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A comment on The case for ending Amazon’s dominance. Parent comment

Re:The case for ending Amazon’s dominance by scarface74 on Saturday February 17, 2018 @04:01PM (#16402666)
Who do you trust more to do the right thing? Private industry or the government? Lately, it seems like private industry has been more on the side of the Angels than the government. Private industry - especially consumer facing ones - seem to be a lot more accountable to the public than the government.
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Re:The case for ending Amazon’s dominance by austenallred on Saturday February 17, 2018 @04:31PM (#16402830)
That’s kind of a weird false dichotomy and the answer is “it depends”
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Re:The case for ending Amazon’s dominance by scarface74 on Saturday February 17, 2018 @04:49PM (#16402924)
Not really, once you get the government involved in capitalism, even if it is well meaning, there are always unintended consequences.

But in the real world, would Obama regulate tech companies? Would Trump regulate banks?

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Re:The case for ending Amazon’s dominance by fjsolwmv on Sunday February 18, 2018 @02:10AM (#16404879)
Read up on how antitrust law and labor law came into existence . The unfettered capitalism you love is actually quite fettered, and many people died for that right.
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Re:The case for ending Amazon’s dominance by scarface74 on Sunday February 18, 2018 @08:55AM (#16406079)
Technology moves much faster than regulation. It wasn't the slap on the wrist that MS received that brought down its influence - it was Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon. Especially Apple and Google that made PCs less relevant to most users and developers.

In 2016, the government was in the process of forcing cable companies to allow third party set top boxes. The cable companies fought back, the government dropped the pursuit and guess what? Technology made the need much less relevant.

https://www.recode.net/2017/1/31/14453444/fcc-tv-open-set-to...

Now even though the cable company "won" they loss anyway. They are still losing cable subscribers and companies like DirecTV and Sling came along.

I pay $35 a month for DirecTVNow, get all of the cable channels I care about and in my local market, get all of the OTA channels (NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC, and the CW). While the government was fighting the last war - cable set top boxes - the industry had moved on to creating services that let you watch live TV anywhere - on your phone, tablet, internet connected set top boxes, game consoles etc.

While the government was worried about MS unbeatable dominance on the desktop, during the next 10 years, the battle had moved to mobile.

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