I don't feel that capitalism is an end to be pursued, but I agree that these conglomerates should be broken, for the sake of avoiding irreversible concentration of power.

Not really irreversible unless they get a monopoly on violence, so as long as the overton window from the publics perspective shifts dominantly towards breaking them up in the future we'll be able to get a better situation.

When you can reliably tell they have a monopoly on violence, it's far to late to do something about it.

However, Very Bad Things™ can happen long before they have monopoly on violence. And violence where? Large companies operate in weak jurisdictions, not only in their home states of Maryland and Ireland.

Maybe propose an alternate system that is 100% free from any similar hypothetical future abuse?

Did you mean Delaware instead of Maryland?

They (search, social media, advertising companies) are gaining a monopoly on truth. With that they indirectly control the government, which is the one with the monopoly on violence.

You are never given the real truth in the media. There’s never been an incentive for that.

To emphasize, all human productions are biased, that's human nature, and news media are not exempt, despite many outlets making serious attempts to produce unbiased news.

Part of the job of being a consumer of media is understanding the bias of what we're consuming, determining whether it skews the news, and possibly counter-balancing by consuming other media with different bias. And yes, it's lots of work and most people aren't willing to spend the time doing that.

Well, historically, there have been a number of companies with the right to violence. The East Indies and West Indies Companies, for instance, or more recently United Fruit. I haven't bothered to check, but I'd be surprised if Big Oil didn't have mercenaries on call in hot zones, with little to no oversight.

Nobody (company, nation or gang) needs a monopoly on violence to become dangerous.

Those companies didn't have the right to violence in their home countries, they waged wars in other countries instead. Companies overthrowing their home country hasn't really been a thing.

True. However, please don't forget that the conglomerates being discussed initially do exist and have considerable influence in other countries than the US, so my remark remains :)

Also, the Medici family was initially a wool company, then grabbed power in their homeland, kept it for about three centuries and somewhere along the way produced descendants that ruled over much of Europe. Similarly, the fascist uprising that gave power to Franco over Spain was largely privately funded by a bank [1] and I seem to remember that the German Nazi party was largely funded by industrialists and bankers [2] until reached power.

So, I'd say that companies overthrowing their home country's government has unfortunately been a thing for quite some time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_March

[2] https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/wall_street...

> for the sake of avoiding irreversible concentration of power

In the context of capitalism, it’s for the same reasons.

hmmm isn't it just exactly capitalism? and government intervening would maybe be against capitalism?

What. Deploying capital to make investments is the central conceit of capitalism. It’s right there on the tin.

Those parts would still end up bought by Blackrock, Vanguard or whatever index fund is in fashion and steered by these funds that have the easiest business model but no capacity to innovate.

Then maybe funds like Blackrock, Vanguard, should be dismantled as well.

Why? "Owned by Vanguard" is the closest possible thing to "owned by the American public". What do you think Vanguard is and where do you think their money comes from?

Downvoting because parent is clearly referring to corp gov activities and it’s insulting to insinuate they don’t know what an asset manager is.

Everyone should be their own asset manager? The devolution of voting has already started, so not sure that direction has much merit.

Maybe just restrict index funds from interfering with whatever business they own? Index funds are ultimately a dumb momentum-based business model that just buys whatever companies are doing well at the moment and sells whichever aren't, but bear no risk themselves outside the economy shrinking. Not sure why they should have any say in how the companies they own operate, it seems like a complete competence mismatch (dumb ones with little risk controlling the smart ones with the skin in the game).