[pron]

This case is a beautiful demonstration of the dynamics of both "free market" and regulation. Free market dynamics demand (in this case as in all cases) that large players must never compete on prices or wages (as your competitors have the resources to fight back, so competition on price just makes everyone worse off). On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market (antitrust), as well as a tool wielded by capitalists to strengthen their stranglehold (patents).

It is perhaps worth reminding that the interplay between regulators and the market, and their co-evolution, have taken a different historical path than in Europe. While in Europe big government preceded laissez-faire, or at least, evolved hand-in-hand, the US was largely unregulated for many years. The result was that Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power in the US, advancing the "economy" but at the same time practically enslaving the population. It was after many years of cries for help by the American people, and a long struggle led largely by the press, that Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government, wrestle back some power, and save the people from feudalist oppression.

Ironically, many Americans forgot what the US looked like when the government was powerless, and the market was allowed to roam free. People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about when playing out in the real world.

Obviously, as patent law demonstrates, regulation can be (and is) abused by capitalists. As the world changes, power shifts, and players adapt new strategies in this constant power struggle, both the market and regulation need to evolve hand-on-hand. The big question is what will play the role the press once played in exposing the workings of the intricate system of interests that is the economy?

[crazy1van]

" On the other hand, regulation was used both to stop an exploitation by the market "

I don't see any evidence that regulation stopped the behavior in this case. Perhaps the law will be used after the fact to sue or jail some people, but it doesn't seem to be what actually stopped the problem.

As another poster said, the class action date ranges end in 2009 because Facebook (a private company) wouldn't play ball.

Capitalism is a messy system, but it does tend to self correct in the long run.

[pron]

The practice stopped because of an agreement reached with the Justice Department[1]. I don't know which theoretical model leads you to believe that capitalism tends to correct itself, as historical evidence suggests otherwise: that the free market tends to converge towards feudalism (in the broad sense) – as happened in the US in the late 19th and early 20th century – or crisis; any corrections in course have always been due to public uproar which led to increased regulation.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/technology/18google.html

[usefulcat]

> Capitalism is a messy system, but it does tend to self correct in the long run.

That's quite a generalization; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[crazy1van]

You are right. My statement is a huge generalization and I will never be able to find hard supporting evidence in the true sense.

However, my general sentiment stems from looking at the well being of the average person across human history. As humans shifted towards a system where people earned for themselves and kept what they earned, the typical human life improved at an astounding rate. On a much smaller scale, I've never seen people work harder than when they had stake in the outcome.

Anecdotes and generalizations, I fully admit. However, I bet many others with a much wider variety of life experiences than I have reach the same conclusion.

[pron]

Actually, human society hasn't "shifted towards a system where people earned for themselves and kept what they earned". Throughout history there have been motions back and forth towards a amore socialist or a more capitalist system. In fact, I'm not sure you can say that we have such a system in any of the Western countries, right now. People don't just work for themselves: they pool a large chunk of their resources together to build common infrastructure necessary for business.

There was one time, however, when human society shifted from a communal hunter-gatherer society to one having private property, and that was the neolithic revolution. It is pretty much universally agreed that it made most people worse off. They had to work more (you're right about that; hunters-gatherers needed to work only 20 hours a week), got more sick, were malnourished, had to give birth to more children, and lived less (until modern technology, that is). It's unclear why this most important revolution in human history happened, but some theories suggest that it was brought about by the only people who benefitted from it: those who quickly became rich.

[mindslight]

> Ayn Randian titans took control of pretty much all power ... after many years of cries ... Teddy Roosevelt was able to strengthen the government ... People like Ayn Rand, who sadly came to the US just as the wheel was turning, didn't see the suffering that their romantic fantasies had brought about

I'm confused - which side used the time machine?

[mpyne]

I know this is HN, but maybe you should try to comprehend the message as it was obviously meant instead of choosing a possible interpretation that is illogical and then beating up on the interpretation you chose.

[mindslight]

I got the original message (or at least the beginnings of one).

OP started off on the narrow path of understanding with balancing viewpoints, but then fell off by representing Rand as unconditional support for corporate domination, and went on to imply that her writings inspired these before-her-time titans to boot. So I pointed out the absurdity by expanding on it.

Besides what's really more interesting, analyzing caricatures of ideologies, or time machines?

[skj]

There was no implication that the Randian titans were inspired by Rand. Only the implication that they lived by her ideals.

That, of course, can happen before she actually articulates them.

[mindslight]

Only if you're talking about a narrow caricature of her ideas, and ignoring the context she was writing from - socially-based totalitarianism. Her focus of strong individualism would have manifested quite differently if she had been writing during that period of hierarchical totalitarianism.

There are many people who use what she said to justify their being assholes, but the same applies to any philosophy when it's taken for strict prescriptions.

[smsm42]

If large players routinely pay top specialists low wages, they will cease to be large pretty soon, since their talent will be leaving for players paying better money and making those players large instead. Some people, of course, are impatient and want their enormous wage to be even more enormous - and now! And they want it while carrying no risk at all. That's where politicians come in - delivering other people's money while moving risk to somebody else is their specialty. Of course, their primary clientele is the same large players, but minor politicians are not above serving smaller audiences and endorsing extensive and complex regulations that would cost large players a tiny bit of their profits while making compliance so hard that smaller players would find it very expensive to compete. Which is all for good, so politicians can proceed with their good work. At the end, everybody wins - impatient people get a tiny bit of cash from large players, lawyers get a huge pile of cash from large players for managing the lawsuits, large players get higher barriers to entry, politicians get votes for restoring the order and everything is great because nobody ever asks where the money comes from.

[pron]

Bureaucracy is annoying, slow, and unjust. But the situation now is much better than when the market was unregulated and robber barons did as they pleased. The American people suffered under the tyranny of the free market, they called on the government to save them, and it did. Nothing is perfect, and everything requires constant work and improvement, but we can use a gentle reminder now and then of how things used to be.

I don't think anyone believes Silicon Valley engineers are a bunch of miserable, oppressed working-class folk, but it's good to know how even the most seemingly progressive of corporations behave.

As to "making compliance so hard that smaller players would find it very expensive to compete", I think that regulation sometimes swings this way, but it is sometimes gradually, slowly, fixed. I don't think anyone would say that all regulation is always good for the big players and bad for the small ones.

Lastly, where does the money come from?

[smsm42]

>>> I think that regulation sometimes swings this way, but it is sometimes gradually, slowly, fixed

The first sometimes is more like "almost always" and the second one is more like "almost never". Government regulation is a ratchet - easy to move one way, almost impossible to move the opposite way.

>>> Lastly, where does the money come from?

That, as I said, the question that is never asked. Because everybody feels entitled to have the money, nobody ever asks who's paying the money. Consumers? Shareholders? Taxpayers? Who cares.

[pron]

Do you think that without regulation there will be less barriers for the small players? Because I can assure you that the Robber Barons made sure there were no small players left. They either bought them out or forcefully drove them out of business. As much as regulation places a burden on the small guys, if you let the big guys alone at it, they will make it much harder. This isn't theoretical; that's how it actually happened (and if the US 100 years ago is too far back for you, look at Russia in the past 20 years).

[smsm42]

Russia in the past 20 years is an example of a libertarian no-regulation state? Are you kidding me? Russia is a corruptocrat authoritarian state with no independent courts, virtually no independent media outside of internet, no rule of law or personal protection of property and person, official state censorship, and is corrupt to the core, with rampant extortion and bribery on every level of the government. And yes, plenty of invasive regulation that is used exactly to extort these bribes. Latest state initiative, recently introduced into Duma, is mandatory registration with the state of every internet site and mandatory preservation of users' activity logs by every site operator: http://lenta.ru/news/2014/02/28/data/

I'm sorry, did you just mention Russia as an example of state with no regulation? Ignorant, joking or trolling?

[sliverstorm]

You say they will cease to be large, and "pretty soon" at that. You accuse employees of being impatient. But this collusion lasted for nearly five years.

Besides, how can their talent leave for players paying better money when nobody except for the large players can afford top wages? Just because Google can extract $150k+ of yearly value out of an engineer doesn't mean another company can. You need a large, successful business for that...

[smsm42]

Five years is not a very long time for a company, and it assumes this collusion actually suppressed wages in a meaningful way, compared to the rest of the industry, which is yet to be proven.

>>> Besides, how can their talent leave for players paying better money when nobody except for the large players can afford top wages?

If their wages are so high already as to be unaffordable for most of the industry, it significantly deducts from my sympathy about them being oppressed by wage-suppressing large companies. To both have wages that nobody except very few very rich players can pay and then complain their wages should actually be even higher and are artificially and illegally low seems to me a bit greedy, not?

>>> Just because Google can extract $150k+ of value out of an engineer doesn't mean another company can.

Another company then sucks at what it is doing if it can't extract value efficiently. But experience shows new players routinely come out to disrupt existing ones. But if Google is able to both extract huge value and pay huge wages - unattainable anywhere else - what exactly is the complaint about? That these wages aren't huge enough yet and could be even huger?

[sliverstorm]

Five years is not a very long time for a company, but for an individual? Especially in an industry that exhibits ageism and by some accounts is "done with you" when you turn 40? Given that, five years is more than 25% of the time in which you are hot on the market. So, no, I don't really think someone who has been shafted for five years is being "impatient". Just how long do you expect them to wait?

[smsm42]

Where that 40 thing comes from? Maybe it was true 20 years ago when 40 years old meant no extensive experience with modern computing, but by now it's plain stupid to refuse to hire experienced developers in their 40s. Sergey Brin is 40, Larry Page is 40 - are they really "too old" now? I think this ageism thing is going to die very soon, if it already didn't.

>>> Just how long do you expect them to wait?

That depends on what you're waiting for. I was talking about economic processes, they don't happen overnight. If you want to improve your personal situation, you don't have to wait for that.

[sliverstorm]

Where that 40 thing comes from?

My observation of discussions on HN about age discrimination. (I'm not a software engineer, so I have no personal touch with that job market)

If you want to improve your personal situation, you don't have to wait for that.

When the top employers are actively colluding against you, maybe yes, you do. You have no power against a company worth $400B, unless you band together with your peers. Perhaps in some kind of legal action...?

[lostlogin]

This doesn't directly correlate, however Apples profit per FTE was over $2 million in 2013. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/10/31/apple-revenue-per-hea...