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[...] might have been surprised when headlines began appearing last year suggesting that Google and its fellow tech giants were threatening everything from our economy to democracy itself. Lawmakers have accused Google of creating an automated advertising system so vast and subtle that hardly anyone noticed when Russian saboteurs co-opted it in the last election. Critics say Facebook exploits our addictive impulses and silos us in ideological echo chambers. Amazon's reach is blamed for spurring a retail meltdown; Apple's economic impact is so profound it can cause market-wide gyrations. These controversies point to the growing anxiety that a small number of technology companies are now such powerful entities that they can destroy entire industries or social norms with just a few lines of computer code. Those four companies, plus Microsoft, make up America's largest sources of aggregated news, advertising, online shopping, digital entertainment and the tools of business and communication. They're also among the world's most valuable firms, with combined annual revenues of more than half a trillion dollars.
In a rare display of bipartisanship, lawmakers from both political parties have started questioning how these tech giants grew so powerful so fast. Regulators in Missouri, Utah, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere have called for greater scrutiny of Google and others, citing antitrust concerns; some critics have suggested that our courts and legislatures need to go after tech firms in the same way the trustbusters broke up oil and railroad monopolies a century ago. But others say that Google and its cohort are guilty only of delighting customers. If these tech leviathans ever fail to satisfy us, their defenders argue, capitalism will punish them the same way it once brought down Yahoo, AOL and MySpace.
[...] There's a loose coalition of economists and legal theorists who call themselves the New Brandeis Movement (critics call them "antitrust hipsters"), who believe that today's tech giants pose threats as significant as Standard Oil a century ago. "All of the money spent online is going to just a few companies now," says [Gary Reback] (who disdains the New Brandeis label). "They don't need dynamite or Pinkertons to club their competitors anymore. They just need algorithms and data."
Related: Microsoft Relishes its Role as Accuser in Antitrust Suit Against Google
Google Faces Record 3 Billion Euro EU Antitrust Fine: Telegraph
Antitrust Suit Filed Against Google by Gab.Ai
India Fines Google $21.17 Million for Abusing Dominant Position
Google's Crackdown on "Annoying" and "Disruptive" Ads Begins
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday February 23 2018, @02:10AM (1 child)
Well, for Google a good start might be to split Alphabet into it's separate companies. The problem with that is that the economically successful endeavors subsidize the ones that are still working on being economically successful...and that's an important thing to have subsidized.
My opinion, for what little it's worth, is that the tax on stock trades should be proportional to the inverse of the time that the stock is held up to around 7 years, and beyond that should start increasing again until at around 3 decades it consumes all the capital gains, and beyond that takes even more. If I had a serious chance of getting this implemented I'd start considering the exact shape of the curve, but I want it to be smooth, with one inflection point, and be at around 100% at both 1 second and 30 years, and essentially zero at seven years. This would encourage people to plan for the long term, but prohibit long term monopolization.
FWIW, the only real reason that I think of Google as evil is because it's an effective monopoly. But it *is* an effective monopoly, and that means that even if it's not being predominately evil and underhanded now (I think the evidence is equivocal) you can depend on it becoming such.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Friday February 23 2018, @08:50AM
the tax on stock trades should be proportional to the inverse of the time that the stock is held up to around 7 years, and beyond that should start increasing again until at around 3 decades it consumes all the capital gains, and beyond that takes even more. If I had a serious chance of getting this implemented I'd start considering the exact shape of the curve, but I want it to be smooth, with one inflection point, and be at around 100% at both 1 second and 30 years, and essentially zero at seven years. This would encourage people to plan for the long term, but prohibit long term monopolization.
I think this is a great idea, although I was tempted to replace your 1 second with 1 day, I prefer your one second, because of the bad things that might happen near the end of the day with my version.
I would leave the 30 year and above tax at about 30% because of cases where the stock passes through a whole generation without the option to trade because of family problems and other complications. There are reasons why very long term investment can be highly beneficial to society too.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!