1529-20....
* Weaken IP
* Hold executives accountable for company actions (put them in jail if warranted)
* Rework the tax system to avoid the offshoring of profits and other tax loopholes
All the usual stuff that won't happen with regulatory capture
For example if 3rd party digital app stores are forced on Apple, then they should be forced on everyone including Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft as well. Additionally they should be forced on Epic too, which has a monopoly on selling cosmetic items in Fortnite.
It's hard to see how we could do less given that they are barely regulated right now.
>There are the recent and obvious examples like Apple’s case with their App Store
I know they get a lot of criticism here but they seem the most benign to me. On the desktop their market share is tiny compared to Microsoft and even for phones Android is on as many phones (in the US, much more so in the rest of the world).
Meanwhile Google dominates in search, MS dominates in Office, MS/Amazon have carved up web services between them, Amazon dominates in online consumer sales.