Big Tech Could End the State As We Know It

(Via FutureSin)

Increasing pressure on regulating, breaking up and taxing BigTech means we recognize monopolies are dangerous.

Technology monopolies aren’t just bad for the internet, they are bad for innovation. As market leaders lock down talent, acquire competitors and dominate industries, the rules of free-market capitalism begin to break down.

Not only this, they abuse their position. We’ve seen this with Google and Android and Facebook with data harvesting and privacy invasions. As anti-trust probes heat up, so are digital taxes on BigTech globally.

A world where American (or Chinese) companies become too powerful is not just oppressive to smaller countries, but oppressive to democracy, free speech the rights of consumers and global citizens at the most basic levels. When wealth inequality hacks capitalism severe imbalances in how the future plays out are put into play. Increasingly, the United States and China are weaponizing their technology companies in a mounting cold tech war. This impacts the global economy and surveillance capitalism oppression as well. The race for our financial, health, psychological and genetic data is already underway.

John Harris of the Guardian had an interesting argument. He said Big tech companies are transforming societies — but their pitiful contributions aren’t enough to help governments adapt.

As companies like Amazon create jobs they are also disrupting jobs, in the closure of retail stores, but if they don’t pay their fair share of taxes, we all lose. Consumers like cheaper things that we can get faster, but at what price? As technology companies become bigger, the AI they create will only become more powerful. As there’s little to no regulation on how these companies operate, legislation and government monitoring are well behind the curve. It could get so bad in the 2020s and 2030s that technology companies could overreach the power of their Government. Many believe this has already started to occur with Facebook’s various abuses and mismanagement.

France’s 3% digital tax, designed to target big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google, gave some hope to other countries within and without the EU who plan to take similar measures.

American companies are like another wave of colonialism, where territory under the influence of these powerful corporations is being divided up in an arms race for control in data harvesting, the Cloud, E-commerce, ride sharing, and more.

The sad part is that in 2019 it has become a winner-takes-all end game, a zero-sum game where FAANG stocks are only becoming more powerful. Too powerful. Not only does that lead to a corrupt internet, it leads to a Silicon Valley technocracy which threatens not only the middle class, the disruption of jobs but the global economy itself.

When we listen to BigTech more than our own Government, you know something is very wrong with Western capitalism and a democracy governed by advertising and a social media influence.

Regulators are gearing up to investigate the largest US tech companies. But are breakups of these corporations on the horizon? We know that Facebook’s acquisitions of WhatsApp (2014) and Instagram (2012) should have been blocked by anti-trust regulators. Same thing for when Google acquired YouTube (2006). But Congress (the SEC or the FTC) don’t generally plan ahead long term and perhaps could not have predicted what those apps would become. Monopolies in the cloud, advertising, and data harvesting (AI) mean that startups cannot compete and the American media is now nearly totally governed by Silicon Valley and New York.

There isn’t a decentralization of information that enables us to weed out misinformation and the impact of corporate interests and a wealthy elite. In fact, Facebook, Google and Apple — in their tenure as “rulers of the internet” — have made it a much less safe, fair and good place for people and free market competition. Given the huge concentration of technology giants in San Francisco, Silicon Valley has essentially disrupted itself.

The only way forward for the world is actually to shift to Chinese companies that provide an alternative. However, due to the political, trade and technology warfare, that seems highly unlikely and could take a few decades into the future to occur. China and the U.S. are simultaneously strategic partners and strategic rivals. That Google was working with Huawei (Verge) on a smart speaker is a timely symbol of that. Google, with its Dragonfly project, is okay to create a censored search solution for China. When you work at Google, don’t do evil are just words.

We’ve come to the point where Silicon Valley has too much power and the internet Giants have become too big. Without regulation and new laws, we can’t even decide they should be broken up. Our only hope is if someone like Elizabeth Warren becomes the next President (Medium), a highly unlikely event.

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