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Elizabeth Kolbert at The New Yorker writes about the implications that technology monopolies have for culture by asking "Who owns the Internet?". Three decades ago, few used the Internet for much of anything and the web wasn't even around. Today, nearly everybody uses the web, and to a lesser extent, other parts of the Internet for just about everything. However, despite massive growth, the Web has narrowed very much: "Google now controls nearly ninety per cent of search advertising, Facebook almost eighty per cent of mobile social traffic, and Amazon about seventy-five per cent of e-book sales."
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What Big Tech's Monopoly Powers Mean for Our Culture
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @04:22PM (15 children)
If a single provider arises from voluntary interaction, then it's not a monopoly in the usual sense; it's still just one service provider out of many potential, competing providers—the underlying system (capitalism) is still fundamentally decentralized.
That is, a single-provider that arises from voluntary interaction is going to be a very different kind of organization than one which arises out of involuntary interaction; the organization that people call "government" is an example of an organization that arises out of involuntary interaction.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @04:35PM (13 children)
I have no idea what you mean with "in the usual sense".
From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]
A monopoly (from Greek μόνος mónos ["alone" or "single"] and πωλεῖν pōleîn ["to sell"]) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity.
Whatever you mean with "in the usual sense" is not in that definition (nor in any other definition I've ever encountered).
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:22PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:42PM (3 children)
Yes is does:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly [wikipedia.org]
compiling...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:56PM (2 children)
You are perceiving an implication that doesn't exist. Try again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @06:12PM (1 child)
A "new kind of widget" implies a high barrier (compared to market size) to enter the market in either development time or intellectual property. The rest should be fairly self-evident from the cited definition.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @06:31PM
Try again.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 23 2017, @06:20PM (7 children)
I have no idea what you mean with "in the usual sense".
Perhaps he means in an "anti-trust" or "legal" sense.
From the Sherman Anti-Trust Act [justice.gov]
The Sherman Act also makes it a crime to monopolize any part of interstate commerce. An unlawful monopoly exists when one firm controls the market for a product or service, and it has obtained that market power, not because its product or service is superior to others, but by suppressing competition with anticompetitive conduct.
So there's some additional legal requirements to be an unlawful monopoly.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:02PM (6 children)
Yes, there are additional legal requirements to make a monopoly unlawful. But the very fact that this additional adjective is added shows that there are monopolies that are not unlawful monopolies, as otherwise there would be no point in adding the explicit "unlawful". You don't speak of "unlawful murder" or "unlawful theft", you just say "murder" or "theft".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 23 2017, @08:31PM (5 children)
I agree with you. And I think we're both agreeing with what the AC was trying (poorly) to say. Which is that all monopolies aren't necessarily bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @12:30AM (4 children)
You say:
However, what you mean to say is something very different:
or even better:
or more precisely:
If the OP expressed himself badly, at least he didn't say something completely opposite to what he intended to say.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:37AM (3 children)
The wording may not be the best but it does parse properly:
All monopolies are not bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @12:30PM (2 children)
That is not what you mean to say. What you mean to say is this: "Not all monopolies are bad." How is it that you cannot perceive the difference?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:12PM (1 child)
Because he is using the English language, which is not always logical. You are trying to map logic to the rules of the language, which fails here.
"All X are not Y" would logically parse as ∀x∈X:¬Y(x), but according to the common usage of the English language it actually means ¬∀x∈X:Y(x). This is not unlike the fact that "I don't see no logic in it" would logically imply that whoever utters this does see logic in it (in logic, double negation cancels out), but actually means that the uttering person doesn't see logic in it.
The English language is not really logical; learn to live with it.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 25 2017, @01:29PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:12PM
It's still a monopoly when said company takes steps to stifle competition. Google has already demonstratively hurt a variety of other companies by doing anti-competitive things. Intentionally devaluing competitors in their search listings. Bundling their google services such that Android manufacturers have no choice but to use Google's services if they want to be validated and have access to google's play store.