> What if a powerful business partner, such as the Chinese or Indian governments or a large company, wants search results 'made more fair and balanced' in return for their business? Hollywood studios, Bloomberg, and (IIRC) Fox already have censored themselves for the Chinese government. Advertisers' influence on the news is well-known.
This is what _every_ business would do and actually does when it is offered a significant advantage over all potential competitors in the market. That's what lobbying is all about. Large corporations pay politicians so they create laws in order to suppress competition.
Everyone loves free markets as a consumer, but a business is never interested in the kind of competition that could put it out of existence, its employees fired and leave its founders bankrupt.
The solution here is not to create new regulations which make it even harder to do business than it already is, or to enact laws that make this kind of bribery illegal (it would continue no matter what you do) but to impose serious limitations on government power so it can't rig the system for a handful of powerful corporations that can afford engaging in this kind of bribery.
Rather than address these points individually, I think it will be more efficient to get to the heart of the issue: It seems (forgive me if I'm wrong) that the comment is based on the libertarian/Objectivist ideology that everyone is driven by greed only and that that's a desirable or necessary order of things; and that government, including regulation and law, is bad and ineffective. I don't agree with that premise, so I'd need to hear arguments that address these specific situations.
> This is what _every_ business would do and actually does
Google and the NY Times refused the Chinese government's proposals and were kicked out of that market.
> to impose serious limitations on government power so it can't rig the system for a handful of powerful corporations that can afford engaging in this kind of bribery.
I don't see how limiting government power to regulate large businesses will help; it will shift power to the large businesses, worsening the situation. I don't think Google and Facebook's success is due to government rigging the market, nor do I think their influence will now diminish if government regulatory power is reduced.
> Rather than address these points individually, I think it will be more efficient to get to the heart of the issue: It seems (forgive me if I'm wrong) that the comment is based on the libertarian/Objectivist ideology that everyone is driven by greed only and that that's a desirable or necessary order of things; and that government, including regulation and law, is bad and ineffective. I don't agree with that premise, so I'd need to hear arguments that address these specific situations.
Human advancement on every level is not driven by greed, but by rational self interest. Self interest is a necessary precondition for improving anything, otherwise what's the motivation to build for example a nice house if I don't care about the better life quality that I'll have living in it? Greed is just a subjective or collective way to say that someones self interest goes far beyond what is considered productive and rational. (if you p--- everyone off with inflated self interest you will likely have a problem rather sooner than later)
Just compare the improvements that societies made which didn't allow or limit direct self interest as the primary motivation for economic activity to those that did. There's just no doubt that life in Socialist countries was in almost every case much worse and it is even today. (USSR, pre Capitalist China, North Korea, Nazi Germany, Venezuela, Cuba and so on)
> Google and the NY Times refused the Chinese government's proposals and were kicked out of that market.
You are omitting that I wrote "significant advantage over the competition". I doubt China would _ever_ tolerate officials rigging its system in order for the NY Times to have a significant advantage over its national mainstream media. Or Google over Baidu. Most likely these companies do not even have a chance at competing with local Chinese companies anyway. An average Chinese person might desire to use an iPhone with Chinese apps on it, but reading the NY Times, c'mon.
> I don't see how limiting government power to regulate large businesses will help; it will shift power to the large businesses, worsening the situation. I don't think Google and Facebook's success is due to government rigging the market, nor do I think their influence will now diminish if government regulatory power is reduced.
I do not say that Google's and Facebook's success is due to bribing politicians, this is most certainly wrong. But large corporations do it after reaching a certain size in order to ensure that they will be able to maintain it into the future.
There would be no need to ever bribe a politician if these corporations were fully confident that they could stay dominant in the market and beat new competition. The mere fact that corporations decide to do this shows that it is often more efficient to spend resources on suppressing competition via government power than using it to innovate and improve products and services.
Who looses in all of this? The consumer (more expensive, lower quality products), the worker (lower incomes) and anyone who wants to build his own company. (high entry barriers to the market resulting in a static class of elites with less upward mobility)
Again, look at markets where government directly owned or ran almost all businesses. What was the result for the average person? How competitive were the products? These countries usually allowed and desired to export while suppressing imports, but for some reason all the Capitalist societies wanted to buy was natural resources, not finished products. Buy Soviet Lada cars? Who would have bought that when there's Mercedes, Audi, BMW, VW and so on? (I'm in a German country so that's what we drive here)
Of course there were a few cases were largely Socialist countries did work, but these were to my knowledge always edge cases where they for example have a very small population and enormous natural resources (like oil)
> Libertarian/Objectivist ideology
Yes, something along these lines. I desire to live in a society that offers as many freedom to every one of its members as possible, though I recognise that there must be limits too. The Socialist on the other hand wants to mold society in some way or another in order to achieve or reach some kind of higher or better form of society. This is always done by the use of force and I reject that. If you try to convince me to better myself - fine, but passing laws that threaten fines (robbing me of my resources) or prison is not okay with me.
This is what _every_ business would do and actually does when it is offered a significant advantage over all potential competitors in the market. That's what lobbying is all about. Large corporations pay politicians so they create laws in order to suppress competition.
Everyone loves free markets as a consumer, but a business is never interested in the kind of competition that could put it out of existence, its employees fired and leave its founders bankrupt.
The solution here is not to create new regulations which make it even harder to do business than it already is, or to enact laws that make this kind of bribery illegal (it would continue no matter what you do) but to impose serious limitations on government power so it can't rig the system for a handful of powerful corporations that can afford engaging in this kind of bribery.