The internet, left unchecked, is a monopoly-making machine, an engine designed to concentrate power,
attention and more in the hands of those who already have it, James Ball
⏬ Download "The Social Dilemma" (Netflix) at the bottom ⏬
Why Monopoly?
The supracited applies both to giant corporations like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc (aka Big Tech), and telecom companies owning undersea cables that carry traffic between continents and/or fiber and wireless networks that bring the internet to homes and devices. There is an increasing overlap between those two layers, since the number of undersea cables owned by Big Tech has surged over the last decade (ref).
Facebook and Google are quickly taking over the seas. By 2020, both companies will own about 29% of the underwater cables that run throughout the world (ref)
Tech giants eagerly purchase platforms in order to integrate data streams and neutralize potential competitors, with Google buying YouTube and Waze, Facebook buying Whatsapp and Instagram, Amazon buying Goodreads and Twitch, and Microsoft buying LinkedIn and GitHub.
Antitrust regulations exist to prevent businesses from holding too much centralized power over an industry
Advertising accounts for as much as 90 % of Google’s revenue, boosting the market capitalization of its parent company (Alphabet) to roughly the size of Mexico’s GDP
Legislators at state and federal levels can take action to promote competition by preventing mergers, breaking up big companies, and penalizing companies for anti-competitive behavior with fines.
Facebook has been accused of anticompetitive conduct, including buying up competing firms and copying features from rival apps
Google, Amazon, and Apple were also subjected to a broad antitrust review opened by the US justice department in July 2019
Big Tech's monopolistic position allows them to simply dictate "Terms and Conditions" (also known as "Terms of Service") to their hundreds of millions of users and the latter have, in order to participate, only one option – to hit ‘I agree’. Another element that worries the European Union and countries such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil, is that the bulk of those services are controlled from one country – the USA.
The next infographic by Visual Capitalist (April 2020), archived on https://archive.ph/mXabl, illustrates how long an average person would take to read the Terms of Service (ToS) of the most popular Big Tech companies / web 2.0 apps nowadays. Reading time was computed assuming the speed of 240 words/min, and the length of the ToS text is expressed by its total word count.
Unsustainable Capitalism
The number of billionaires on 2021 Forbes’ list of the World’s richest (archived here) exploded to an unprecedented 2755 (660 more than in 2020). Altogether these billionaires are worth 13.1 Trillion USD ($), up from $8 Trillion in 2020. Among those individuals, 6 out of the top 10 have their source of wealth located in Big Tech (e.g, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Oracle).
1 Million (M) $ = 1 000 000 $
1 Billion (B) $ = 1 000 000 000 $
1 Trillion (T) $ = 1 000 000 000 000 $
It should be a crime (IMO) to amass such huge amounts of wealth while:
Around 700 Million people in the World are estimated to live in extreme poverty, i.e with less than 1.90 $/day (ref1, ref2)
More than 3 Billion people in the World is poor, i.e. live under 5.50 $/day (ref)
Roughly 600 Million people globally still practice open defecation (ref)
Lets do the maths:
- Assumption:
- If every year we take all the net worth from every new billionaire but 100 Million $/person, and put it together for donation to the World's poorest, we will manage to gather a min of 5.034 Trillion $/year
- 5 100 000 Million $/year - 660 * 100 Million $/year = 5 034 000 Million $/year = 5.034 Trillion $/year, where 660 is the number of new billionaires and 5.1 Trillion $ the corresponding wealth net worth in 2021 Forbes' list
- If every year we take all the net worth from every new billionaire but 100 Million $/person, and put it together for donation to the World's poorest, we will manage to gather a min of 5.034 Trillion $/year
- Problem:
- With 5.034 Trillion $ available for donation every year, how many poor people can get an extra of 3.8 $/day?
- 3.8 $ = 2 x 1.9 $, where 1.9 $ is the boundary value between poverty and extreme poverty
- With 5.034 Trillion $ available for donation every year, how many poor people can get an extra of 3.8 $/day?
- Solution:
- 3.8 $/day/person = 1387 $/year/person
- 5 034 000 Million $/year / 1387 $/year/person = 3.629 Billion persons
- 3.629 Billion people is probably more than the number of poor in the World today, i.e those living under 5.50 $/day
- note that only new billionaires every year entered the equation – if the remaining richest (incl. millionaires) were taken into account, the impact would be higher
If the richest capped their wealth net worth to 100 Million $ and donated the exceeding to the World's poorest, it would certainly be possible to fully erradicate poverty (i.e. to live with more than 5.5 $/day)
Next you can see the ranking positions and wealth histories of some billionaires whose source of wealth come from Big Tech companies. Do you consider it sustainable to be a billionaire in the world you live in today?
- 1. Jeff Bezos, Net Worth: $177 B, Amazon
- 4. Bill Gates, Net Worth: $124 B, Microsoft
- 5. Mark Zuckerberg, Net Worth: $97 B, Facebook
- 8. Larry Page, Net Worth: $91.5 B, Google
- 39. Zhang Yiming, Net Worth: $35.6 B, TikTok
- 83. Pierre Omidyar, Net Worth: $21.4 B, eBay, PayPal
- 95. Laurene Powell Jobs & family, Net Worth: $19 B, Apple, Disney
- 112. Pavel Durov, Net Worth: $17.2 B, Telegram
- 133. Eric Yuan & family, Net Worth: $14.9 B, Zoom
- 154. Brian Chesky, Net Worth: $13.7 B, Airbnb
- 173. Jack Dorsey, Net Worth: $12.5 B, Twitter, Square
- 451. Martin Lorentzon, Net Worth: $6 B, Spotify
- 655. Garrett Camp, Net Worth: $4.4 B, Uber
The point is not how much they have spent to improve the world or reduce poverty; the point is how much they havent while creating monopolies and increasing their wealth way beyond the rational need (IMO)
The Social Dilemma
"We tweet, we like, and we share — but what are the consequences of our growing dependence on social media? This documentary-drama hybrid reveals how social media is reprogramming civilization with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations."
The next film is also available for streaming/downloading on Icedrive [1] and Internet Archive [2].
Solution
A growing international community of developers, technologists, and finance professionals is working to reform the internet by
using blockchain protocols and open-source technologies to build a new internet system altogether — one that redistributes data and power back to users. Read more on Towards a new distributed web.
I´m not against capitalism, but definitely against elitism and unbridled capitalism
I´ll continue publishing my favorite big tech alternatives in here 💯
