In the 80s and 90s, the government had shattered AT&T into many pieces, so there was plenty of real growth in implementing innovations that said monopoly had foregone (e.g. packet switching, wireless telephony, etc). But that's temporary.
Parallel to this was the complete disintegration of the understanding that ruled during the Progressive Era, when we believed you don't sell half your country's economy to a handful of megacorporations[0]. The real growth that came from switching from analog[2] landlines to Internet ran out in the mid 2000s, because most people had it, while consolidation kept on going up until 2020 when we realized, "shit, we're locked in a box with Facebook and TikTok now".
In the late 2000s, there was a shift in the kinds of businesses venture capitalists funded. They can be classified as one of two things:
- Creating a target for a big tech acquisition that will get the VCs their exit
- Flagrantly violating an established rule or law and calling it "disruptive"
The last bit is almost a sort of parody of the post-AT&T boom. Surely, if we squint, AT&T and the US government are both monopolies[3], so they're both fair game to 'disrupt'. Shareholder fraud is pretty ubiquitous in large companies[4], but AI is also based on several more instances of "hope the law goes unenforced". e.g. the whole usefulness of all this AI crap is specifically based on laundering away copyright in a way that lets OpenAI replace the entire creative industry without actually getting rid of the monopolies that made the creative industry so onerous for the public.
"Laws for thee but not for me" is the key point here. Uber and Lyft violate taxi medallion rules, but they aren't interested in abolishing those rules. They just wanted (and got) special carve-outs for themselves so they'd have a durable advantage. If they had just gotten those rules removed, there'd be competitive pressure that would eat their profits. To be clear, I'm not alleging that Uber and Lyft actually are profitable businesses - they aren't - but their ability to access capital markets to continue losing money is predicated on them having something monopoly-shaped. Every pirate wants to be an admiral, after all.
[0] English for chaebol[1]
[1] Korean for zaibatsu
[2] Yes I know ISDN existed sshhh
[3] To be clear, the US government is not a moral high star, but they have democratic controls that other monopolies do not. Voting in a government is granted to all citizens on a one person, one vote basis. Voting in a corporation is one dollar, one vote - i.e. not a democracy.
[4] Example: big tech's complete refusal to break down business profits by line of business despite clear SEC rules against that
Parallel to this was the complete disintegration of the understanding that ruled during the Progressive Era, when we believed you don't sell half your country's economy to a handful of megacorporations[0]. The real growth that came from switching from analog[2] landlines to Internet ran out in the mid 2000s, because most people had it, while consolidation kept on going up until 2020 when we realized, "shit, we're locked in a box with Facebook and TikTok now".
In the late 2000s, there was a shift in the kinds of businesses venture capitalists funded. They can be classified as one of two things:
- Creating a target for a big tech acquisition that will get the VCs their exit
- Flagrantly violating an established rule or law and calling it "disruptive"
The last bit is almost a sort of parody of the post-AT&T boom. Surely, if we squint, AT&T and the US government are both monopolies[3], so they're both fair game to 'disrupt'. Shareholder fraud is pretty ubiquitous in large companies[4], but AI is also based on several more instances of "hope the law goes unenforced". e.g. the whole usefulness of all this AI crap is specifically based on laundering away copyright in a way that lets OpenAI replace the entire creative industry without actually getting rid of the monopolies that made the creative industry so onerous for the public.
"Laws for thee but not for me" is the key point here. Uber and Lyft violate taxi medallion rules, but they aren't interested in abolishing those rules. They just wanted (and got) special carve-outs for themselves so they'd have a durable advantage. If they had just gotten those rules removed, there'd be competitive pressure that would eat their profits. To be clear, I'm not alleging that Uber and Lyft actually are profitable businesses - they aren't - but their ability to access capital markets to continue losing money is predicated on them having something monopoly-shaped. Every pirate wants to be an admiral, after all.
[0] English for chaebol[1]
[1] Korean for zaibatsu
[2] Yes I know ISDN existed sshhh
[3] To be clear, the US government is not a moral high star, but they have democratic controls that other monopolies do not. Voting in a government is granted to all citizens on a one person, one vote basis. Voting in a corporation is one dollar, one vote - i.e. not a democracy.
[4] Example: big tech's complete refusal to break down business profits by line of business despite clear SEC rules against that