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Justice Department considering push for historic break up of Google after landmark antitrust ruling: report (nypost.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 86 points 2 years ago (7 children)

How about we start restricting how many businesses a company is allowed to buy out in a year. Maybe allow like 1-2 mergers a year. There no reason we should allow one company to buy everyone and then kill their products and services leaving the consumers holding the bag that will no longer function because the server is gone.

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I would say even one a year would be too much.

    That unless the business has failed and is no longer operating, for a merger and acquisition to occur they would have to petition the courts for permission first.

    Imagine the shit that Microsoft and Google and Adobe and Amazon would be doing if they had to start their companies from scratch and compete against the already extant players in the field?

    It would create so many jobs, and create an excess of consumer choice opportunity, lowering prices and fighting against inflation far more than a couple of percentage points on the interest rate index ever would.

    I'm tired of only being offered incredibly overpriced very shitty low quality options in every single category.

    We don't need $100,000 cars. We need $5,000 cars.

    We don't need $1,000,000 homes, we need $25,000 homes that anyone in America who works a full-time job regardless of if they're slinging fries at McDonald's or digging ditches can afford.

    We don't need $100 a week grocery bills. We need $5 a week grocery bills.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    We don’t need $100,000 cars. We need $5,000 cars

    A lot of this cost is in materials, quality control and safety testing, plus requirements by trade agreements for where components are allowed to be manufactured and assembled

    We don’t need $1,000,000 homes, we need $25,000 homes

    Most of this cost is land. A tiny home can be self built for a few thousand, and starts at ~20k professionally built, and a small, say 800 sq foot house that someone might actually want to live in can generally be built for under 100k.

    Most houses aren't worth that much but the land under them is. So more townhouses, duplexes and smaller lots, smaller lawns and a lot more apartments and condos will help

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Buyouts shouldn't be allowed by default. The only cases where it should be allowed are when the business being bought out is struggling to the point where a buyout is really the only way to prevent bankruptcy. It should never be a good deal for the selling company and only a last resort to stop closing doors completely.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago*

    Ah yes, but you see, the US government only cares about faceless corporations, business owners and other rich people, and not about the average citizen, sorry. In fact, I would argue most governments are like this.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I'd go further, restrict the market cap for businesses so they have to spin off if they get too big. Add to that a value limit for the number of boards you can sit on so 30 companies can't be controlled by the same people.

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