Here he is at BuzzFeed:
Three companies now have enormous power over our economy and society. Politicians on both sides should be worried.
The economic and social problems caused by the exceptional unchecked power of three companies — Google, Amazon, and Facebook — has created a rare bipartisan opportunity for the right and left to come together around common interests: holding abuses of unaccountable power accountable.
As both conservatives and progressives have learned through experience, these hyper-concentrated market and political powers can effectively censor, exclude, or ban people or entities at any time, for any reason — and without any explanation, due process, or real recourse.
Conservatives understand how unchecked online hyper-power can threaten individual liberty with tyranny: Facebook wields its social power to censor news and filter unacceptable opinions; Google denies advertising to conservatives with which it disagrees; and Amazon ignores pirated goods sold on its marketplace to force the rightful owner of the product to distribute its goods on Amazon on Amazon’s terms, to protect its brand, property, and business.
Progressives understand how automated autocracy can threaten participatory democracy: Google recently threatened the New America Foundation’s funding to force it to fire Barry Lynn and its anti-monopoly researchers for supporting the EU’s $3 billion fine against Google; Facebook and Google have sparked widespread outrage as the prime purveyors of selling highly profitable fake news in last year’s election cycle; and Amazon is seen unfairly undermining competition, and threatening jobs and communities.
Where real bipartisan interests can converge is around holding these corporations accountable.
Just like government needs the competitive rivalry of separation of powers and an adversarial process of justice to keep it honest and working for Americans’ interests, the market needs competition and the backstop of the adversarial antitrust process to keep it honest and working for consumers’ interests.
At its core, this is not a business or government problem, but a human nature problem; power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Ensuring that hyper-concentrations of power are kept in check unites both the right and left.
Although politically divided, Americans agree that all of us should play by the same rules and no one is above the law. Therefore, antitrust changes that hold the nation’s largest online companies accountable, with a focus on economic growth and fair competition, are bound to garner broad, bipartisan support.
Amazon, Google, and Facebook have leveraged their online intermediary or broker functions to become winner-take-all gatekeepers for consumers seeking to reach companies, and toll-keepers for companies seeking to sell to consumers online.
Since these three companies are in the process of aggregating and monopolizing most mass media via the internet by inserting themselves in the middle of almost all online activities, and since the government has granted online intermediaries special immunity from liability for what happens on their platforms, these companies warrant a new moniker: the intermedia.
The intermedia have become dominant market bottlenecks for their distinct functions: e-commerce, information access, and social sharing. Most supply and demand in the economy must now pass through them to interact and to conduct business.
The intermedia have become so dominant so quickly because outdated government rules have created an unfair playing field favoring the winner-take-all online platforms over the rest of the economy.
Special government immunities, regulatory loopholes put in place to support the ancient bulletin board internet, and a near total pass by antitrust enforcers, have enabled the intermedia to unfairly skim most of the revenue growth, value creation, data, and customer interaction from the rest of the economy.*Aug 21
This is not a free market, but a favored market....MUCH MORE
"How the Internet Cartel Won the Internet and The Internet Competition Myth"
June 25
"Why Amazon Buying Whole Foods Will Attract Serious Antitrust Scrutiny"
June 2
"Why US Antitrust Non-Enforcement Produces Online Winner-Take-All Platforms"
The author is an analyst focused on communications with a particular interest in search. He worked at the U.S. Department of State and as a member of the United States Department of State Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy. We've linked a couple times....
June 11
"Why EU Monopoly Search Ruling Will Be a Tipping Point for Alphabet-Google" (GOOG)
Feb 27
Previously on the great coming together:
Sept. 5
"Google is losing allies across the political spectrum" (GOOG)
Aug. 19
"US lawmakers and advocates on both the left and right are increasingly calling for regulating Google, Facebook, and Amazon" (GOOG; FB; AMZN)
June 21
Amazon Is Uniting Liberal and Conservative (against the Borg that is AMZN)
September 2010
"The Left Right Paradigm is Over: Its You vs. [Big] Corporations"
