Comment by wormer

4 years ago

It's literally capitalism. It's the system that Google was allowed to thrive in and become this powerful.

9 comments

wormer

Reply
peaslock  4 years ago

Power concentration is inevitable regardless of the system because in order to enforce decentralization you would need to, well, concentrate power.

Our best bet is to shame those using products of unethical companies.

  • bambax  4 years ago

    Anti-trust laws are enforced by the state, which is a legitimate concentration of power.

    Unfortunately the state has dropped the ball about anti-trust, thanks to stupid economic theories from the Chicago School of Dumbfuckery. Those are the main culprits for the shit we're in.

  • qwery  4 years ago

    So we should shame all the users of Google products, in this case? I'm not sure that shame really works like that and especially when (I assume) there are billions of people using the same products. There's a somewhat lower number of entities controlling the company -- maybe a more effective target.

    Plot twist: (maybe) Xyz is (not) an (un)ethical company, so we should establish some sort of authority on ethics with a malleable but firm framework to guide the consistent -- and proportional to the unethics in question -- application of shame to the people using the products.

  • wormer  4 years ago

    Google isn't a government entity, it's a private company. Had there been more restrictions on what tech corporations (and corporations as a whole) could do, power could have been limited by the concentrated power of government. The issue here is that Google can dictate how we live our lives so heavily without any of its users having a say on how Google and its services should be run. The promotion of Laissez-faire capitalism here in the US promoted Google's growth into it's current position.