SENATE BILL: Breaking Big Corporations Act (Passed)

[Former President tack50]

Well, after the recent incidents irl revealed that big tech corporations have way too much power, here is a bill that aims at breaking those companies up.

Section 2 deals with tech corporations and specifically targets the "Big Five" of Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (ie Google), Facebook and Amazon.

Since perhaps a bill solely targetting tech companies might have been a bit excessive, in section 3 I added a hanful of non-tech companies. I am willing to drop some or even all of them if need be, though still breaking up non tech companies is a good idea too. In the cases of these companies it is harder to argue they have a monopoly like in tech

Section 4 can really be divided into 2 halves. The first half makes it so that the companies can't simply re-merge or reorganize; as well as banning the mergers or acquisitions of large corporations in one another (this might be to agressive so it may have to be reduced to something like a majority stake; possibly with a grandfather clause)

The second half, because I fear the newly broken Atlasian tech sector would be vulnerable to foreign influences (particularly from China) simply bans Chinese companies from operating in Atlasia. Perhaps excessive again (I know many friends who sometimes buy stuff off AliExpress ) but replacing Amazon with AliExpress or something like that is worse than leaving Amazon alone. You could extend this to all foreign companies but that might be too much.

This also makes it so non-tech Chinese corporations require an authorization from the Department of Internal Affairs in order to operate in Atlasia. It also makes it so the SoIA can kick companies out of Atlasia under a 4 month notice, which is probably too protectionist and should be worked out.

I don't know how I ended up with such a protectionist bill when normally I tend to be "lean free trade" lmao

Like I said on the introduction thread, this bill feels to me like it unfortunately turned out less like a proper bill and more like a wish list, but I guess we can debate it and perfect it in Congress. Also, given all the "buts" I've added in here perhaps I should have thought twice about this bill. Oh well, let's try and fix it now.

[Former President tack50]

I expect worse consumer experiences due to loss of economies of scale.
I'd much rather we treated these firms as utilities.

Could you elaborate on what treating big companies like utilities would exactly involve? I am certainly open to that as a compromise solution if everyone is on board and it ends up being the simpler route.

I do worry about economies of scale, hence the very protectionist section 4 when generally I lean more on the free trade side of things (though not with China since they cheat). The objective of that section is to make sure that the new Atlasian tech sector is not simply captured by a bunch of foreign corporations, which would be even worse. Sillicon Valley is still a big contributor to the Atlasian economy after all; it's just that it would be better for everyone if those companies were all separate.

But yet the progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th century fought for anti-trust to do just this. The goal of such a bill would be to enforce such laws.

Of course progressivism has been bought and paid for by these corporations so they will never fight them. I will.

Did those antitrust laws specifically target corporations like Standard Oil by name? It's the "by name" part that might not be constitutional. I'm not opposed to breaking them up.

We don't need to actually fundraise here, so no one's "buying" me.

Great point. It might indeed be unconstitutional to target corporations by name, presumably on equal protection grounds. I'd certainly want to play it safe there. We might have to look at it from the angle of all companies above capitalization X$ instead; which would have the same effect without the constitutionality issues.

Also, note to any large multinationals reading this: If you want to bribe me I am more than willing to take bribes to become a corporatist in Fantasyland

[Former President tack50]

How is a company measured by its size or portion of the market share in dollars?

It seems the way to measure (publicly traded) companies is by market capitalization, which basically is the share price, multiplied by the number of outstanding shares.

I don't know if that is the best metric to measure a corporation's size or not; to be honest I am borderline economically illiterate

[Former President tack50]

Could you elaborate on what treating big companies like utilities would exactly involve? I am certainly open to that as a compromise solution if everyone is on board and it ends up being the simpler route.

I do worry about economies of scale, hence the very protectionist section 4 when generally I lean more on the free trade side of things (though not with China since they cheat). The objective of that section is to make sure that the new Atlasian tech sector is not simply captured by a bunch of foreign corporations, which would be even worse. Sillicon Valley is still a big contributor to the Atlasian economy after all; it's just that it would be better for everyone if those companies were all separate.

I think that treating them as utilities would involve regulations that would restrict their ability to use their large size against competition in interest of the public good. That likely entails restrictions on the behavior of companies above a certain size.

I don't agree that we'd be better off if they were all separate because their size provides convenience for most consumers. Youtube paired with Google means that the platform doesn't need to be profitable to continue existing, something that has immense positive cultural significance. It means I don't have to log into a separate Youtube account just to post a comment. The Youtube algorithm has introduced me to numerous videos I like, to the point I mainly don't actually search things - I just reload the home page and see what they bring up. Due to being logged in gmail I save time and effort in other areas.

Breaking all that up is bad. It's not going to help many people at the end of the day. Speaking as an user of these services, I don't think it'd be good for me. And restricting foreign companies from operating on Atlasian soil only makes it worse, by narrowing the range of options we'd have in the aftermath to a series of subpar options that are less valuable than the sum of their parts.

Yeah, those are all good points, but the issue is that with a huge size comes a ton of power; an amount of power that perhaps no corporation should have.

It comes down to whether we should value the comfort of say, having everything under one umbrella vs the power that a single corporation has because of that.
 
Treating as utilities could work and be a decent compromise, but I am not sure if that would be enough (still better than the status quo).

The only other radical solution I can think of is nationalization (in fact the comparison with utilities kind of falls flat to me, since there are certainly more than a handful of utilities that should at least be partially publicly owned). Nationalization might be a policy that would be par for the course for the Labor Party, but it's not really a solution either; with the government holding way too much power over the citizenry (though nationalization could also mean bigger protections in other aspects). In any case, we can't afford to nationalize tech; not to mention I am sure that no foreign companies would want to watch stuff on a platform owned by the US government itself (even TikTok was private in theory)

[Former President tack50]

The actual solution here is obvious - congress empowers the government to act on antitrust cases if a business is violating X, Y, Z criteria and force breakups. Then upon passage it would fall to the attorney general to actually file the resulting antitrust litigation.

Any idea on how to do the specifics of that?

[Former President tack50]

Yeah, I have no idea how to define the processes needed. I lean towards tabling this and tackling it at another, indefinite point in the future, but I wonder what everyone else thinks.

[Former President tack50]

If nobody else wants to, I can make time tomorrow to research the regulatory standards/practices that are protecting these companies and draft a baseline bill for you guys to fine-tune.

Antitrust law can’t be that complicated. Right? Right? [echoes into the void]

Famous last words

[Former President tack50]

Introducing the following amendment, essencially amounting to a bastardized version of Ted's proposal, where I just nuke point 1 and leave everything else.

1. No company whose business consists primarily of a digital platform shall preference itself in the sale of advertisements or in any other services provided; such companies shall also ensure adequate interoperability and data portability with competing platforms.

2. Mergers and acquisitions resulting in a significant change in market concentration under the Clayton Act shall be presumptively prohibited, unless the merging parties can prove that the merger would not have a significant negative impact on consumers or firms.

3. No contract clause mandating arbitration of disputes may apply to antitrust claims.

5. It is the sense of the Congress that the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice should investigate several technological corporations for engaging in anticompetitive practices which violate antitrust regulations. These include but are not limited to Microsoft, Google or Amazon.

a. It is the sense of the Congress that the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice should prioritize for enforcement violators whose companies make up large shares of national markets, rather than prioritizing smaller violators.

[Former President tack50]

Aye