> or are you just shifting the balance of power from US companies to Chinese companies?

That's not going to happen. The biggest Chinese companies only exist because of stolen technology. This is a well documented fact. Tencent for example has this business model:

1) Identify trending games from competitors outside of China

2) Clone those games and release them internationally

3) Petition the Chinese government to block the game they cloned in China

Maybe in the short term they'll see some growth, but in the long-term innovation will always prevail.

If anything, breaking up these monopolies will lead to more innovation as the smart people working at Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. will no longer be tied by the "golden handcuffs" and will be driven to build and experiment with new ideas and technologies, instead of spending their days working on ads or other money printing businesses that provide little value to society.

We can debate the origination of their know how just like we can debate the origination of Covid. But at the end of the day what matters are the results, and China demonstrated with Covid how much more successfully they were in execution than we were. That same scenario is being replayed in board rooms across the globe - the Chinese people are hungrier, work harder, and get results more quickly. Granted, there are still gaps in some areas, but the margins are shrinking every day.

> Maybe in the short term they'll see some growth, but in the long-term innovation will always prevail.

You are somehow implying that the Chinese people are fundamentally bad at innovation. That's neighboring on being a racist statement that you should take a moment to reflect on. Just like innovation is not limited to the Bay Area, it's not limited to the US either. The Bay Area did in fact produce a disproportional amount of breakthrough ideas in the past 50 years, but not because their residents are somehow genetically more superior to other parts of the country (and ironically, you might be surprised to find out just how many Chinese workers stand behind so many of those Bay Area companies). It happened because the infrastructure for ideas was there (lack of enforcement of non competes, high risk tolerance of financial backers, previous waves of successful founders sharing their know-how with young founders and pouring money into new startups, etc). The pandemic has removed the need for in-person meetings for fundraising, and suddenly we're seeing an even more pronounced decentralization of the Bay Area, which should prove that innovation is not tied by city, county, or country borders - it's tied by regulatory, educational, and financial constraints, all of which are rapidly improving in China.

Once this current wave of Chinese mega-successful companies cashes out, the next wave will be even stronger. It's only a matter of time until a suitable ecosystem forms in China that will give their people the right ingredients to kick our ass in innovation, on top of all the other things they are already kicking our ass in.

Those are your words, not mine.

I never said that Chinese people can’t innovate. My point was that Chinese companies don’t innovate, and if you wanted to have an adult discussion about it, I would’ve been happy to clarify for you why I believe that.

But I’m not going to entertain a discussion with someone that tries to support their argument by putting words in my mouth and suggesting I’m racist. A discussion with someone like that will go nowhere productive.

But you have to admit there's something about our folks being a bit too comfortable with the notion that the Chinese people won't catch up with us because we innovate and they don't. I see people justifying their beliefs in one of these two ways:

1. Focusing on barriers that supposedly exist in China today and will continue to exist forever. Something like: "their government will always force them to do things in a certain way", or "the lack of regulatory framework invites bad behavior and doesn't instill the discipline required to be creative," etc.

2. Focusing on the idea of American Exceptionalism - essentially, it doesn't matter what China does now or in the future, we're always going to be a few steps ahead because of the most unusual events that have led to the formation of our country, our political system, our culture and values, and our inherent will to be the global leaders and ambassadors.

I would be curious to hear what your thoughts are. In my mind, as I laid out above, innovation is not a privilege bestowed upon any one location or nationality, but instead a byproduct of regulatory, educational, and financial ingredients all coming together and unblocking barriers to creativity. All of those elements are changing in China very rapidly, and all of them are moving in the "right" direction.

So for your statement "Maybe in the short term they'll see some growth, but in the long-term innovation will always prevail" to ring true to me, I would have to be convinced that we somehow have a defensible advantage in one of those three elements, and that this barrier will stand the test of time. Because I think we're both agreeing on the notion that there's nothing fundamentally special about us and our raw capabilities compared to theirs.

> If anything, breaking up these monopolies will lead to more innovation

Yes, let’s violate a company’s right to exist and conduct business just because we don’t like ads, or have preferences for how the run things. If you’re so concerned that they are not doing the right thing, then you go out and do it.

It is not really a right, so much as a practical privilege we have set up. As such they should be open to whatever democratic will of the people. If the people arbitrarily decide they can only have so much power or size, then so be it.

The entity sure, but beyond the entity you have a group of people who have created something and want to sell it to you. If the Democratic will of the people said that we should jail them for creating shows we don’t like, I’m sure you’d object. Just because the people will it doesn’t mean it is correct.

People have a right to get together and create things and sell them to you under a contract. You have the right to accept or refuse. That simple.

Our society is regulation drunk.

An almost definitional characteristic of company v. group as you describe.

So, yes, people may decide that we no longer want a certain type of companies. Heck, let's take it a step further - people may also decide that we want everyone to get a million dollars, no questions asked. But people are smarter than that, which is why we still have democracies.

[1] https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-nazi-rise-to-power...

The need of the society is to defend property rights and sustain the rule of law. Economic growth is good, but you can’t make it the top of your list. Besides, we are already awash in too much regulation as it is, we should be heading the other direction towards more liberty. I’m not saying there’s never a time for regulation, just that we are waaaay past the point of reason in many areas.

We may disagree on which is the cart and which is the horse. I think that in general you need a moral people who will enforce the rule of law to get economic growth, so the rule of law is the horse. And the horse’s horse is the morality of the people, something Weimar Germany was certainly lacking. Get those in order first and I think prosperity will follow. Try to put prosperity first, then it won’t matter what rule of law you have b/c the most important thing is to make money.

As a practical matter it may be bad policy. But, right it is not.

But from my perspective they acquire because they can't innovate internally.

Somehow this concept might be easier to explain by looking at the analogies from the military world. Of course the world would be a better place if we all destroyed all of our nuclear weapons. Does that mean that the US should lead by example and destroy all of our weapons first with no assurances that others will do the same? Of course not. We do this step by step, and only as much as we can trust and enforce through bilateral agreements. Well, military power is intrinsically linked to economic power, so it should be clear that we wouldn't want to cap our economic power by implementing rules that others don't have to follow. Of course, two notable exceptions are environmental concerns, and in the future likely also mental health concerns. But you can't just go crazy with imposing unreasonable limitations in those two areas (eg: requesting that every factory is only powered by renewable energy, while allowing Chinese companies to use whatever energy they want). The same thinking should apply to any limitations we want to invoke on protecting our mental health - we have to approach this step by step, rather than killing our domestic companies and handing over the market share to the foreign ones.