[johnm111888]

I would argue that capitalism does not favor this "concentration of power," in fact quite the opposite. Most industries where there is huge concentration of power (i.e. banks) is largely due to regulation. These new SV companies disrupted other big businesses and will eventually be disrupted by another wave of businesses themselves. A look at the top 10 companies by market cap in 1995 is probably very different than the top 10 currently.

I'm not sure how you site "exploitative practices by big business" then give an example of Uber. Uber is % of cab services? I would not classify them as big business. And while you might have a point with Google and privacy, users are not their customer but rather their product they sell to advertisers. So to argue they use exploitative practices and comparing to Amazon is weak considering the users aren't really a part of the supply chain but rather opt-in voluntarily.

[pron]

You're looking purely at the market caps and revenues, while the economy is also a function of employment and political influence. Heavily regulated segments might have fewer players (at first), but those are regulated and their power is curtailed. And like another commenter said, unregulated markets (and historical examples are aplenty, especially in the US), quickly see consolidation and concentration of power in the hands of a few corporations (even if they happen to be nominal competitors), and little regulation means their power (which is not the same as their revenue or market cap) can grow unhindered.

In as much as SV companies "disrupt" old industries, they usually consolidate power. Uber may not be big yet, but it's bigger than any single taxi company, and it wants to be a lot bigger still. How Uber transfers risk to its workers and pretends its nothing but a "marketplace" has the potential to change work relations and job security. It's just that Amazon's business practices look more similar to the ones we know from the gilded age, while what Google and Uber do is new, but not any less exploitative.

Opting-in and choice has little relevance here. A modern democracy must ensure that no unelected entity (and even elected bodies have checks and balances) gains too much control over people's lives even if people seem to want it.

[johnm111888]

Love the discussion. Will write a long response because I don’t have time for a short one. In regard to the first paragraph can you name any examples? The most regulated industries have the most power. Banking, energy & utilities, healthcare insurance are all examples. Can you name one sustained US monopoly that has existed without government assistance?

2nd paragraph. Uber might transfer risk to workers but without uber these workers wouldn't even have jobs as taxicabbers due to the cost of fees/regulation government applies to taxi services. I find it ironic the employees are complaining about a company they voluntarily work for, and arguing against the practices that allow the company to exist and employ them. Uber has ample competition so I wouldn’t say they exactly wield power— they are trying to fight the consolidated power where their competitors are in bed with the government whose laws provide a barrier of entry to the existing inefficient industry. Same thing is happening with Telsa. Whenever a transformative company enters an industry, the existing players lobby government for regulation and/or to enforce the regulation already in place. Throughout history it has been 1.big company(ies) establish huge market share in an industry 2. Said companies lobby government for regulation that prevents new entrants. RR, coal, automotive, finance, health insurance, utility industries have all done this.

3rd paragraph. This is ridiculous. Government’s role is to serve the people. Government knows better than the people? The government needs to protect citizens from themselves? How would they determine when an “unelected body” gains too much control over people’s lives? The fact is the free market determines winners and losers and is the most efficient way to allocate resources. Transactions only occur when both parties think they’ll benefit. No one is forced to do anything. To think the government knows better than everyone else is naïve at best and destructive at worst.

[pron]

> Can you name one sustained US monopoly that has existed without government assistance?

The oil and rail companies of the gilded age. It was government regulation (the Sherman Act[1]) that helped put a stop to monopolies. If you read up on Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Stanford and pretty much any robber baron, you'd see that they were in the business of constant consolidation. True, at many points they were aided by local government, but that's because local government wasn't regulated either.

> Uber might transfer risk to workers but without uber these workers wouldn't even have jobs...

Maybe and maybe not, but that doesn't justify exploitation. Think of an island where the people are starving, and some industrialist moves his business there and has the islanders build iPhones for two slices of bread per day. Both the islanders and the industrialist benefit from the transaction, but the transaction is still exploitative, as the industrialist uses the threat of death by hunger to get an unfair deal.

> Same thing is happening with Telsa. Whenever a transformative company enters an industry, the existing players lobby government for regulation and/or to enforce the regulation already in place. ..

I'm not saying that government regulation is always used for good, or that it's even used for good most of the time. I am saying that society is on the whole better with regulation than without it, because (at least in the US) the population was being massively exploited during the gilded age and called on the government for help, and I think pretty much everyone agrees that America is much better for it, even if growth has slowed.

> Uber has ample competition so I wouldn’t say they exactly wield power.

My original comment may have been confusing, but Uber was mentioned simply as an exploitative company (which might some day become powerful) -- not a currently powerful one, unlike Google and Amazon, which are already too powerful.

> This is ridiculous. Government’s role is to serve the people. Government knows better than the people? The government needs to protect citizens from themselves?

Democracies protect people from themselves even when it comes to the democratic process itself. Most democracies prevent people from voting in a dictator, even if the people really want it. They install checks and balances to prevent an accumulation of power even if the people want it. And it's not about knowing better, but averting disaster by slowing down the growth of potential "cancerous tumors". The government doesn't (and can't) always decide what's "good" and what's "bad". All it can do is prevent individuals or organizations from growing too strong, so that if something bad happens, the damage is limited. This means that some potential positive effects are slowed down as well, but lowering the risk for a disaster is usually worth it.

> How would they determine when an “unelected body” gains too much control over people’s lives?

Just as Teddy Roosevelt did. When the exploitation starts piling up, the media exposes the control, and the people call for change.

> Transactions only occur when both parties think they’ll benefit.

Like I said before, this doesn't mean the transactions are carried out when both sides are free of duress. A surgeon and a homeless person aren't as free when it comes to the choice of, say, buying drugs. The surgeon has a lot to lose if caught, while the homeless doesn't. Performing transactions when one side of the deal has limited choice or limited knowledge is exploitative even if that side benefits, too. In democracies, the weak side will hopefully be educated of the exploitation, and then use their political power to tip the scales more in their favor. The idea is that democracies (though they're far from perfect at that; really far) are able to generate other forms of power to offset that of property.

If the rich are free to exercise their power -- money -- any way they like, the poor should be free to use their power -- their numbers -- to fight back. This is why I think American libertarianism is so hypocritical, as it places limitations only on one side but not the other. If regulation on money is to be completely lifted, than so should regulation on violence. But since many people don't want that, we have democratic institutions that give the poor some power back (though not nearly as much as they would in an anarchy, where they'd be free to use violence, which is why democracy, too, mostly serves the rich).

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act

[badusername]

That seems like an illogical reasoning regarding Uber. Remember that uber only gets a small slice of whatever the "islanders" are getting. There wouldn't be any reason to deliberately make it harder for the people working unless the market itself has dictated such changes.

[pron]

> Remember that uber only gets a small slice of whatever the "islanders" are getting.

Yes, but they're also taking almost risk, so it's still exploitative. The island example was simply meant to show that transactions where both sides benefit aren't necessarily fair, and can still be considered exploitation -- not as a direct comparison to Uber.

[cbd1984]

> I would argue that capitalism does not favor this "concentration of power," in fact quite the opposite.

That's nice and all, but history says otherwise, with the Gilded Age as the primary example: Monopolies existed in the relative regulatory vacuum, and it took government power to break them up.

[johnm111888]

Referencing the time period in which the economy grew at its fastest rate in history in regards to GDP and real wages? Gilded Age transformed US into the economic superpower that it is today -- regulatory vacuum helped this. Government corruption and high tariffs helped prevent competition and helped establish the monopolies it later set out to break up. RRs benefitted from the creation of the interstate commerce commission

[cbd1984]

> Referencing the time period in which the economy grew at its fastest rate in history in regards to GDP and real wages? Gilded Age transformed US into the economic superpower that it is today -- regulatory vacuum helped this.

It optimized for massive growth at the expense of everything else, yes. That's not what most people actually want. Most people understand they aren't going to be Vanderbilts.

> Government corruption and high tariffs helped prevent competition and helped establish the monopolies it later set out to break up. RRs benefitted from the creation of the interstate commerce commission

So government did everything wrong and businesses did everything good, then and always, for ever and ever, amen. And you Austrian-School Libertarians wonder why nobody takes you seriously.

More to the point, do you not understand the economic benefits of massive vertical and horizontal integration, and how difficult it is to break into a field like railroads, even if we do posit a total regulatory vacuum?