“[S]ize matters, and Silicon Valley’s giants are just too darn big. Time to chop them up like old Ma Bell. Let’s apply the antitrust laws that were made for taming just these types of octopod monopolies. For example, Google and Facebook’s tentacles have slithered into every corner of the web and strangled the competition. There was a word for that back in the day – what was it? Oh, yeah. ‘Monopoly.'”
Kurt Schlichter: On fire.
And by the way, the same could be said for monolithic media companies like Gannett, too. When everybody’s “local” newspaper is being run by the same company in Tyson’s Corner, VA, copyediting and composition occurs at a central facility in another city two hours down the road, and the local reportorial staff has shrunk to nearly nothing, what level of independent journalism is actually left?
You’re sure as hell not going to get anything like the crusading style that used to keep local government on its toes instead of sitting back dumb and happy while the tax revenues roll in and the local fat cats get fatter. This is how outrageous billion-dollar stadium deals and 10-year bribes, er, property tax abatements, to entice companies to relocate to your city happen with little to no public comment, even as property and other taxes (like the county option tax) keep rising steadily as the years go by.
Case in point: How does the mayor of Carmel, Indiana, keep getting re-elected? He’s destroyed traffic patterns throughout Clay Township, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure and grand architecture that I don’t think anybody up there has a clue how it’s all going to be paid for, and to hear people talk, everybody hates him — but they keep voting for him anyway. A good, crusading local newspaper might have chucked a spanner into Brainard’s gears before now, but Carmel hasn’t got one, and the Gannett Star isn’t going to worry itself over what goes on in the next county.
Break ’em up. Go back to local control of media.