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Big tech’s big week raises fears of ‘Blade Runner future’ of mega-company rule
Critics worry we are entering a ‘Blade Runner future’ where our entire lives are controlled by a handful of super-rich, super-powerful corporations directed by a generation of plutocrats with wealth unseen in human history.
Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft all reported record-breaking profits amid a pandemic bonanza but recent Biden administration moves suggest US tech’s easy ride is over
Dominic Rushe in New York
@dominicru
Sun 1 Aug 2021 03.00 EDT

This week the combined fortune of the richest seven billionaires, all big tech titans, passed $1tn for the first time, according to the Institute of Policy Studies’ (IPS) Inequality tracking project.

“We are looking at a Blade Runner future, a world where a handful of companies will dominate all economic activity,” said Chuck Collins, senior scholar at IPS. “This is not just bad for the economy, it’s bad for consumers, for communities, for competition. There is real harm here,” he said.

When a company is as dominant as Amazon is in online retail, Google in search or Facebook in social media, competition gets ever harder, he said. Their huge cash piles mean they can buy out – a favorite Facebook tactic – or copy new entrants, investors will shy away from putting cash into potential rivals, and entrepreneurs will aim to sell out to their giant rivals rather than take them on.

And alongside all that cash comes political power and the means to fight any official or government that challenges them. “We are creating a political and corporate oligarchy that is fundamentally against a healthy democracy and competition,” said Collins........

Now Andreessen doesn’t sound so sure. “The dreams came true; it all worked. And now we’re the dog that caught the bus. What do we do with this damned bus?” he told Substack writer Noah Smith this month.

“We went from being pirates to being the navy. People may love pirates when they’re young and small and scrappy, but nobody likes a navy that acts like a pirate. And today’s technology industry can come across a lot like a navy that acts like a pirate.”

andy7171 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:09 am They are protected by some legal thing Trump tried to get rid of. If you take that away and allow them to be sued, this problem goes away.

andy7171 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:09 am They are protected by some legal thing Trump tried to get rid of. If you take that away and allow them to be sued, this problem goes away.

Pwns wrote:There's an opportunity here to unite the populist right and the populist left under the banner of putting more of the economic spoils in the hands of wage earners to be spent in the economy rather than woke, illegal-immigration-loving, China-kowtowing Corporate America. Of course the problem is some on the left would sooner side with Al Qaeda than someone who may have once said biologically-male individuals shouldn't play women's sports and much the GOP base doesn't realize big money interests would go against everything they care about to keep their taxes low.