RECOMMENDED READING
“Big Tech” has become shorthand for a potpourri of overlapping issues including monopoly power and market concentration; censorship and political influence; and consumer manipulation. Companies with business models as disparate as Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are treated as a monolithic challenge.
Making sense of that challenge requires dividing it into three separate parts. The first of these, as the “big” in Big Tech suggests, is the market power and anti-competitive behaviour of the companies that control the platforms on which key products and services are offered. Antitrust complaints are pervasive in the digital world because scale tends to be a source of value rather than cost, creating more contexts for natural monopoly.
Fortunately, Americans have considerable experience dealing with market power and monopolies. Google is the same kind of problem as Standard Oil and it has the same solution: it should be broken up. Facebook and Twitter are railroad-like monopolies and require utility-style regulation.
Recommended Reading
New Policy Brief: U.S. Needs More Commercial Spectrum for Economic Strength
The use of radio spectrum is increasingly important for America’s economic and national security, argues a policy brief released today by American Compass.
U.S. Needs More Commercial Spectrum to Lead on AI and Reindustrialization
Government decisions about the allocation of spectrum are more critical than ever.
To Reindustrialize America, Make Industrial Equipment More Accessible
New American Compass policy brief argues that federal agencies should use their loan authorities to help finance industrial equipment.
