<story><title>We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/30/nationalise-google-facebook-amazon-data-monopoly-platform-public-interest</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bem94</author><text>I think a lot of the &amp;quot;oh my gosh nationalisation is such an awful idea&amp;quot; &amp;#x2F; &amp;quot;not in my free society&amp;quot; comments are missing the point.&lt;p&gt;I too believe nationalisation is a bad idea &lt;i&gt;in this case&lt;/i&gt;, but given the enormous reaction it would bring, can you imagine how awful the situation appears to be from the authors (any many other non-tech-bubble) peoples perspective to even contemplate such a thing? Let alone write an opinion piece in a national news paper. You can argue it is a bad idea all you like, but ultimately, Facebook Google and Amazon are building something that scares people. Scared people do stupid things.&lt;p&gt;If the tech bubble does not look at articles like this as symptoms of a growing scepticism, or a check on the implicit (and often abused) trust of their users, then the backlash is only going to grow. The tech bubble inhabitants will have only themselves to blame.&lt;p&gt;You can argue all you like about whether people are logically correct to fear the big three. What matters is that they are fearful, and how the bubble reacts to that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slowmovintarget</author><text>Things are awful because someone wrote an opinion piece in the newspaper?&lt;p&gt;I heartily disagree that anyone should &amp;quot;detect a consensus&amp;quot; from leftists preaching expropriation. That&amp;#x27;s just an ordinary activity for them. Nick Srnicek may be shouting a bit louder than most from his pulpit in The Guardian, but that has as little to do with truth as his article has to do with reason.&lt;p&gt;Google, Facebook, and Amazon are just fashionable targets for his emotional appeals for a more powerful state. He doesn&amp;#x27;t write about Monsanto in this article, even though they have an ever tightening control over the food we eat, because they aren&amp;#x27;t as well understood by the masses.&lt;p&gt;Bread and circuses. This is the circus part.</text></comment>
<story><title>We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/30/nationalise-google-facebook-amazon-data-monopoly-platform-public-interest</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bem94</author><text>I think a lot of the &amp;quot;oh my gosh nationalisation is such an awful idea&amp;quot; &amp;#x2F; &amp;quot;not in my free society&amp;quot; comments are missing the point.&lt;p&gt;I too believe nationalisation is a bad idea &lt;i&gt;in this case&lt;/i&gt;, but given the enormous reaction it would bring, can you imagine how awful the situation appears to be from the authors (any many other non-tech-bubble) peoples perspective to even contemplate such a thing? Let alone write an opinion piece in a national news paper. You can argue it is a bad idea all you like, but ultimately, Facebook Google and Amazon are building something that scares people. Scared people do stupid things.&lt;p&gt;If the tech bubble does not look at articles like this as symptoms of a growing scepticism, or a check on the implicit (and often abused) trust of their users, then the backlash is only going to grow. The tech bubble inhabitants will have only themselves to blame.&lt;p&gt;You can argue all you like about whether people are logically correct to fear the big three. What matters is that they are fearful, and how the bubble reacts to that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ckastner</author><text>&amp;gt; I think a lot of the &amp;quot;oh my gosh nationalisation is such an awful idea&amp;quot; &amp;#x2F; &amp;quot;not in my free society&amp;quot; comments are missing the point.&lt;p&gt;They really aren&amp;#x27;t. Far larger, more entrenched monopolies have existed before; when they needed to be resolved, they were simply broken up.&lt;p&gt;Suggesting to nationalize them is not only entirely unnecessary, it contradicts decades of experience in dealing with monopolies.&lt;p&gt;IMHO, nationalizations are either bail-outs or power-grabs.</text></comment>