> At what point exactly did it lose the rights it was entitled to then?
At some point between becoming a publicly-traded company and becoming the sole gatekeeper of a significant chunk of the world's personal data and apps.
To provide a precise specification of which exact antitrust regulations should take effect at which threshold of growth is, I hope you will concede, a tiny bit beyond the scope of a HN comment.
> If 3 dudes in a basement are entitled to sell goods/services on their own terms, then Apple should be as well.
I see no reason why that should be the case a priori.
"Apple" does not refer to the free actions of a few individuals, but to a particolar kind of profit-seeking contract called a "public company".The capabilities of such contracts can and do get restricted all the time, often with good reason.
> Apple is still a private company, not a public service, and the case I'm making is explicitly against socializing its services simply because it is big
Whereas the case I am making, conversely, can be summed up as: once a company becomes so big and/or powerful that it can prevent competition from arising outright, it should be either broken up or socialized, preferably the former.
Apple cannot prevent competition from arising outright, just as RIM could not, just as Microsoft could not. That's my whole point. Antitrust itself is a violation of fundamental liberty. There doesn't need to be an authority that tells free people how to interact peacefully. This authority diminishes the liberty of the people subjected to it, regardless of whether it came to power democratically or otherwise.
Do you really think that failing some public intervention Apple will be around in a century, undiminished? If it is, wouldn't that mean it is continuing to provide valuable goods and services people want?
"Apple" does indeed refer to the actions of a group of individuals, simply because there are no other agents in the system. It's individuals making decisions all the way down. "Publicly traded" doesn't mean "public service".
The tech giants have such warchests that they can afford to simply buy out any competitor that has a chance to compete with them. And unlike Cronus, they're unlikely to be deceived into swallowing an omphalos.
> Do you really think that failing some public intervention Apple will be around in a century, undiminished? If it is, wouldn't that mean it is continuing to provide valuable goods and services people want?
Is that belief of yours even falsifiable?
Is there any observation that would make you conclude that a given company, despite being profitable in a free market, is nevertheless representing a net negative for the world?
Or is it an article of faith for you that an unconstrained free market always leads to an eventually optimal equilibrium?
It is trying. Yahoo tried to acquire Google too, remember? Why take millions when you can make billions? Plenty of orgs refuse to be acquired because they see more money on the table by competing.
> Is that belief of yours even falsifiable?
Not per se, but history shows that even the most entrenched monopolies are very prone to disruption. I don't see any non-banks in the Fortune 100 that are over a century old. This almost proves my point since there is hardly any industry more entrenched by regulation than banking.
> representing a net negative for the world?
First we would have to agree on what "net negative" means, agree that our vision of what to do about it would improve the situation, and agree that we have a right to take such an intervention. Do you see where the problem is?
> unconstrained free market always leads to an eventually optimal equilibrium
Of course not, only that we the people do not have the right to dictate to other free people how they can peacefully, consensually, interact. Nor do we have the right to dictate to others the meanings of words like "negative" and "positive". All this does is diminish the freedom of everyone involved.
> It is trying. Yahoo tried to acquire Google too, remember?
The success rate doesn't need to be 100% for my point to be valid.
WhatsApp and Instagram could very well have eaten Facebook's lunch. Now FB is being threatened for the first time by TikTok, why? Because they're a Chinese company and FB can't simply buy them due to Chinese regulations!
Also consider this: in an idealised, perfect free market, every company is just barely breaking even, because as soon as they're making a profit it means it's possible to undercut them. (Bezos: "Your margin is my opportunity").
The existence of massive liquidity in the hands of some companies is itself evidence of inefficiency.
> Not per se, but history shows that even the most entrenched monopolies are very prone to disruption. I don't see any non-banks in the Fortune 100 that are over a century old.
Poor evidence, since antitrust action was very strong in the USA for most of the 20th century.
> First we would have to agree on what "net negative" means, agree that our vision of what to do about it would improve the situation, and agree that we have a right to take such an intervention. Do you see where the problem is?
Yes, people can disagree on what their preferred society looks like. That's the fundamental problem of politics. But that disagreement can include the exact value of freedom.
I personally rate freedom very high, yet the restraint "if you manage to build a trillion-dollar company, you must not make it unnecessarily hard for others to develop better products than yours" sounds like a slam-dunk kind of sacrifice for the sake of a more efficient innovation-oriented market.
> The success rate doesn't need to be 100% for my point to be valid.
Yes it does. You were arguing that Apple can prevent competition from ever arising. This isn't the case, clearly.
Yes of course there is inefficiency, I never said there wasn't. It would take a long time and a lot of money to build a mobile device as capable as an iPhone. That amount of time/money basically dictates how Apple can behave in the marketplace. If Apple triples its prices, for instance, competitors will become much more appealing both to users and investors.
All of this profit is Apple's return on the initial investment of developing the iPhone and App Store. This was an existentially risky thing for them to do, and we should not hinder the profits brought about by its success, lest we discourage others from attempting the same.
It's not at all clear that these regulations will create a more innovation-oriented market. It could well be that they will hinder innovation. Do you have any ideas on how we can tell for sure? I think we should be pretty confident before using regulation, don't you?
> Yes it does. You were arguing that Apple can prevent competition from ever arising. This isn't the case, clearly.
Ok, fine, it can only reduce the effectiveness of competition by a large amount. See the last point in this reply.
> All of this profit is Apple's return on the initial investment of developing the iPhone and App Store. This was an existentially risky thing for them to do, and we should not hinder the profits brought about by its success, lest we discourage others from attempting the same.
Why? Do we not want to discourage others from attempting to build rent-seeking platforms?
(a) "I want to design and sell a great device: a new kind of smartphone, with radically improved UX and capabilities"
(b) "I have a great device that everybody wants. Instead of directly raising its price, I want to make money by getting a 30% cut of all business ever done on this device, forever"
(a) is a perfectly fine business plan, and it doesn't hamper anyone else's competitive efforts. The follow-up (b) however _only_ works as a monopolistic plan. If the device isn't very successful, the rent-seeking will further drive away app developers. But if the device becomes incredibly popular, app developers will have to suck up the extortionate price because I've locked down the market.
Peter Thiel said "Competition is for suckers", and this is a good example of it. The benefits of the free market come from competition, but companies will naturally strive hard to avoid competition. Therefore, the rules should make it hard for them to do so, and easy for competition to arise.
> It's not at all clear that these regulations will create a more innovation-oriented market. It could well be that they will hinder innovation. Do you have any ideas on how we can tell for sure? I think we should be pretty confident before using regulation, don't you?
On the one side: hundreds and hundreds of promising startups whose products only ended up raising the existing giants' moat even higher, when not cancelled outright.
On the other side: gosh, what if someone in the future had the next iPhone-level innovation in hand, but the idea of having to turn it into a semi-open platforms after a paltry fifteen years of obscene profits turned them off the idea?
I'm not so much saying that the benefits will be massive, as much as I'm saying the 'deterrent' risk is hilariously negligible.
At some point between becoming a publicly-traded company and becoming the sole gatekeeper of a significant chunk of the world's personal data and apps.
To provide a precise specification of which exact antitrust regulations should take effect at which threshold of growth is, I hope you will concede, a tiny bit beyond the scope of a HN comment.
> If 3 dudes in a basement are entitled to sell goods/services on their own terms, then Apple should be as well.
I see no reason why that should be the case a priori.
"Apple" does not refer to the free actions of a few individuals, but to a particolar kind of profit-seeking contract called a "public company".The capabilities of such contracts can and do get restricted all the time, often with good reason.
> Apple is still a private company, not a public service, and the case I'm making is explicitly against socializing its services simply because it is big
Whereas the case I am making, conversely, can be summed up as: once a company becomes so big and/or powerful that it can prevent competition from arising outright, it should be either broken up or socialized, preferably the former.