Robert Reich (previously) served in the presidential administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, was Clinton's labor czar, and sat on Obama's economic transition advisory board; though he is generally on the Democratic Party's left flank, his own history shows that he has credibility with the establishment wing of the party as well.
That's why it's so significant that he has backed Elizabeth Warren's plan to break up the Big Tech companies. Reich says that the Big Tech giants are the most visible symbol of a new Gilded Age, in which corporate concentration threatens the power of states to regulate companies and keep them from abusing their customers and blocking innovation and competition, and attributes the collapse of new American job-creating businesses to their stranglehold.
He also condemns Big Tech for its environmental devastation, its tax evasion, and its low wages to all but a few workers (90% of Silicon Valley workers have experienced a real-terms pay cut since 1997)
The Democratic Party has an intimate relationship with Big Tech, relying on the companies, their executives, their industry associations and their rank-and-file for cash contributions.
The answer is to break them up. That way, information would be distributed through a large number of independent channels instead of a centralized platform. And more startups could flourish.
Even one of Facebook’s founders has called for the social media behemoth to be broken up.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced a proposal to do just that. It would force tech giants to open up their platforms to more competition or break up into smaller companies.
Other countries are already taking on Big Tech. The European Union fined Google nearly 3 billion dollars for antitrust violations in 2017.
Let’s be clear: Monopolies aren’t good for anyone except for the monopolists, especially when they can influence our elections and control how Americans receive information.
Here’s why we need to break up Big Tech [Robert Reich/Alternet]
(via Naked Capitalism)
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