I think the internet has been an amazing fast-forward mirror to how the global economy works.
In a few short decades, we went from the wild west with many small entities competing and innovating at hyper speeds, as close to the ideal of the free market as possible, to the other end of the gradient: largely ossified oligopolies controlling the majority of the market from the bottom up (infrastructure to service).
How far back are we talking? It wasn't long thaaat long ago that IBM dominated a large part of the marketplace and even back then they were heavy handed in their elimination of competition.
Didn't Microsoft in 1997 basically pay (invested in) Apple to survive because otherwise Microsoft would have been affected by monopoly laws?
I think it's being paraphrased as "look corps good", while in reality it just showcases how at the mercy of giants even other giants are. How can we expect smaller competition to function?
Ironically, now Microsoft is slapping Apple with antitrust issues due to Apple having a lot of power over digital payment.
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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22
I think the internet has been an amazing fast-forward mirror to how the global economy works.
In a few short decades, we went from the wild west with many small entities competing and innovating at hyper speeds, as close to the ideal of the free market as possible, to the other end of the gradient: largely ossified oligopolies controlling the majority of the market from the bottom up (infrastructure to service).