I've seen a lot of people point to the fact that when the oil companies broke up many of these people just got richer because they invested in each one of the child companies. I don't think the purpose of the antitrust actions is to stop people from getting rich, the point is to break up the monopoly. In this regard, splitting up the companies does actually distribute the power, albeit it can make the original owners much more wealthy. The point is the concentration of power, not necessarily the concentration of wealth which people often let their own insecurities befuddle.
Often, at least in the US, and perhaps other places as well, money is a pretty strong proxy for power, and so concentrating wealth can end up concentrating power as well. I can appreciate the semantic difference between the two, and conceptually agree that breaking up companies _should_ distribute power. But I'm wondering about the long-term implications/success rate of breakups?
Antitrust action against Microsoft has been argued to have led to the oligopolistic state of affairs today [1].
The break up of AT&T/Bell System worked in the short term, but the market has re-consolidated into a few big TelCo players.
And that's just at the company level. I'd be interested as well whether the increased wealth/increased concentration of wealth among former owners also leads to (in the long term) increased regulatory capture or other side effects spearheaded by those individuals with their increased war chest.
So is the idea that the break up would give content producers access to the ads and or ad data? Presumably this would allow them to generate better ads for a particular user? Would that allow you to have multiple ad data providers (which may have access to Google and FB data) competing with each other? How does the content discovery part of Google or FB work then and how are they paid? The power of FB and Google I think is about what you do after you visit a particular site. Also what about FB marketplace and other online classifieds (e.g. craigslist)? That was where local newspapers made money.
For local papers, I could see some kind of cooperative develop, maybe where web resources are pooled, and hyper local ad data generated.
6 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 25.0 ms ] threadAntitrust action against Microsoft has been argued to have led to the oligopolistic state of affairs today [1].
The break up of AT&T/Bell System worked in the short term, but the market has re-consolidated into a few big TelCo players.
And that's just at the company level. I'd be interested as well whether the increased wealth/increased concentration of wealth among former owners also leads to (in the long term) increased regulatory capture or other side effects spearheaded by those individuals with their increased war chest.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/6/17827042/antitrust-1990s-m...
Because the gov't approved of too many mergers.
(Having too few practical TelCo choices has really sucked for our family from a consumer standpoint.)
For local papers, I could see some kind of cooperative develop, maybe where web resources are pooled, and hyper local ad data generated.