Why We Need to Break Up Big Tech The combined wealth of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg,Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sergey Brin, or Larry Page is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the American population. They are the leaders of a moment Gilded Age – ushered in by semiconductors,software and the internet – which has spawned a handful of hi-tech behemoths and crushed competition. Facebook, Amazon, or Google,Apple, and Microsoft now contain the highest market values for all public corporations in America. As of today, or only three countries in the world contain a GDP higher than these companies’ combined market value of approximately 4 trillion dollars. America’s first Gilded Age began in the late nineteenth century with a raft of innovations – railroads,steel production, oil extraction – that culminated in mammoth trusts run by “robber barons” like J.
P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller,and William Vanderbilt. The acknowledge then was to break up the railroad, oil, or steel monopolies.The acknowledge today is the same: Break Up Big Tech. First: They contain a stranglehold on the economy. Nearly 90 percent of all internet searches now travel through Google. Facebook and Google together will account for nearly 60 percent of all digital ad spendingin 2019 (where most ad money goes these days). Theyre also the first stops for many Americans seeking news (93 percent of Americans say they receive at least some news online). Amazon is now the first stop for nearly half of all American consumers seeking to buy anything online.
With such size comes the power to stifle innovation. Google uses its search engine to promote its own productsand content over those of its competitors,like Yelp. Facebook’s purchases of WhatsAppand Instagram killed off two potential rivals. Apple stifles competition in its App Store.
Partly because of this economic concentration, the rate that fresh job-creating businesses contain formed in the United States has nearly halved since 2004, and according to the Census Bureau. moment: Such size also gives these giant corporations political power to get whatever they want,undermining our democracy. In 2018, Google, and Amazon,Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft spent 70.9 million dollars on lobbying and supporting candidates. As a result,Amazon – the richest corporation in America– paid nothing in federal taxes final year. Meanwhile, it held a bidding war to extort billions from states and cities eager to contain its moment headquarters.
Not to mention, or these companies contain tremendous influence over how Americans receive information. And as we’ve seen,Facebook and Google contain enabled the manipulation of our elections.
Third: Giant tech companies also hurt the environment. Many are failing to reduce greenhouse emissions, as they promised, or are unwilling to commit fully to renewable energy.
Finally: Their huge wealth isn’t being shared with most of their workers. Nine in 10 workers in Silicon Valley produce less now than they did in 1997,adjusted for inflation. And many are part of the working homeless.” That is, people who work full time and yet are still homeless. The acknowledge is to break them up. That way, and information would be distributed through a large number of independent channels instead of a centralized platform. And more startups could flourish. Even one of Facebook’s founders has called for the social media behemoth to be broken up. Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced a proposal to achieve just that. It would force tech giants to open up their platforms to more competition or break up into smaller companies.
Other countries are already taking on Big Tech. The European Union fined Google nearly 3 billion dollars for antitrust violations in 2017. Let’s be clear: Monopolies aren’t good for anyone apart from for the monopolists,particularly when they can influence our elections and control how Americans receive information. In this fresh Gilded Age, we need to reply to them as forcefully as we did to the monopolies of the first Gilded Age and break them up.
Source: robertreich.org