On Friday, Elizabeth Warren
penned a plan to break up big tech (Amazon, Facebook, and Google) as a means to
promote competition and unleash innovation by smaller firms. Here is what she
said.
Unlike the European
Commission, U.S. regulators have mostly stayed on the sideline
watching some large [tech, media] firms take advantage
of (abuse) their dominant market positions. Consequently,
domestic consumers (through privacy breaches and reduced competition) have
been harmed to some varying degree. But, breaking up industry giants
is not the answer. Where do you stop? What about AT&T/Time
Warner? Comcast/NBCU?
Oversight with
consequences (large fines, behavioral changes) is more appropriate.
Unraveling scale and efficiencies, regardless of whether they originated from
organic growth or approved M&A, are wasteful. I think the progressive
Democrats are searching for platforms that resonate with voters. This is
not one that will. Whether they are willing to admit it or not,
consumers/voters like their monopolies/oligopolies as long as they are
well-behaving.
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