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Author Topic: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, & Apple  (Read 7673 times)

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Offline Donald Baker

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Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, & Apple
« on: July 31, 2018, 07:03:57 PM »
Are these corporate giants going to dominate all commerce eventually?  I could throw in Disney, Comcast, and Time Warner as well.  It seem like wealth is concentrating more and more and competition is going away?  Is this an accurate statement or just how things appear?

Offline Phidippides

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Re: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, & Apple
« Reply #1 on: July 31, 2018, 10:03:52 PM »
You raise an interesting topic.  I like to think that I support free market capitalism in all its glory; the less government involvement, the better.  However, this understanding presupposes fair competition.  With the rise of the tech titans, we have seen companies that have a level of control unseen in the great industrial monopolies of the Gilded Age.  Today, we have companies that control vast amounts of information which has given them insights unlike the world has ever seen.  John D. Rockefeller may have cornered the oil market, but he was never able to eavesdrop on private conversations of customers as a means of trying to increase sales as companies can today.  If you wanted steel you would have to go through Andrew Carnegie, but he would not have been able to peer into the private communications of millions of American citizens. 

The sheer power that tech companies have today separates them from their corporate ancestors, and it also makes them much more dangerous than ever before.  At some point, citizens will need to stop and ask where these companies are headed in the future.  How much of our lives will they be involved in?  Will we have any privacy left? 

Add to this the interesting development which hasn't really been discussed but which really raised its ugly head during the gay marriage debate: corporations taking public stances in favor of a specific hot-button social issue.  I think that the gay lobby inside companies was strong and resistance was weak which led to this kind of unprecedented maneuver.  What if corporations decided to go even further and force consumers to accepting specific values as a condition of doing business?  Could Amazon include a message on its checkout page which stated "as a condition of concluding this sale, you agree to have an automatic message sent to your representative to urge him to defend abortion on demand"?  Could Apple agree to sell iPhones only to those who are registered Democrats?

This is only the tip of the iceberg, though.  It's easy to see how they could use their hegemony to push a certain socio-political vision in our country, whether we - the citizens - agree with it or not.  That's a very scary thought. 

A lot of sci-fi or dystopian storylines of the future frame power struggles as involving one or more corporations.  I can see why this is.   

Offline Donald Baker

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Re: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, & Apple
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2018, 09:59:30 PM »
Excellent points Phid.  Companies are going to great pains to gather what is called "Big Data" so that they can find correlations and patterns like where customers like to shop, their social media habits, traditional demographic data etc...  They are looking for anything they can exploit for new business opportunities.  They employ machine learning and the Internet of Things as well.  It's downright Orwellian what they are capable of doing these days, but at the same time, I also understand why they do it and if I were a CEO of a major company, I would definitely data mine as much as I could to keep up with the competition.  The question is, should we regulate this activity?  Or should we just get used to the fact that companies are going to do what they do?

Offline Phidippides

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Re: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, & Apple
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2018, 11:13:43 AM »
I think they may have to be broken up or regulated in certain ways.  I don't think that Big Data itself is the problem, but what can be done by these companies in terms of control over our democracy.  We might not think about this too much now, but imagine how this plays out if the trend continues.

Earlier this summer, Google decided not to work with the Pentagon on a project because some employees protested:

Google employee protest: Now Google backs off Pentagon drone AI project

Imagine a situation in which Google had worked on this project with the Pentagon, but in a time of war the Google board decided it was opposed to the lawful actions of our President and/or Congress and decided it didn't want to play along.  What if Google decided to disarm any drones its software was installed on so they couldn't kill?  We might think this would be illegal and that board members would go to jail, but what if they took out an insurance policy - if the board went to jail, the entire company would shut down select Google services (such as Android and Gmail), effectively crippling millions of users, including many members of Congress?  Our entire economy could be disrupted.

Could this happen?  I don't think it's as far off as it may seem.  When companies have such a pervasive influence, they have great power.  This should scare us. 

Offline Donald Baker

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Re: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, & Apple
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2018, 01:10:36 PM »
I'm scared now.lol