The government? They're the reason they're so big and powerful in the first place. Politicians are easily swayed if you have billions of dollars to convince them to do your bidding.
Everything is set up to favour cancerous growth once you reach a certain size, and there are no real failsafe mechanisms against that. Antitrust is useless if it is never invoked, for example.
I wish we'd start to notice how our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government have been failing us for decades on this matter, instead of just wondering "how the hell did it come to that?" and blaming "capitalism", whatever that means.
Adam Smith alone doesn't explain how a company can skirt around the rules of free market competition and grow to a trillion dollars. You need a lot of external help from people in power to get there.
To add, the establishment LOVES when team red and blue fight over social issues.
Not that social issues aren't important, but the outcome of social issues never negatively affect the crony capitalists in power. Social issues are the opium of activists and pundits to distract the very same activists and pundits from decades of policy that only benefit the elite.
Raytheon LOVES when people fight about abortion rights.
Citibank LOVES when people fight about police reform.
None of these social issues actually matter if the entire middle class is ground to dust and scattered into the wind.
I’m afraid that indexing and the top heavy nature of the SP500 has made it very against the personal interests of anyone in power to do this. :( They know their own net worth will tumble if they break up the seven or so companies propping up the SP500 right now.
Hopefully some politicians will eventually realize they are put in power to serve the needs of everyone not just the rich that own stocks.
>In 2023, the percentages owning stock range from highs of 84% of adults in households earning $100,000 or more and about eight in 10 college graduates and postgraduates to a low of 29% of those in households earning less than $40,000.
How do you break them up? Most of the big tech companies have a large, singular business that makes most of the money. We could split Amazon into AWS, content, and store, and the store would still be a problem. Same with Google and search and ads, Meta with Facebook, Apple with iPhone.
This isn’t to say that splitting them isn’t worth doing, but it won’t do anything to help monopoly problems. The main result would be the death or price increase for smaller services.
sph|2 years ago
Themselves? Of course not.
The government? They're the reason they're so big and powerful in the first place. Politicians are easily swayed if you have billions of dollars to convince them to do your bidding.
Everything is set up to favour cancerous growth once you reach a certain size, and there are no real failsafe mechanisms against that. Antitrust is useless if it is never invoked, for example.
I wish we'd start to notice how our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government have been failing us for decades on this matter, instead of just wondering "how the hell did it come to that?" and blaming "capitalism", whatever that means.
Adam Smith alone doesn't explain how a company can skirt around the rules of free market competition and grow to a trillion dollars. You need a lot of external help from people in power to get there.
infamouscow|2 years ago
Not that social issues aren't important, but the outcome of social issues never negatively affect the crony capitalists in power. Social issues are the opium of activists and pundits to distract the very same activists and pundits from decades of policy that only benefit the elite.
Raytheon LOVES when people fight about abortion rights.
Citibank LOVES when people fight about police reform.
None of these social issues actually matter if the entire middle class is ground to dust and scattered into the wind.
travisgriggs|2 years ago
Mistletoe|2 years ago
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
Hopefully some politicians will eventually realize they are put in power to serve the needs of everyone not just the rich that own stocks.
>In 2023, the percentages owning stock range from highs of 84% of adults in households earning $100,000 or more and about eight in 10 college graduates and postgraduates to a low of 29% of those in households earning less than $40,000.
ianburrell|2 years ago
This isn’t to say that splitting them isn’t worth doing, but it won’t do anything to help monopoly problems. The main result would be the death or price increase for smaller services.