steveads
Joined 7 years ago
Joined 7 years ago
I joined a book club back in January that meets bi-weekly. I really enjoy it and met some friends that I now see occasionally outside of our meetings.
Work laptop, given to me by the company, is an HP EliteBook (i7-7700U, 16GB RAM)
There is a Philosophize This! episode which is quite a good introduction to Baudrillard's ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgoKIT0Ufc&t=109s
1) Gaining critical mass is definitely a barrier to entry for competition. I'm just less sold that Facebook's current popularity is not due to it's foothold in the space vs it's utility.
2) Economy of scale is what allows these companies to offer their services to me as 'free'. I don't really mind that Facebook or Google have taken something that is useless to me (my personal browsing history, locations, likes, etc) and found a way to monetize it if I get to use their platform for free in return.
3) I'm not sure that breaking up big tech would significantly discourage their 'moat maintaining' behavior. If anything, with additional competition introduced, wouldn't there be even more incentive to put time and resource into maintaining what majority they have?
1. The big tech companies are not true monopolies. They simply offer a better service than current competitors. It's hardly set in stone that Facebook, for instance, will continue to hold it's majority in social networking.
2. I'd trust a large company like Google who has stronger data protection policies in place than the smaller alternative also in the same space.
3. Breaking up or regulating more strongly distracts some of the most productive and innovative companies.
From it's Pulp Fiction response: "...However, whether you personally consider "Pulp Fiction" a good movie depends on your taste in film."
To avoid this noise I often add something like this to my queries "skip any preamble or qualifications about how x is subjective" and the results are much better.