re: Trump threatening to use anti trust laws against companies he doesn’t like is wrong

I’ll take that as a yeah

I have already spoken to that twice in this thread but I understand not wading through the shallow insults. Just know that is the extent of the abilities of those posters.

Obama should have been impeached over the IRS abuse of his enemies.

quote:

---

Seems Trump threatened today to investigate Google, Amazon and Facebook for anti trust violations.

This is big government run amok and I am very disappointed a republican president would threaten private companies like that. It is like FDR.

There is nothing right about it.

---

You're myopic / intentionally blind to the greater picture as usual in your arguments.

Linking a relevant article from Feb 2018 in Esquire, titled "SILICON VALLEY’S TAX-AVOIDING, JOB-KILLING, SOUL-SUCKING MACHINE", written by a tech industy insider who has been a beneficiary of Google, etc. It advocates the need to bust up the big tech companies.

LINK

In one instance, as the article states, it was curbing the Microsoft monopoly, when they were trying to crush Netscape Navigator and others with IE, that allowed Google and others to get the oxygen (money & marketshare potential) that allowed them to survive and thrive, and "unleashed trillions of dollars in shareholder value". This is the spirit of antitrust laws-- not constraining success, but making sure those who succeed don't throw down the ladder behind themselves so that others can't climb up as well.

If they (the FANGs) are competing fairly, then I'm sure they'll survive antitrust action. If not, maybe they'll be broken up or be subject to some sort of regulation that evens the playing field. And to be perfectly clear, they don't compete fairly. The article cites an instance or two where they intentionally mis-represented facts in potential deals to regulators, then after the deal, they had to pay penalties for their deceit. If true, this is proof that anti-trust action is potentially warranted. It's worth repeating: antitrust laws are not about constraining success. And they aren't about taking something away from someone to give it away to someone else (like socialism/communism). These laws are about creating fair opportunities to compete in the marketplace. Companies that cheat to expand through mergers and who enjoy unfair tax advantages create an unfair marketplace.

Now that the FANG companies have dominated their markets and have a similar or greater marketshare to what Microsoft had, is it unreasonable to say they shouldn't face the same constraint that Microsoft faced in order to make room for new competitors? After all, they are effectively wiping out the middle class in several industries, and are creating a very small percentage of people who own everything, reducing the rest of us to serfs. Do you disagree with how the article addresses that point?

If I invented a better idea/product than Amazon or Google, what chance would I possibly have given the unfair advantage they have? Their existing marketshare advantage would be hard enough to overcome without even getting into unfair tax advantages (I think the article cites roughly a 14% tax rate compared to 27% tax rate of others in the S&P). Further, Google and Facebook would flat out rig the game against me and bump my product right off the first page search results or shadow ban me in some way or another, in the same way they do political voices they disagree with. And it would be roughly impossible for me to do anything about it, except to sell my IP to them when I could no longer afford to fight... assuming that the government sponsored Chinese IP theft machine didn't already hack me and overwhelm me with the assistance of the FANGs as a favor for more leeway to operate in China.

There's really only one thing you allude to that has any validity at all: Trump has gotten pissed off at the political interference that the FANG and other big Silicon Valley companies are running to unfairly give more attention to Democrats-- both by directly supporting them and by silencing / shadow banning the right. That still doesn't make him wrong and it doesn't even make him unethical.

That's pretty much how the world works: you notice a problem, you become irritated, you act. Take any issue, left or right and that's how it works...

- Conservative leaning people think illegal immigrants not contributing much, if anything, to pay for infrustructure and health care, while sponging off of it and driving costs up for everyone is a problem.

- Progressives see a gun used in a school shooting and think automatic weapons should be banned.

Notice the pattern? People start caring when they notice a perceived problem, then they want to act. Trump is no different. Trump may not have realized how pervasive the reach of the FANG companies had become until they started manipulating their power to influence politics. That the FANGs are censoring the free flow of information to citizens is a huge problem. It also just happens to be how they brought the rest of their unfair practices to Trump's attention. Now he knows and is thinking about acting. Absolutely nothing wrong with that in practice or thought.

So, my short-sighted friend, not only are you wrong in saying there's nothing right about it, there is actually a lot that's right about it. And Trump is far from the first person to even bring this topic up.

quote:

---

president would threaten private companies like that.

---

Publicly traded companies now are private?

quote:

---

Publicly traded companies now are private?

---

Are they not owned by their shareholders?

You can support Trump's actions, but this isn't the hill to die on.

Teddy Roosevelt is one of my favorite Presidents and he reigned in "capitalism" in order to save it. Regulatory capture and corporatism are real, and I've heard zero Republicans do anything about it. The GOP has zero accountibility on this issue, IMO. Outside of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, I'd trust zero Republican Senators to vote against corporatism, and they are hated by their fellow Republicans for it.

And since that's the case, if anti-trust laws are a way to bring accountibility to those issues, so be it. It's better than the status quo, IMO.

know you and Elizabeth Warren are on the same side of this issue.

It's scary you have to define that for someone that can vote.

quote:

---

They're a private entity in the sense that they are not owned by the government or are not a government agency.

---

So the kind of entities that are under the umbrella of the antitrust laws. Weird, I say.

quote:

---

know you and Elizabeth Warren are on the same side of this issue.

---

That's possible, and I wouldn't care. She's largely a fraud, but even she is probably right once in a while.

I also can't help but notice you're not going to take me head-on with the argument, but will try to obliquely attack me by suggesting I'm on the same page as Warren. I hate to disappoint you yet again, but even though I'm fairly conservative, I don't hate people on the left side of the aisle and would consider voting for a decent Democrat. There just aren't many-- if any-- that are decent. Republicans may not be much better, but the Dems tend to be much worse and want to over-legislate and rouse mobs with fear.

Notice the fine point in my longer post-- legislation shouldn't constrain success. It shouldn't be about taking stuff away from the rich to give away to the voters you made dependent on you. It should be about fairness and equal opportunity. I actually doubt Warren would agree with me, but if she's mouthed something approaching that, good for her.