>As a recent example, Net Neutrality involved massive amounts of lobbing and had very clear "pro-consumer" and "anti-consumer" sides
This isn't as uncontroversial of an opinion as it might appear to be in a place like HN. What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.
No, you're putting words in my mouth, or misunderstanding my point.
> you think Comcast should be broken up
I think efforts to break up tech monopolies should first be focused on telecommunication companies.
> because they lobby for things you don't like,
Not just me, but are objectively harmful to 99% of the people they would affect
> but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.
I'm mostly focusing on Google here, and yes, they at least occasionally lobby for things I like because sometimes their interests and the interests of the public in general happen to align.
With Comcast (and other ISPs), you have only one choice, and they spend tons of money and effort making sure you only have that one choice, and continue to have only that one choice. Comcast recently spent nearly $1M to prevent Fort Collins from creating a municipal ISP[1]. That is actively anti-competitive and monopolistic by definition.
> With Comcast (and other ISPs), you have only one choice, and they spend tons of money and effort making sure you only have that one choice, and continue to have only that one choice. Comcast recently spent nearly $1M to prevent Fort Collins from creating a municipal ISP[1]. That is actively anti-competitive and monopolistic by definition.
I'm sure if the U.S. government was proposing to sell public bonds to build a search engine or ride-sharing service, you'd see a lot of lobbying from Silicon Valley. It's not "actively anti-competitive and monopolistic by definition" to oppose government backed and funded competition in your industry.
It's municipal, so the magnitude of threat you're implying (oooh Government) is a misdirection. GP's point is that consistently lobbying to shut down the existence of any competition, public or private, is monopolistic behavior. And it is, pretty much by definition.
GP used an example of lobbying against the government entering what had heretofore been a private market. Pushing back on that is not "monopolistic" by any sense of the term. If you have examples of Comcast lobbying to prevent private competition, I'd like to hear them. The biggest impediment to private competition actually comes from the public interest sector, which insists on build-out requirements that make it very difficult to start competing ISPs, on the theory that it's better for nobody to have competing choices than to only have wealthier areas have competing choices.
Monopoly refers to being a sole provider. It is completely by definition monopolistic to take action to prevent a second provider from emerging.
Is it possible for them to have other strategic incentives for their action, such as preventing a type of competitor from emerging? Yes. And if you take the perspective that government is a uniquely troublesome competitor, it's understandable to feel extra strong about it.
But it's still monopolistic in context. A counterpoint to "competition from the government is uniquely unfair" is "having only one provider is uniquely unfair". One is from the perspective of a profitable $100B corporation, the other is from the perspective of the consumers.
The city wanted to launch a municipal internet service. Predictably, it failed because the requirements were to provide service everywhere and the bids all came back too high.
Meanwhile they continue to resist private ISPs who want to expand into neighborhoods where they think they can do so profitably.
Search engine and ride-sharing don't seem to be natural monopolies however. Communication infrastructure in most part of the USA clearly is.
Still I agree breaking up Comcast is not the solution. You will just end up with smaller more localized monopolies. That's pretty much what happened with Bell after all.
The solution would be either nationalizing the infrastructure and leasing it to operators or forcing existing operators to rent their infrastructure to their competitors for a set price. The later is actually working quite well in France. Short of that you will never get competition. It's simply not profitable.
It's working terribly in France. France has some of the slowest broadband in the OECD: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... Just 18% of French households have connections faster than 15 mbps, versus 48% of American households.
That's mostly because France never used copper cable as a TV distribution system and is going straight to fiber. Deployment is admittedly slower than it should be especially in the countryside where it will never be profitable due to low density. Meanwhile, people are stuck with ADSL and VDSL which give connections closer to 10mbps than 15.
Cost wise however, you can't even compare the USA and France. In France, a full speed FTTH subscription with no data cap cost 25 euros and you can pay 20 more to get a cell phone plan with unlimited call and unlimited data. If you are ready to switch provider yearly, you can bring that down to 25 euros all included.
According to the December 2017 OECD data, France and the U.S. are basically tied in terms of fiber deployment (12-13% of total broadband connections): https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.10-PctFibreToTotalBroad.... Which is pretty remarkable because in the U.S., fiber is a relatively smaller upgrade, because fast cable alternatives are available in almost every fiber market. (Just 1/3 of people who can get FiOS actually subscribe, for example. Google fiber has struggled to break 40% too.)
Also note that the French deployment is being heavily subsidized by the government (to the tune of $24 billion). Except for a small amount during the post-2008 economic stimulus, broadband deployment in the U.S. is not subsidized. Whereas the French government is paying a direct subsidy to build fiber in rural areas, in the U.S. rural deployment is financed by a cross subsidy (taxing ISPs in urban areas to subsidize ISPs in rural ones).
Most likely unaffected. You rightfully pointed that the state is paying for much of it. A significant part of the deployment is actually done directly by the state (via the equivalent of counties) which owns the infrastructure.
> Also note that the French deployment is being heavily subsidized by the government (to the tune of $24 billion). Except for a small amount during the post-2008 economic stimulus, broadband deployment in the U.S. is not subsidized. Whereas the French government is paying a direct subsidy to build fiber in rural areas, in the U.S. rural deployment is financed by a cross subsidy (taxing ISPs in urban areas to subsidize ISPs in rural ones).
I don't really see what this has to do with my initial point: mandatory leasing of ISP private infrastructure to their competitors successfully create competition.
It is not subsidies to ISP by the way. Most of this money goes to counties so they can build their own infrastructure which they then lease to ISP. It makes a lot of sense because while this infrastructure wouldn't be profitable if privately built they have a significant positive economic impact on the region where they are deployed.
Wasn't Verizon given billions in subsidies for FTTH (which they installed on the east and west coast, the most profitable areas) and then sold off vast areas they didn't touch to companies like Frontier?
They certainly weren’t given cash like the french government is doing. The most you can say is that Bell Atlantic, Verizon’s predecessor, was allowed to accelerate depreciation of their copper network more quickly than under the previous tax rules.[1] Whether that amounted to a subsidy depends on how quickly the value of the copper plant decreased after fiber was built. The accelerated depreciation was based on the quite reasonable assumption that the value of the copper network depreciated more quickly after fiber was built. I’ve never seen a calculation refuting that premise.
[1] When you build an income-producing capital asset like copper wire in the ground, you can’t deduct the cost from your revenues immediately for tax purposes, like you can with say employee salaries. Instead, you gradually deduct the capital cost over the income-producing life of the asset. If the government allowes you to depreciate an asset faster than the value of the asset actually drops, that nets you some tax benefit due to the time value of money. On the other hand, if the accelerated depreciation reflects the fact that certain types of assets depreciate quicker, then it will result in the correct amount of taxes being paid. For example IT equipment in data centers can generally be written off immediately—unlike wires in the the ground it’s pretty much worthless after a few years.
For 4G data, your bandwith get capped ridiculously low after 60GB. For broadband, it's seems really unlimited yes. As it's often supposed to be for residential use only, I guess they will start asking you questions if your usage becomes very noticeable. I personally don't know anyone who ever had an issue.
What's the purpose of monopoly laws? What is their spirit? Consumer benefit, right? If that is better served by municipal utilities, then while it may not violate the word of antitrust, it certainly violates the spirit.
> I'm mostly focusing on Google here, and yes, they at least occasionally lobby for things I like because sometimes their interests and the interests of the public in general happen to align.
There’s definitely an argument to be made here that their interests don’t align with the public, and that they should therefore be targeted first — public interests is a subjective phrase.
Isn't the point of government to represent the people? Sure, the parent poster is but one person, but on the whole, Americans were in favor of Net Neutrality.
Perhaps outright defending FANG is going too far, but the parent definitely has a point that ISP's should be looked into when we're discussing "breaking up" companies.
There are multiple ways to represent the people and their best interests. It is not always the role of the government to do what is most popular. Raising taxes instead of increased deficit spending is an example of something that is often unpopular, but in many cases the objectively better option.
> Raising taxes instead of increased deficit spending is an example of something that is often unpopular, but in many cases the objectively better option.
I don't think that you could get any reasonably representative range of economists in a room to even agree that this is ever a better option, so I think your claim to objectivity is unwarranted.
Well, if the pre-existing taxes were zero, you could probably get a most economists to agree that raising taxes was better than increasing deficit spending.
> What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.
Far from being a shocking "admission," it's the least surprising thing in the world that people support policy they like and oppose policy they don't. And ignore policy they're indifferent to.
(People may also at times support policy they don't like and oppose policy they do for various practical political reasons, but that's a different discussion.)
This might be more of an issue in areas where things people do/don't like are arbitrary matters of taste. I'm certainly not saddling up to lead a state-backed charge against the company that produces Peeps despite the fact that I think they're a terrible excuse for candy.
But net neutrality is not an arbitrary matter of taste.
Nor, really, are immigration, tax reform and antitrust issues.
> What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.
The original point of anti-trust law was to make things better for the consumer. If Comcast is using their power to lobby for anti-consumer practices then they should be broken up. Naturally consumers are going to disagree with anti-consumer practices.
It's uncontroversial to say Net Neutrality is pro-consumer on HN because we're the people who know the technical aspects of the concept; it's uncontroversial anywhere people know what it's about.
But the point is well made. We can't be breaking up companies that don't do what we want, if they're playing by the rules.
The real answer is to change the rules. Warren is running on some populist anger, and that's a dangerous thing to praise.
This is only true if you think that "the rules" can't include breaking up companies when they reach a certain level of market control. I hope you agree that Warren is running to change or enforce some rules; the reason you run for political office is to become a rulemaker or executor.
That's fine also, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive. If lax laws have allowed monopolies to take hold, then the job of the government is to protect consumers by creating a free market - and that may mean breaking companies up. In the case that the monopoly is natural or sufficiently hard to prevent, the government should either take over the industry and run it as a non-profit or intervene in such a way that creates a free market.
In absolutely no way should the government do any of those things. The government should instead pass laws that reflect how the people want corporations to behave, and until they do so, not punish or harm corporations for playing by the rules.
The government running an entire industry, even the threat of such a thing, is a great way to completely destroy innovation in that industry. Why would I invest in research if it's a real possibility the government can come in and take everything from me for nothing?
What you're suggesting doesn't create a free market, it creates a dead market.
Not sure about desirable. I'm not a huge fan of the company/person with the most money to donate basically dictating the direction of our country (as it is now).
This isn't as uncontroversial of an opinion as it might appear to be in a place like HN. What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.