Implications of the Monopolistic Order

[Moriarte]

The world is becoming increasingly centralised. Today’s major powers consolidated and as such earned the ability to compete and dictate their will on the international arena. Politics is merely a reflection of the economy, within the global economy centralisation is taking place as a natural continuation of the process, which unfolded over thousands years of recorded history. If you’re in it to win it, there’s simply nothing else to do, than to centralise to attempt to raise efficiency. We went from villages to city states, to countries, to country blocks, economic zones. And we haven’t yet reached the end of the line.

We celebrate achievements of corporations, selling us gadgets, cars, computers. These corporations are only able to achieve levels of manufacturing efficiency of their magnificent products because they’ve conquered scale problems through centralisation of labor & resources, including capital. Obviously, we have the internet, centralised hub of communications and surveillance, where everyone can say what they really think, while divulging their location and thought history. (Convenient!) All these achievements of human ingenuity push the process of centralisation to creation of strong monopolies.

Monopoly is the ultimate dream, goal and achievement of any competitive business owner. The ultimate validation crown - you’ve succeeded, you’ve driven out all competition! But we, the people, don’t like monopolies. Which is rather counterintuitive: how can we not like monopolies, when these monopolies brought around some of the coolest products? Well, monopolies become predatory, unwilling to innovate, but very willing and able when it comes to satisfying personal economic and political goals of a narrow band of capitalists, that control them.

I heard and read some people claim we can control monopolies, “break them”, they say… In my opinion this is otherworldly naivety, a sweetheart idealism. You don’t control monopoly, no, no, monopoly controls you! Just few days ago, a near-monopolist company valued at $2.6 trillion, bought another near-monopolist company for $70 billion to form a very strong software entity. Did they try “break it”? Oh yes, they did. Did they succeed? No, they didn’t. While the deal isn’t 100% finalised, it’s pretty clear that the cogs got greased and the mechanism will deliver the only sensible result satisfying the important beneficiaries of the process.

Monopolisation/centralisation has gotten so extreme lately, that market value of Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia combined ($6.6 trillion) is bigger than combined value of all companies on all European stock exchanges. ($6.4 trillion)

So what next? Will these monopolists need their own armies to control their interest? Will they need their own currencies, to remove last bit of fiscal manipulation from the hands of clearly shrinking governments? What further implications of the monopolising world should we expect in years to come is what interests me.

 

[Senethro]

No. They want weak, compliant states to do all the messy law enforcement and apologising for them. They want everything that doesn't leave them on the hook for responsibility and blame.

 

[r16]

the monopolistic order is 1,5 Nation States . The half being the former colonial power and the money it hoarded at the time . The corporate malpractice on a global level is enabled and protected only by military reputation ; at the end of the day . The things that might happen to that will be less tolerable to discuss , so , those companies are not going to inherit the planet . No , the joke about the Meek as promised by Jesus is lame , because they are not going to get Space either .

 

[Kaitzilla]

The world is becoming increasingly centralised. Today’s major powers consolidated and as such earned the ability to compete and dictate their will on the international arena. Politics is merely a reflection of the economy, within the global economy centralisation is taking place as a natural continuation of the process, which unfolded over thousands years of recorded history. If you’re in it to win it, there’s simply nothing else to do, than to centralise to attempt to raise efficiency. We went from villages to city states, to countries, to country blocks, economic zones. And we haven’t yet reached the end of the line.

We celebrate achievements of corporations, selling us gadgets, cars, computers. These corporations are only able to achieve levels of manufacturing efficiency of their magnificent products because they’ve conquered scale problems through centralisation of labor & resources, including capital. Obviously, we have the internet, centralised hub of communications and surveillance, where everyone can say what they really think, while divulging their location and thought history. (Convenient!) All these achievements of human ingenuity push the process of centralisation to creation of strong monopolies.

Monopoly is the ultimate dream, goal and achievement of any competitive business owner. The ultimate validation crown - you’ve succeeded, you’ve driven out all competition! But we, the people, don’t like monopolies. Which is rather counterintuitive: how can we not like monopolies, when these monopolies brought around some of the coolest products? Well, monopolies become predatory, unwilling to innovate, but very willing and able when it comes to satisfying personal economic and political goals of a narrow band of capitalists, that control them.

I heard and read some people claim we can control monopolies, “break them”, they say… In my opinion this is otherworldly naivety, a sweetheart idealism. You don’t control monopoly, no, no, monopoly controls you! Just few days ago, a near-monopolist company valued at $2.6 trillion, bought another near-monopolist company for $70 billion to form a very strong software entity. Did they try “break it”? Oh yes, they did. Did they succeed? No, they didn’t. While the deal isn’t 100% finalised, it’s pretty clear that the cogs got greased and the mechanism will deliver the only sensible result satisfying the important beneficiaries of the process.

Monopolisation/centralisation has gotten so extreme lately, that market value of Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia combined ($6.6 trillion) is bigger than combined value of all companies on all European stock exchanges. ($6.4 trillion)

So what next? Will these monopolists need their own armies to control their interest? Will they need their own currencies, to remove last bit of fiscal manipulation from the hands of clearly shrinking governments? What further implications of the monopolising world should we expect in years to come is what interests me.

Next is public/private partnerships. (Fascism)

Government is the ultimate tool both to break up monopolies or to entrench them permanently.

Private companies can do many of the things that are illegal for government to do or politically unpopular.

The team up is natural for both sides.


The cost of living crisis will continue to escalate relentlessly until house and car ownership is just a dream.

Small businesses will all be wiped out.

Inflation will be used to argue against universal basic income while the monopolies increase prices effortlessly.

To compete fairly with one of the monopolies, simply gather up a few billion dollars to comply with the million rules and regulations they lobbied to get passed and start a new company to compete with them.

 

[Joij21]

Next is public/private partnerships. (Fascism)

That already does exist. Been going on throughout the cold war and the war on terror, where you been?

Will these monopolists need their own armies to control their interest?

Already happened with the Dutch & English East India companies. Also happened with the Pinkertons gunning down striking union workers late 19th & early 20th centuries.

Problem is whenever they had to kill people it led to massive revolts (as in India) or mass public outcry (as in the United States). Both of which then made the respective governments at the time look powerless & incompetent for allowing corporate interests for escalating things to the point of mass disorder. So in turn those governments responded with massive crackdowns against the companies in question. Trust busting in the United States and the transfer of the East India Company's holdings over India to the Crown directly.

So in order to not risk creating a massive backlash that causes a trust bust or the government seizing most of their assets, companies have generally learned to instead rely on state security forces due to the ability to claim plausible deniability and should things escalate to bloodshed they can blame the violence all on the government instead.

Will they need their own currencies

Look up Amazon tokens!!!

East India Company also beat them to it.

I think Elon and several other corporatists prefer to adopt Crypto. But generally you would have two parallel systems Cryptocurrency & Corporate Digitized Tokens.

 

[Moriarte]

No. They want weak, compliant states to do all the messy law enforcement and apologising for them. They want everything that doesn't leave them on the hook for responsibility and blame.

If a state is weak, can an international conglomerate with presence in every city on the planet afford to entrust protection of its assets to that weak state? Or would their barrels be safer with professional help: a couple of fast ships of private military contractors protecting the passing oil tankers from local pirates along a good stretch of African continent. Throw in a few helicopters too.

 

[Joij21]

If a state is weak, can an international conglomerate with presence in every city on the planet afford to entrust protection of its assets to that weak state? Or would their barrels be safer with professional help: a couple of fast ships of private military contractors protecting the passing oil tankers from local pirates along a good stretch of African continent. Throw in a few helicopters too.

Depends on whether the nation in question has been designated for natural resource extraction (as in the Third World), is currently being utilized as a factory floor (as in the Second World), or is the end market and financial HQ (as in the First World).

In the case of resource extraction you want the nation in question to be unstable and corrupt in order to extract the material in question without the individuals of said nation relying on a strong centralized government to nationalize the resources in order to fund and subsidize development of the nation.

In the case of a factory floor you want the government to be stable and preferably authoritarian so as to protect your factory properties but also crush labour through brute force and prevent them from unionizing or demanding better pay. You also want some corruption so the regime allows you to pollute and ignore environmental regulations.

In the case of the end market and financial HQ you want a stable government that is preferably democratic though in a specifically neoliberal sense. The democracy keeps your customers happy, content, and motivated to buy your product instead of constantly worrying about survivalism rather than consumerism. Stable financial and banking systems to finance your global operation tend to do better in less corrupt systems, so democracy with a stable justice system is preferred. However the nation must idealize neoliberalism so as to encourage a system of justice which does not question globalized capitalism and defends as well as protects your HQ from ever falling into anti-corporatist hands or getting trust busted.

It's a three, two, one system and back again.

 

[Moriarte]

The biggest monopoly trial in 25 years.'U.S. et al. v. Google' kicks off tomorrow. The US government challenges Google over its search dominance, notably its deals with Apple making Google the default search on iPhones.$GOOG holds ~91% of the global search market.

From Wiki:

United States v. Google LLC is an ongoing federal antitrust case brought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google LLC on January 24, 2023.[1] The suit accuses Google of illegally monopolizing the advertising technology (adtech) market in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The suit is separate from an ongoing DOJ antitrust case launched in 2020 accusing Google of illegally monopolizing the search engine market.

Filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the suit aims to force Google to sell off significant portions adtech business and require the company to cease certain business practices.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023)

Spoiler Google's business at a glance :

 

[Birdjaguar]

Busting up Google ads would be great.

 

[Moriarte]

So Google vs the US government is under way, and this morning in the E Barrett Prettyman court house in Washington, the opening remarks from both sides were heard.
The prosecution went first, who claimed:

• Google has had a monopoly on search engines for 12 years
• Google told Apple "No default placement - no revenue share" which Department of Justice lawyer Kenneth Dintzer said was the search engine saying "take it or leave it"
• Dintzer also claimed monopoly has given Google the privilege of offering a "less-than-optimal" product and alleged it was paying $10bn a year for privileged positions

We then heard from Google's lawyer, who argued:

• The most-used desktop computer in America belongs to Microsoft, which relies on the Bing search engine
• Changing default settings on iPhone can be done in 4 taps
• Mozilla has often evaluated which search engine to make default - switching between providers
• Some of the most valuable searching - for food - happens via other names, like Yelp or DoorDash

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/business-66782668

 

[Gorbles]

The most-used desktop computer in America belongs to Microsoft, which relies on the Bing search engine

Pretty sure MS was dinged for this recently (maybe only in Europe), didn't hear about Google sticking up for them regardless. Shaky ground to start your defense off on a rival under (valid) scrutiny!

 

[Moriarte]

Pretty sure MS was dinged for this recently (maybe only in Europe), didn't hear about Google sticking up for them regardless. Shaky ground to start your defense off on a rival under (valid) scrutiny!

A cunning attempt to appear small in the shade of a bigger rival!

Simultaneously hinting that most windows 11 users opt for google search willingly, even when presented with a forcing alternative (bing)

In effect, they question validity of a claim that monopolistic position was mainly achieved through shady practices, rather than people's choice, with the latter being guided by the relative quality of a google search, as per win11 example.

That could be the direction they aim for?

 

[Gorbles]

A cunning attempt to appear small in the shade of a bigger rival!

Simultaneously hinting that most windows 11 users opt for google search willingly, even when presented with a forcing alternative (bing)

In effect, they question validity of a claim that monopolistic position was mainly achieved through shady practices, rather than people's choice, with the latter being guided by the relative quality of a google search, as per win11 example.

That could be the direction they aim for?

Yeah, I think it's ultimately about optics. "shady" vs. "earned".

There are obviously a lot of layers to this. I think corporate IP lawyers are, uh, I've had some wine so this could sound spicy, but, uh, ghouls? Yeah. Ghouls.

Anyhow this applies to MS, Google and more besides. But regardless of what I think about them, I believe they're very, very competent. They're good at what they do. A big problem with Oracle vs. Google (imo not in terms of outcome, Oracle were "bad" there) was the absolute technological illiteracy of the general court, judiciary, and so on. Google and Oracle knew the game. They were both playing the crowd.

The same applies here. I think MS has a huge advantage in the Windows install base and will be trying to play that down, but in terms of browsers Google has been playing that game aggressively for over a decade and will most definitely be trying to play that down.

"Yes your Honour, Microsoft leveraged its market share with uh, Internet Explorer. Yes. Nobody installed Chrome, and we never ever placed big buttons saying 'install Chrome it's the fastest browser' on all of the massively popular sites we run, including Google Search"

Will be interesting to see how this shakes out. I'm happy to see them fight, but unlike the Oracle case I'm actually rooting against Google here. Ideally I'm rooting against them both, but I'll settle for Google being scoffed at this time.

 

[Moriarte]

A big problem with Oracle vs. Google (imo not in terms of outcome, Oracle were "bad" there) was the absolute technological illiteracy of the general court, judiciary, and so on. Google and Oracle knew the game. They were both playing the crowd.

Similar theme seems to be present here:

For Mehta (US District Judge), wading through these arguments requires a decent knowledge of tech history. During the more than 10-year time period that the case covers, browsers, phones, and search engines all evolved rapidly. So, on top of weighing complicated antitrust questions, Mehta might also struggle to keep track of basic facts like how search was conducted at any given point in the case's timeline. While Cavanaugh (a lawyer representing the state of Colorado) delivered his opening statement, Mehta even appeared briefly confused by some of the references to today's tech, unable to keep straight if Mozilla was a browser or a search engine. He also appeared unclear about how SEM works and struggled to understand the options for Microsoft to promote Bing ads outside of Google's SEM tools.

Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine

Google accused DOJ of aiming to force people to use “inferior” search products.

arstechnica.com

 

[Gorbles]

Similar theme seems to be present here:

Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine

Google accused DOJ of aiming to force people to use “inferior” search products.

arstechnica.com

Yeah, exactly that. I'm a software dev and I'm still in the job I got straight out of uni (a few positions up haha), and it's software for a mobile-first company. The progress that industry has made is truly amazing, but it helps companies run obfuscation like this.

If you're not an industry professional, you're not going to know.

 

[gay_Aleks]

So what next? Will these monopolists need their own armies to control their interest? Will they need their own currencies, to remove last bit of fiscal manipulation from the hands of clearly shrinking governments? What further implications of the monopolising world should we expect in years to come is what interests me.

I believe you are doing something of a conflation - not an uncommon one - of a supposed opposition between a monopoly and a government. In fact, history demonstrates quite the opposite. Exxon Mobil does not need its own army, when the U.S occupiers in Iraq (and formerly Afghanistan) are present there, ready to extract territorial tribute from the land at will.

The governments do not shrink; actually, what we are seeing is the complete destruction of the social-democratic compromise forged after the war. Therefore, what we consider a service any government 'ought' to provide will soon become something in the past. Healthcare? Private insurance. Education? Charter schools. You get the idea. Meanwhile, the police will grow even further - at this point, police departments such as the Chicago PD can have their way by threatening cities at the merest provocation. This will likely be the case outside the U.S, of course, but it is there that it's the most aggravated; and usually a good bellwether of what and where's something going. Conversely, I do not think there'll be new currencies (what you must be thinking of is, perhaps, company scrip; but that's for the rubes, ie the workers; not for 'actually' important transactions). In most imperialist nations, too, making sure that things such as IP and private property in general will become even more tensely secured. We are just seeing the beginning of restricting the free flow of information across the Internet. In non-imperialist nations, we will likely witness an unhinged amount of violence to maintain their exploitability, whether that is of natural resources, services, labour or - worst of all - tourism and real estate. They will become hollow, lead balloons full of gold.

The implications are same as they've been since Lenin's time, except much more deeply stark. If in his time, the U.S was untouched and had credit lines to throw out and 'swallow' parts of its European competitors, this time around, well. Firstly: the U.S corporate sector is deeply, deeply in debt. We are talking about trillions of dollars here. It's rather difficult to get at the scale of things, and here, the debt is genuinely poisonous due to its sheer size. Whenever any profits are being sent to repay it, that becomes in the form of cutting cheques for a very limited clique of people, more limited than even the overall bourgeoisie is. The issue with that is this isn't really sustainable. Because the second issue is that there isn't a whole lot left to swallow in Europe. So: where to? There are, right now, two options: Either a breakdown of the CPC (this would not occur without either a violent intervention (read: nuclear war)) or a technological change that would make space exploitation several orders more cheaper. But I somehow doubt the latter would occur soon enough in time. See, one of the biggest issue with the way you place things is that you assume the state is against the monopolists; in fact, the monopolies could not possibly exist without the state. It is a product of the bourgeois relations that in order to ensure the continued rentierism we face today (see: Unity charging devs per installation, retroactively), one that cannot be done by the corporations alone. Or, well - it could be - but the path of least resistance is using l'etat. One place where the state has undoubtedly shrank, however, is non-military R&D; NASA is getting fudge-all and it's just clipping coupons for SpaceX. The - apologies for using a buzzword - the innovation needed at this point to exploit space resources is not present within most institutions that are pointing at space. If anything, it's more likely they're making more weapons as we speak.

For the hawks of war that the modern states are cannot remain peaceful forever.

 

[Ajidica]

All I know is that every game of Monopoly ends with someone getting mad, storming off, and frequently flipping the table.

 

[gay_Aleks]

In historical circles, this is commonly known as a 'world war', so yes, effectively.

 

[Takhisis]

Politics is merely a reflection of the economy

Decisively shaped by economy, yes. Shaped by economy and economy alone, no. Most decisions are economically irrational and not always driven even by the already irrational desire to burn everything up (even ecologically).

It's not always (just) about the money.

All I know is that every game of Monopoly ends with someone getting mad, storming off, and frequently flipping the table.

This sounds like revolution to me.

 

[innonimatu]

Already happened with the Dutch & English East India companies. Also happened with the Pinkertons gunning down striking union workers late 19th & early 20th centuries.

You know that the dutch and the english east India companies had to be bailed out by the respective states. But there are less well talked about details about those famous examples. Their mercenary armies existed on loan from states, by which I mean using people and weapons allowed, made available, mostly by their states. The "war surplus" of the time. This is recurrent in whatever era mercenaries are used. The very existence of these companies, their charters, depended entirely on state enforcement of the laws that provided for then, and said how they were controlled.

Monopolies are always state creatures, products of the laws done by states favouring this form of organization over that. Where monopolies exist, they exist because of states.

Which is one of the sad things about people (usually libertarians or those influenced by neoliberal ideas) complaining about some evil of "socialist policies" because states would then have "more power" (this, when they bother explaing why they think socialism is bad). States always have power! That is by definition. The political issue is how, by whom and for whose benefit, that power gets used.

Because corporations with mercenaries are such a feature of distopian fiction, it is worth taking that down: modern mercenaries are like ancient mercenaries, sometimes they are used by "companies" but those always show up with the connivance and in full dependence of state power somewhere. That is as true of east Asia centuries ago as of Africa and Arabia in the 60s and 70s, or more recent cases up to Ukraine. And these uses are circumstantial and limited. Mercenaries (or corporations) actually taking over a state are extremely rare but if and where they do, they become the state, no longer companies, and we're back to the state model of political power. Anyway, very rarely does a Sforza appear in history.