Senate panel approves antitrust bill restricting big tech platforms

Re:Senate panel approves antitrust bill restricting big tech... by dereg on Thursday January 20, 2022 @05:14PM (#30015940)

> More fundamentally there should be a bill that affectively taxes the top 10% of companies in all industries and credits the bottom 25%. Call it an innovation bill. In addition the bottom 25% percent should get discounts on all licensing fees charged by the top.

No. How is this at all promoting innovation? The practical effect of this would be to allow crappy companies to stay alive as zombies, doing the opposite of promoting innovation. This would also encourage companies to split into a hojillion shell companies to qualify themselves as what you define "the bottom 25%."

This isn't even speculation. If you look at states' tax credit programs to "encourage innovation" in x industry, you see those tax credits are absorbed by the best of financial engineers.

The more levers, and thus complexity, you create in an economy, the more likely that it's the extreme wealthy who benefit.

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Re:Senate panel approves antitrust bill restricting big tech... by endisneigh on Thursday January 20, 2022 @05:17PM (#30015981)

I disagree with you. If companies split themselves into smaller companies that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Without having described how exactly the money would be distributed or the specific criteria I'm not sure how you can confidently say it would create zombie companies.

In any case, the point of what I was saying was to help fund strong competitors. You could just as well transfer funds from the top 10% to the third and fourth deciles.

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Re:Senate panel approves antitrust bill restricting big tech... by dereg on Thursday January 20, 2022 @05:21PM (#30016030)

What's your desired outcome of a program like this? The purpose of antitrust is to encourage competition for the benefit of consumers. Improving competition is a necessary, but not sufficient outcome. Creating competition for competition's sake, irrespective of the consumer effect, is against the spirit of antitrust.

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Re:Senate panel approves antitrust bill restricting big tech... by endisneigh on Thursday January 20, 2022 @05:23PM (#30016061)

I think competition for competition's sake is good. Historically and inherently it will ultimately result in better outcomes for consumers as ultimately that's the purpose of all companies - providing goods and services.

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Re:Senate panel approves antitrust bill restricting big tech... by Jcowell on Friday January 21, 2022 @03:05AM (#30020567)

No , Competition should not be for competition sake but for the benefit of the consumer. If competition results in worse conditions for the consumer it should be eliminated. Especially in the tech space where things such as security is sometimes compromised for the sake of competition

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Re:Senate panel approves antitrust bill restricting big tech... by endisneigh on Friday January 21, 2022 @06:11AM (#30021969)

How exactly would competition not inherently help the consumers?

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Re:Senate panel approves antitrust bill restricting big tech... by majormajor on Thursday January 20, 2022 @07:04PM (#30017278)

I would love taxes or other regulation that encouraged companies to split up, but I think something like an aggressive progressive tax structure on revenue would work better than sending money to the companies at the bottom.

A company dying means the people in it would be available to other companies, where they could potentially find better things to do. Very different from a person suffering from poverty (where welfare and such has its place).

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