Today's links
- Corruption: Concentrated gains, diffused losses.
- This day in history: 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 29 Jun 2021
Today's links
- SCOTUS to wrongfully accused terrorists: "drop dead": Kavanaugh finds new ways to be wrong.
- Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit: Bad web-design is a choice.
- This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 28 Jun 2021
Today's links
- Podcasting "Qualia": My column on quant-bias, antitrust, drug policy and epidemiology.
- Lazy Congress only schedules 9 days' work this summer: We're not paying you to party on donors' yachts.
- This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
The Doctrine of Moral Hazard
When it comes to self-preferencing, right wing economists are right: incentives matter.
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee spent 23 hours debating a historically unprecedented package of tech competition bills, surprising observers by passing all six of the legislative proposals under consideration, with bipartisan support.
Each of the six bills is interesting in its own ways — for example, the ACCESS Act (HR 6487) uses interoperability and standards to reduce the costs we bear when we leave monopoly platforms behind, by letting us stay in touch with the friends who stay.
Pluralistic: 27 Jun 2021
Today's links
- ISP announces 86% slowdown "in line with others": Altice wins the race to the bottom.
- This day in history: 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 26 Jun 2021
Today's links
- The Overlapping Infrastructure of Urban Surveillance: A long, tall graphic depicting the invisible, ubiquitous city spy-grid.
- How Peter Thiel gamed the Roth IRA for tax-free billions: More from Propublica's Secret IRS Files.
- New York City's 100 worst landlords: Gotta catch 'em all.
- This day in history: 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 24 Jun 2021
Today's links
- The pandemic showed remote proctoring to be worse than useless: Kill it with fire.
- This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 22 Jun 2021
Today's links
- Improving the ACCESS Act: Six ways to make the most important tech law of the legislative season even better.
- Juul's junk science: Reporting bias makes vaping's safety is a hazy mess.
- Peloton bricks its treadmills: Your kids are dead because you didn't buy the subscription.
- This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 21 Jun 2021
Today's links
- Podcasting "Inside the Clock Tower": Reading my Consumer Reports story about an interoperable future.
- This day in history: 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
The EU, Tech Trustbusting, and Trade Wars
There’s a difference between protectionism and political will
Competition regulators in the EU, the UK and the US are all looking hard at concentration in the tech sector, and well they should: an industry that was once hailed for its dynamism — for being a sector where yesterday’s world-spanning titans are sold for parts to companies that were mere napkin doodles a year or two before — has calcified into “a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four.”
The reasons for tech concentration are pretty straightforward. Despite a lot of fatalistic tech exceptionalism about “network effects” leading to inevitable monopolization, the actual means by which tech companies consolidated is actually easy to see in the historical record.
Continue reading "The EU, Tech Trustbusting, and Trade Wars"