Topic: thoughts on companies becoming too powerful? - page 3. (Read 7025 times)

Well speaking in this context, I would say that more than 80% of the whole world’s wealth is with few people ruling these companies and this is one reason of the huge income gap. You need to have policies that implies progressive taxation as a result of which the money that is generated by these companies will be taxed. Facebook creates more than $10 million per minute. This is a whopping amount that could be used to alleviate poverty in the locality.

Things are a bit different in this day and age. Your assumption would be 100% correct for the pre-Internet era, but today it is a completely different story. As even this forum clearly shows, you can foster useful connections and build solid reputation from ground up without having to be born into wealth

This is in striking contrast with what we had before the Internet came when you really couldn't lift yourself out of poverty if you didn't have proper connections which you obviously hadn't for being born into poverty. Though I agree that you should rather work smart instead of working hard (that kinda goes without saying)

But isn't it exactly what the Internet is about, i.e. about being smart?

You fail to realize that the system is totally broken.  Hard work isn't going to magically lift you out of poverty.  You need solid connections that poor people usually do not have.  Becoming an entrepreneur just means exploiting workers like the rest of capitalists do and then you are contributing to the problem.

You can always try to do something about it instead of complaining about how the rich elite only get richer and governments only work against you. Complaining doesn't increase your wealth, becoming an entrepreneur does.

An uncle of mine complains about this all the time, and this for years now. No matter how much I try to convince him to get off his lazy ass, he still thinks that the rich elite and governments should make an effort to change things.

We have decades of history proving that the elite will not hand you over free money, and governments will not do anything to change either. It's YOU that needs to change, not the rich elite or governments. This is how the poor stays poor.

I guess he is actually looking at the disadvantage part of giving these companies too much power, because when the have too much power, they also have too much money to manipulate anything that they like which some of them would definitely affect the future of the younger ones. In my country, we have some companies like that, and when any young person tries to compete with them, they will either use the power and the money they have to cause influence that would make them not to thrive.

Look at Facebook, they started buying everything over just to have that monopoly, and after they got it, the next thing that came to their mind is to create a global currency which indirectly means they are trying to take over the financial control of the government that made them also.

As long as it gives and satisfies the needs of the people in terms of entertainment then why should it be broken up.
They are doing their purposes, so it should exist as long as we want it to exist. It doesn't really affect our lives and those employees of companies that have been bought. It's their business if they wanted to buy those companies that oppose them, it's part of being intellectual. The purpose for you that's why they're still existing is for entertainment so you should focus on that.

Situation is same almost all over the world, such big companies always trying to make as much profit as possible, and they look at people mostly as consumables. Why big company as Apple has manufacturing facilities in China? Because there is cheap work force, probably lower taxes and they do not have to worry too much about human rights. I watched some documentaries about how Apple work in China, and I can only say that most of animals in USA has better conditions than these workers in China.

The rich are rich because they take 90% of money in their pockets, and we have situation where 10% of people control around 90% world wealth. We can say that 90% or human population serve them and their interests. It is in their interest that we stay poor and dependent on them, so they can control us more easily.

Your right . thats also what im thinking about but i believe there are still some companies that aims to help people . some of their earned profits will go to the charities , churches and those people or places that have been destructed by natural calamities  .

 if these kind of companies are becoming powerful then id say its good . its good for them and its also good for us  but if those selfish companies are becoming powerful then that is threatining  .

They should think about us since we are the one they are giving their service.

It is true though that they don't care what they care is the service, the product they are giving to people since if there will be a lot of people disappointed about the product, it will all be posted in the social media and that would destroy their face as a company.

Food for thought.
Purposely typo so that nobody can attack me for spreading lie.

I don't think the government will disband the hectacorn company, a company as big as Facebook or Disney will be a new revenue for the country. They provide international services where all the money will go to that big company, indirectly there will be a flow of money coming from other countries to the countries of that two companies. Even the government should maintain and support companies like this, if they forbid maybe it will be a stupid government.


Indeed we are giving power to both companies, but are we able to stop using the services of the two companies. Look at the many people in the world who depend on their services, they provide services with a win-win system. They need us and we need them, so even if you invite all people in the world not to use the services of the two companies, surely they will not care about you. Well that's because Facebook and Disney have had a big influence on the economy, not just the economy of their country but the world economy.

That's an intricate and massively complicated issue

If someone (or something) more powerful dissolves some entity less powerful, does it always mean that the former becomes even more powerful (read, evil)? For example, in 1911 the US government divided the American Standard Oil (of the Rockefeller fame) into 34 (or so) separate companies effectively turning them into competing entities. Was that a bad act, and did the American government thus become more powerful? Even if it did, was that power accumulation a bad thing for the common good over the long run?

Broken up by the government? So you want someone more powerful to break them up? You see here is the main problem. Without even realizing you are being reliable on someone more powerful to disintegrate someone less powerful.
Facebook and Disney does not have any power over us. It is us who are giving them the power and it is us united who can take away everything from them. Image if everyone stopped using facebook. What do you think will happen to it?

I still think that the government is the biggest power in this world, big companies like Facebook, Microsoft and so on will obey the rules applied by the government, for example when the US vs China trade war, and the US government bans all Chinese products coming, then Facebook will follow that rules, so Products from China like Huawei cannot get the latest version from Facebook anymore. that is an example from government power. You don't need to worry about that

I guess we should also add Microsoft to the list

And probably put it at the very top of it as they have arguably reinvented the entire idea of stifling competition by adding a whole new dimension to it while utilizing the complete spectrum of tools starting from outright stealing (DOS operating system seems to be the most conspicuous example) and ending with such sophisticated methods as allegedly embracing an open technology or standard and then twisting it in such a way that no one can any longer use it without actually using Microsoft's version of it. And they still got off pretty cheap in the end

Well that's undeniable, all these companies are obeying the law paying taxes and when doing wrong get fined also they paid it. That's the nature of free market but the disadvantages might be some people out there who are still small scale companies trying to compete with all these big boys will definitely have a hard time.

These companies are operating in a country, where the free market is practiced, as long as it is legal and they pay the right taxes, you are allowed to expand your business, it's actually good for countries to allow this to happen because it means employment and revenue through taxes, I don't see any disadvantages, you did not specify either what's the disadvantages.

It seems to me that first of all we ourselves must take care of ourselves, because no company thinks about people.  First of all, every industrial giant or other company thinks of superprofits, and not in order to make this world a little better.  Therefore, you should not worry about anything Huawei or Apple.

If it happened to Standard Oil and AT&T then I don't see any reason why it shouldn't happen to tech giants. I don't know about the current laws in the US where these companies are registered is but there should be enough outrage for the government to really put its thumb on it.

The thing is, should the US govt do it and risk having this sector out-competed by companies from countries that don't have such restrictions? For example everyone probably heard about Huawei and its connections with the Chinese government. Say you think Apple is to large, should you allow it to be handicapped, which would only favor Huawei?


I think in the case of social media giants, the only things that really pisses off people is their ideological biases and handling of data. Otherwise these people had been very eager to use and share their info with these companies at the start.

Michael Crichton, the author of the original book Jurassic Park, wrote other works which became full production films in theaters. One of his books entitled Rising Sun spawned a movie starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, touching upon topics related to OP's post in terms of global markets and american anti trust laws.

Crichton's approach was to compare large japanese conglomerates like matsushita with american corporations of the day. Japan, china and countless other countries have no laws against corporations becoming too large or powerful, allowing them to grow into massive private sector entities dwarfing american analogues which can be somewhat growth restricted via contrast.

There's a question as to whether nations like the US which sometimes adhere to anti-trust laws which were created before global markets existed can compete on a global scale. In china we currently see their government throwing free money at business sectors in an effort to give their own private sector an advantage over competition. In america we often see the opposite with state based regulation hiking taxes and working to reduce any advantages native business might enjoy. Over the long term, this could prove to be self destructive in terms of limiting sector growth in an era where foreign nations employ the polar opposite policy.

Precedents consumers commonly object to are not necessarily related to the size of companies. Rather increasingly common cases of predatory business practices associated with consolidated markets, price fixing and other negative trends.