SENATE BILL: Breaking Big Corporations Act (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A BILL
To break up big corporations and make mergers harder

Be it enacted by the Congress of the Republic of Atlasia assembled

Section 1. Title

This legislation may be cited as the Breaking Big Corporations Act.

Section 2. Breaking Up Big Tech Corporations
1a. Alphabet.inc is hereby dissolved into its constituent subsidiaries.
1b. Google LLC shall be further broken up into its constituent services. The Department of Internal Affairs may make exceptions to this on interatctivity purposes, but this shall not apply to Google Search, Google Mail, Google Advertisement, YouTube, Google Maps and Google Drive; all of which must remain separate companies after the enactment of this bill.
2a. Apple Inc. is hereby broken up into its constituent branches. The Department of Internal Affairs may make exceptions to this on interactivity purposes, but the phone and computer divisions must remain separate.
2b. All other subsidiaries of Apple Inc. must be broken up; with no exceptions
3. Facebook Inc. shall be broken up into its various constituent companies. All acquisitions made by Facebook Inc. over the past 10 years shall be broken up.
4. Amazon.com, Inc. shall be broken up into its several constituent services and subsidiaries
5. Microsoft Corporation is hereby broken up into its several products, subsidiaries and services.

Section 3. Breaking up non-Tech big corporations
1. Berkshire Hathaway, Inc is hereby broken up into its different subsidiaries
2. Johnson & Johnson is hereby broken up into its different subsidiaries
3. JPMorgan Chase is hereby broken up into its different subsidiaries
4. ExxonMobil is hereby broken up into its different subsidiaries
5. Wells Fargo is hereby broken up into its different subsidiaries

Section 4. Making mergers harder and protecting the new ecosystem
1. No 2 companies that descend from any of the companies broken up by this bill may merge together or be purchased by one another, under any circumstances
2. No 2 companies with a dollar market capitalization of over 10 billion dollars may be allowed to merge, or to purchase participation shares in each other.
3. Baidu; Alibaba; Tencent, Xiaomi, Huawei, DiDi, JD and ByteDance, as well as any other technological corporation headquartered in the People's Republic of China; is hereby banned from operating in the Republic of Atlasia, or any area under its jurisdiction
4. Any non technological corporation headquartered in the People's Republic of China must get an authorization from the Department of Internal Affairs in order to operate in the Republic of Atlasia beyond December 31st, 2022.
5. The Department of Internal Affairs may stop any foreign corporations from further operations in the Republic of Atlasia, or from investing in any company headquartered in the Republic of Atlasia with a 4 months notice; if said foreign corporations are found out to be harming the competition inside the Republic of Atlasia

Section 5. Enactment
1. This bill shall become enacted on April 1st, 2021

Sponsor: Tack50
Senate Designation: SB28:02

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Initial Debate Period - sponsor advocacy etc.

[Rep Jessica]

Now this is a good bill! Love to see it. These mega corporations have destroyed competition and have cheated the people of Atlasia for the past 60 years. It is time to enforce the anti-trust laws and do what we did to Grandbell and standard oil!!! Competition is good and Atlasia and its people must be first once again.

I endorse this bill.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Hate to sound like a corporatist here, but I do not believe it is constitutional to directly single-out individuals or businesses in Congressional legislation. I hope tack can address this in his advocacy.

[Rep Jessica]

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.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

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.

[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

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

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

[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

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Breaking up these firms is definitely well-intentioned but I don't think it's practical. Nor is it ultimately going to be beneficial on net. Preserving their size while tightening regulation is my preferred route. I agree the concerns are valid, but breaking up is not a good solution in my view. Worse services, worse off business sector - hardly a winner in my view.

[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)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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)

If preventing large technology firms from existing means destroying a significant chunk of the utility that ordinary people derive from them, then that's not worth it. It's going to suffocate the economy and suffocate pleasure for people. We just have to live with the fact that technology firms are in a now-mature market that, like most, lends itself to consolidation. The data and tech economy is a big part of the lifeblood of the Atlasian economy. I'm all for more regulation but breaking up Big Tech goes too far.

I would say that the average person prizes convenience and ease more generally. Even if we broke up Google and Amazon and other firms, and thus severely impaired their ability to operate to a sufficient degree that the law's intention was enacted in full, new Googles and new Amazons might just rise up instead, offering the exact same product in essence - unless we destroyed them too. Google and Amazon and other firms only rose to such heights because they offered an unbeatable package for commonfolk - a service that was needed and desired. That service needs to be provided in a modern economy, and if we prevented such a service from being provided, then we are only going to lose out on the benefits, economic and otherwise, from having it in the modern age.

I don't think you intend for the working class, or anyone else, to have to waste time, effort, and (in some cases) extra money* for things they previously had taken for granted, but that is what this bill, if passed and enacted, would do.
*=no way in hell do I like the idea of a Youtube equivalent having to charge money for people to access it, but can you really rule that out here?

[Blair]

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.

I don't know why you're pretending that we have political donations in Atlasia.

We don't.

[Blair]

This is honestly an issue where I'm undecided- I do not think it it is at all healthy for one tech company like facebook to have such a lion share of social media, especially when it expands across different services- I remember lots of friends  saying 'I hate facebook, there's no data privacy... I'm going to just use whatsapp' which sums up how people engage with the lack of competition.

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.

There's a reason they do this & it's not out of the kindness of their heart- if you're not paying for a product it's because you are the product. Youtube is made with ease of access, and with suggestions so that they can target certain content at you, get you to engage and most importantly get an accurate picture for the advertising they sell.

I think ease of access has to be weighted up with the lack of action on various pretty vile stuff from anti-vax conspiracies to neo-nazis & anti-semetic hate speech.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

There's a reason they do this & it's not out of the kindness of their heart- if you're not paying for a product it's because you are the product. Youtube is made with ease of access, and with suggestions so that they can target certain content at you, get you to engage and most importantly get an accurate picture for the advertising they sell.

I think ease of access has to be weighted up with the lack of action on various pretty vile stuff from anti-vax conspiracies to neo-nazis & anti-semetic hate speech.

It's not really relevant if they aren't doing this out of good of their hearts, because businesses in general is generally driven by self-interest. And any tech firm that would replace them would also be driven by self-interest.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

There's a reason they do this & it's not out of the kindness of their heart- if you're not paying for a product it's because you are the product. Youtube is made with ease of access, and with suggestions so that they can target certain content at you, get you to engage and most importantly get an accurate picture for the advertising they sell.

I think ease of access has to be weighted up with the lack of action on various pretty vile stuff from anti-vax conspiracies to neo-nazis & anti-semetic hate speech.

It's not really relevant if they aren't doing this out of good of their hearts, because businesses in general is generally driven by self-interest. And any tech firm that would replace them would also be driven by self-interest.

So just to be clear, you are okay with your data being tracked and sold by corporations?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

There's a reason they do this & it's not out of the kindness of their heart- if you're not paying for a product it's because you are the product. Youtube is made with ease of access, and with suggestions so that they can target certain content at you, get you to engage and most importantly get an accurate picture for the advertising they sell.

I think ease of access has to be weighted up with the lack of action on various pretty vile stuff from anti-vax conspiracies to neo-nazis & anti-semetic hate speech.

It's not really relevant if they aren't doing this out of good of their hearts, because businesses in general is generally driven by self-interest. And any tech firm that would replace them would also be driven by self-interest.

So just to be clear, you are okay with your data being tracked and sold by corporations?

Yes. I would, though I would also be fine with GDPR-style regulations to allow me to tell them to stop.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

There's a reason they do this & it's not out of the kindness of their heart- if you're not paying for a product it's because you are the product. Youtube is made with ease of access, and with suggestions so that they can target certain content at you, get you to engage and most importantly get an accurate picture for the advertising they sell.

I think ease of access has to be weighted up with the lack of action on various pretty vile stuff from anti-vax conspiracies to neo-nazis & anti-semetic hate speech.

It's not really relevant if they aren't doing this out of good of their hearts, because businesses in general is generally driven by self-interest. And any tech firm that would replace them would also be driven by self-interest.

So just to be clear, you are okay with your data being tracked and sold by corporations?

Yes. I would, though I would also be fine with GDPR-style regulations to allow me to tell them to stop.

Would you elaborate on this?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

There's a reason they do this & it's not out of the kindness of their heart- if you're not paying for a product it's because you are the product. Youtube is made with ease of access, and with suggestions so that they can target certain content at you, get you to engage and most importantly get an accurate picture for the advertising they sell.

I think ease of access has to be weighted up with the lack of action on various pretty vile stuff from anti-vax conspiracies to neo-nazis & anti-semetic hate speech.

It's not really relevant if they aren't doing this out of good of their hearts, because businesses in general is generally driven by self-interest. And any tech firm that would replace them would also be driven by self-interest.

So just to be clear, you are okay with your data being tracked and sold by corporations?

Yes. I would, though I would also be fine with GDPR-style regulations to allow me to tell them to stop.

Would you elaborate on this?

The whole thing of data being sold and used to create customization and whatnot is a critical part of the structural infrastructure that allows this convenience to exist, and systems are ultimately sustained by infrastucture. This is basically a consumer agreeing to take part in the data ecosystem and be compensated henceforth. Without companies collecting and selling this data, it would make things considerably less efficient. It is true that if you aren't being pressed to pay for a product, then you are the product. I don't think a departure from this system would be all that good (though I am worried to some extent about the overall situation) but we can make it easier for those who want to opt out to allow them to do so. It ought to be up to them. Companies should absolutely have to ask your permission before using your data.

[Sestak]

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.

[Rep Jessica]

I want to break up amazon, walmart, apple and google for violation of anti-trust. It is clear as day that they have been getting away with anti-competitive behavior and working together. It is time for this government to act.

[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?