This argument is always repeated within the first ten minutes of these discussions, but I don't really understand why anyone assumes that competition is somehow the panacea to every problem on the planet.

I don't want ten unregulated facebooks who all leak my data, I want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules. The dynamics of social networks which don't deliver value if they're fragmented has made the competition focus obsolete. When Zuckerberg makes this point he is obviously speaking in his self-interest but he is absolutely right and the dominance of his platform proves it.

The world isn't better off if half of the information is on bing and half of the information is on google, the world is better off if those large companies which do deliver benefits to end consumers by virtue of their centralisation are bound by law to implement reasonable standards.

Well the thing is, if you want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules, creating a few competitors might actually help to achieve the goal.

Competition does not solve every problem on the planet. But it does solve a huge amount of problems, so it is very important to make sure that some regulation target at solving a single problem will not bring that huge amount of problems into the world as a side effect.

As a hint, when a large company asks for some regulation, it is very likely that it is of the kind that brings all those problems.

This oversimplified "regulation is bad" idea is pushed by a lot of think tanks (e.g. CATO, americans for prosperity, freedomworks, heritage foundation) set up by the Koch brothers. They have close links with the media, which is why these weirdly specific views get parroted a lot.

If you've ever read a story about the evils of hairdresser licensing (for instance), it's from them. They have been on a crusade against regulation since a lot of their fights with the environmental protection agency.

You make it seem like some weird fringe view funded by a handful of people. To the contrary, it’s been the dominant mode of public policy since the 1980s across the whole western world. Reagan, Clinton, Thatcher, Howard, Harper, etc. Even Trudeau and Macron, who are ostensibly left-leaning, are doubling down on privatization and deregulation: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2016/nov/... https://fee.org/articles/emmanuel-macron-is-surprisingly-pro...

The top 10 countries in the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation economic freedom index doesn’t even include the US: https://www.heritage.org/index. (It does however include the entire rest of the Anglosphere.)

>who are ostensibly left-leaning

They absolutely are not. They're capitalists, neoliberals, in all senses. There are no left wing economic policies being created anywhere in the western world right now.

They would have to be, because they favor deregulation. You can't define your way out of an argument. If "everyone in the western world" operates this way, you're making his point for him.

This oversimplified "regulation is good" idea is pushed by a lot of think tanks (e.g. Brookings, center for american progress, The Commonwealth Institute) set up by the Soros and Clintons. They have close links with the media, which is why these weirdly specific views get parroted a lot.

If you've ever read a story about the evils of low taxes (for instance), it's from them. They have been on a crusade for regulation since a lot of their fights with the environmental protection agency.

| Great comments. Lets keep this up!

(This comment is intended to show that simply pointing out that a group advocates for something doesn't make it wrong and dismissable because of that.)

>This oversimplified "regulation is good" idea is pushed by a lot of think tanks (e.g. Brookings, center for american progress, The Commonwealth Institute) set up by the Soros and Clintons.

It's not though. They make a case for certain kinds of regulation and they don't try to tell a "all regulation is good" story.

It's also pushed by genuine people. Read Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin.

Does that make them wrong?

It's also pushed by people who just observe how many things are legislated, read a bit of history (monopolies granted by kings, guilds stamping out competition via force, etc) and how cost disease has gotten so much worse.

> The world isn't better off if half of the information is on bing and half of the information is on google

The premise here is incorrect. The idea is all information would be available on both Google and Bing, and searchers are free to query their engine of choice.

> I don't want ten unregulated facebooks who all leak my data, I want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules.

At this point you should be wondering if it should be run by the government.

> This argument is always repeated within the first ten minutes of these discussions, but I don't really understand why anyone assumes that competition is somehow the panacea to every problem on the planet.

Competitive markets are the closest thing we have to a panacea for every problem. There’s lots of things the US and Europe don’t agree on. But one thing they do agree on is deregulation to enable competition. That’s why even Macron in France is trying to privatize SNCF. That’s why Denmark abolished its version of the FCC. That’s why nearly every Western European country has deregulated markets for wholesale electricity, allocates public airwaves through auctions, etc. Thats why Vietnam, which is still technically a Marxist-Leninist country, has 95% of people supporting market capitalism: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/13/vietnam....

That is not to say that market failures don’t exist. But we should think extremely hard before we try non-market solutions, identifying exactly why the market isn’t working and addressing those specific issues in the least invasive way.

Idk who's downvoting all these things but it's clearly someone with Marxist ideologies trying to apply it to capitalism. Competition is essential not only for the economy but for human civilization. Humans do not want to be equal, they just want an equal playing field. Policies that fail to acknowledge that basic human element will always fail because they won't be able to stop people from cheating the system.

I don't understand why people think that data leakage is ONLY a problem for facebook and it's competition. If data leaks into an ad-tech company we can still compel them to delete it. All it requires is a good US version of the GDPR.

Competition is the fundamental of Capitalism. Capitalism becomes cronyism without fair competition.

Edit: Downvoters please elucidate?

Meta comment: The rules ask us to please not ask about downvotes; It distracts from the discussion.

As for why you’re being downvoted, it usually means people don’t agree with you (not that you’re wrong). However, we’re not supposed to downvote simply because we disagree here, but it happens.

And seeing you’re a “green” account, it could also just be people who downvote all new users (yes, those exist).

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