MFP Commentary:
This is a compelling arguement. This article’s argument is my arguement. But Americans seem to know little to nothing about liberty and freedom.
Americans are so dumbed down they don’t even see the real monopolies that are in the room. i.e. the government schools, our monopoly health care system systems, that includes doctors, dentists,and pharmacists. Our monopoly legal defense system consisting of BAR attorneys. How about our monopoly money system run by the Federal Reserve?
We have plenty of real monopolies and they are what we should be concerned with.
~MFP
Note: FWIW I disagree with the author’s assertion that big tech has gotten to where they are on a level playing field. They demonstrably have not. It is the unlevel playing field that is at fault, and needs to be corrected, not necessarily any actions by the companies themselves. For whatever reasons dumbed down Americans will be misguided to attack symptoms, and to ignore the causes, time after time after time, and never seem to learn a thing. Please comment below if you wish to flesh this out.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al who are censoring people and content have a right to do that. Calling them monopolies or public utilities is the wrong way to go. Stressing their “power” is the wrong way to go, by which I mean it contradicts libertarian thinking about products and free markets. Worrying about free speech in the context of their censorship is likewise a losing and flawed argument. Forcing companies to provide a forum of free and/or diverse speech is not compatible with freedom.
Talking about applying anti-trust to these companies is the wrong way to go, in a libertarian analysis. Why? Being a big company or being the main company at present in a market doesn’t give a company real and lasting power as long as the market is open to the entry of competition. As far as I know, the market for communications fora is open. This means there are not insuperable barriers that prevent competitors from arising with new products that siphon customers from the present companies.
I could be wrong about market openness if these companies have wrongly buttressed their positions by patents that never should have been granted, in which case the appropriate targets are the laws that allow monopolization by that means. However, the analysis below assumes that other tech companies are feasible and exist right now that can substitute for Facebook et al. Alternatively, it assumes that entrepreneurs can find ways of delivering internet content and communications without the intermediation of these companies by other pathways. …..Read More