Comment by safety1st
1 month ago
Only competition can provide a solution. We have lost sight of this principle even though all Western democracies are built on the idea of separation of powers, and making it hard for any one faction of elites to gain full control and ruin things for everyone else. Make them fight with each other, let them get a piece of the pie, but never all of it. That's why we have multiple branches of government, multiple parties etc. That's why we have markets with many firms instead of monopolies.
There has never been a utopian past and there will never be a utopian future. The past was riddled with despotism and many things that the average man or woman today would consider horrific. The basic principle of democratic society is to prevent those things from recurring by pitting elite factions against each other. Similarly business elites who wield high technology to gain their wealth must also compete and if there is any sign of them cooperating too closely for too long, we need to break them up or shut them down.
When Apple and Google agree, cooperate, and adopt the same policies - we are all doomed. It must never happen and we must furthermore break them up if they try, which they are now doing.
>There has never been a utopian past and there will never be a utopian future.
I wouldn't call it utopian, but I'd say we are way past "peak democracy" at this point.
There was a time in which corporations did get broken up when too large, when we did understand that it's about serving the population first and accumulating wealth after that, when corporations influencing politics was widely seen as a negative. It does seem to me we are now way past that.
There's no reason why democracy can't peak again and reach new heights. But that won't happen automatically.
Personally I think there are technological preconditions for stable democracy that have recently been countered by authoritarian leaning technology. We need to invent counter technology to those things.
There is no authoritarian leaning technology. People figured out how to create 1984 while saying they defend free speech.
It is simply that, eventually, people learn how to use technology to their advantage.
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I disagree that there's a technological solution to late stage capitalism and the slow death of liberal democracy.
New technology doesn't change anything about social institutions - the most powerful groups before the technology was invented simply own the technology after it's invented and use it to further cement their power.
I think the luddites were on to something. We don't need technology, we need humans doing things a little differently, maybe even doing bizarre things like setting factories on fire. Personally I hope we can try other things before setting factories on fire, see Keith McHenry's version of The Anarchist Cookbook for peaceful resistance solutions as well.
The point is though without a restructure, new technology doesn't liberate, in fact it further entrenches existing power structures.
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I think everyone would have a problem with the type of domination exhibited by Apple & Google, if they understood it.
There are many voters who are not well versed in tech. You can see this reflected in the kinds of politicians that win, and in the types of issues they are (and are not) fighting over.
It's up to us to make the issues clear and simple.
And when was this utopia in your opinion? This sounds like rosy retrospection to me.
Or are you talking about a very specific industry, because the thread sounds like it is all society or "Late capitalism" which I disagree with.
I don't believe there was any utopian period in the past, but in US history, the Gilded Age had a lot in common with our current day (corruption, centralization of wealth and power, stemming from new technologies). And it was followed by the Progressive era and then the New Deal which were distinctly more populist in nature. Those were the eras of American history where the US got serious about anti-trust and unionization respectively.
In fact true competition is only possible via open standards, protocols and technology stacks.
We need agreement to ensure the large corporations adhere to these.
We don't need agreement for this. In the past, hardware was limited, and you could only really implement one (maybe two) network stacks before things got silly. Nowadays, a software-defined radio can speak ten thousand protocols, for a lower cost than saving a cat video to your hard drive.
We only need that the standards are open, and described clearly enough for a schoolchild to implement, and that we are not prevented from adding additional protocol support to systems we acquire.
Hardware protocols are a bit different, but I actually dislike the USB-C standardisation. We already had better de-facto standards (e.g. small, "fixed-function" devices like feature phones and e-readers all use Micro USB-B for charging). Our problems were mainly "this laptop barrel charger is incompatible with this other laptop barrel charger", and proprietary Apple connectors.
The most important hardware protocol is power supply, which we can fix by requiring well-documented, user-accessible contacts that, when sufficiently-clean power is applied to them, will power the device. These could be contacts on the motherboard (for something designed to be opened up), or something like Apple's Smart Connector (without the pointless "I'll refuse to charge until you handshake!" restriction).
Requiring open, well-documented protocols which aren't unnecessarily-complicated is imo more important than requiring standard protocols.
We're not just talking about hardware here.
Any standard that is developed closed-source and is protected or proprietary, can and will prevent consumer choice further down the line.
Interoperability of data, choice between vendors, and the ability for smaller players to compete with established larger players are all directly negatively affected by a lack of open standards.
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This doesn't seem right to me. It is often in companies' best interests to adopt standards, but that is because it allows them both to have an optimized supply chain.
Car manufacturers today have a lot of standards that I expect would make competition from any new contenders harder not easier. Tesla would be an example of that, they did survive but the industry thought it was never going to work precisely because of all the standards and regulations required.
On the other hand, early car manufacturers didn't have standards and shared technology stacks. At that time new car makers popped up everywhere and we had a ton of competition in the space.
Open standards are good for the consumer and good for any features that require interoperability. It has nothing to do with competition though.
Sorry, but you're incorrect.
If a particular product is tied to a specific proprietary tech stack, then the consumer is also tied to specific suppliers. This is known as vendor lock in.
Microsoft used this approach with Internet Explorer back in the old days; ensuring that it provided proprietary elements and implementation, that would encourage developers to provide websites that only functioned using their browser.
Open standards allow choice.
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I'm not opposed to open standards, but what makes you think that a corporation which simultaneously violates anti-trust law in three markets and evades meaningful enforcement can be forced to comply with standards?
The problem is not primarily technological, it is a problem of rule of law. Google is a serial violator, found guilty multiple times. So it is a failure of enforcement of law (unless government actions in the near term end up being very dramatic).
If someone points a gun to your head, I guess you could solve that by inventing a personal forcefield. But until you do, we need law enforcement as a deterrent against murder. Otherwise murderers will just keep on doing it.
I wish this was a higher up comment because it's such an important point, and it's totally an achievable thing.
Governments should be supporting this competition, or at the very least not encouraging monopolies/duopolies. Give loads of support/help to startups, small businesses. Let the large corps fund themselves.
But instead, we end up giving them huge tax breaks, anti-competitive legislation and even give them a voice in government.
in the face of large monopolies such as today's platforms, to keep competition you must regulate with laws that stop consumer abuse
This doesnt work if the market incentives themselves encourage these rent seeking actions.
We have given capitalists more and more power pver the last few decades and instead making things better, its just allowed them to nueter the government regulations that would have prevented them from fucking common people over. The market can not solve for this the same way it cant solve for education or the military. This needs laws
Of course I'm in support of consumer protection laws but what needs to be more widely understood is that with Google specifically, probably with Apple and maybe with Microsoft, we are at a unique point in history where passing laws isn't enough.
There are laws on the books, Google's breaking them, and it's just forging ahead with more of this anti-consumer control crap anyway. Google's unique in American history, it has recently been ruled an illegal monopolist in two cases in two markets and a third ruling against them in a third market is likely to drop soon. Even Standard Oil didn't achieve a rap sheet like Google's.
Yeah of course we need government action and I'm calling for that. But people need to realize that this monster is way bigger than just passing a law. The judges need to be choosing harsher remedies including a breakup. The enforcement apparatus needs to be stronger, willing and able to seize direct control of the company if it doesn't comply or complies maliciously. EVERYTHING in the system needs an upgrade because Google is so uniquely huge and criminal in the context of American history.
They are a different, far larger and more intractable problem than your standard, garden variety corporate criminals and extreme measures are needed to rein them in.
Now, imagine a future where the Web platform didn't become a duopoly and Phone+Tablet+PC OSes didn't become a triopoly. A half dozen vendors globally for one, and a different half dozen for the other. That's a very very different world where someone is going to carve out plenty of market share by letting you continue to install your own apps even if they're ad blockers or whatever else you would like. You just wouldn't get 12 companies plus the US, EU and Chinese governments or whoever to all agree on a single platform. We need the big guys to fight. We need the market to be divided. We need competition. We need to slay Google and never have another Google again.
So exactly what law is Google breaking? They are not a monopoly in the US or even 50% of the phone market.
And are you going to force app developers to support all of these platforms?
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