Democratic candidate for president Andrew Young, in the past week, said that among the presidential candidates he was the one that loved and had a better knowledge about technology. Andrew Yang’s plan to revive technology was wise but also confusing. Investigations carried out by federal agencies, state attorney generals and congress on antitrust should be given more attention. Yang claimed that disbanding firms, basing them on prize and size would not change anything. He added that only a few people were not supposed to have control over powerful tech.
There is a lot of uncertainty moving around big technology companies and antirust has proven this by yang’s take on antitrust. In March, Elizabeth Warren in a post, discussed on “breaking up big tech”. This brings a lot of controversy and people tend to blame her for breaking companies up. Debates have been made to come up with ideas on whether they should dismantle Silicon Valley giants.
In 1956, an antitrust suit helped solve Bell telephone monopoly without breaking it. Later in 1984 it was terminated causing a great drawback. Bell Company had to share its patents in 1956 with Transistor voluntarily by signing a consent decree. Richard John, an author of Network Nation and a historian at Colombia University, said that the consent decree of 1956 was significant since it was not about breaking up companies but opening opportunities for others.
Laws have been put in place in accordance with federal antitrust statutes. This laws give the government the authority to penalize firms for a competitive conduct. Federal trade commission in conjunction with the Department of Justice, have the power to punish companies that break the policies put in place.
Some lawyers, professors and journalist have debated that since antitrust was abolished a lot of problems have occurred. Warren, a democrat, said that the government has stopped performing its obligations since the 1970s. Tim Wu, a Colombian professor, published a manifesto on Monday giving out principles to make sure that antitrust was brought back. Tim Wu debated that the growth of firms like Uber, WeWork and Amazon have been caused by predatory pricing. This forced other companies out of the market. Monopolist have debated throughout the history of America that an example of market being effective was due to stranglehold sectors. Richard John claimed that in 1880s and 1990s network effect arguments were used for political importance’s by operating companies in telephone.
Good investment help strong firms maintain their superiority in the field. When big tech companies talk about breaking up companies, they talk of reversing and blocking this investment that was put in place to create this firms. Firms like Google bought Waze, a company that was a big competitor to Google Maps. Network effect argument fail to notice that some of this superior firms own a number of different industries. For instance, Amazon deals with sales of different commodities. These include distribution of groceries, Cloud computing, electronics. This allows them to expand into other businesses.
