I’d sell off tech, too.

If I owned tech stocks (I mean, outside of my 401(k), where I don’t have granular control over what the fund managers include in their portfolios), I’d be selling, right now.  Or frankly, would have been selling last month.

The WSJ has an editorial this morning talking about overheated tech stock prices, mentioning things like Amazon trading for 160 times earnings, blah de blah de blah.  They then say, “But what makes this month’s tech sale so jarring is that it comes amid strong quarterly earnings growth.”

Nah, not jarring at all, if you think about it.

It’s clear that the tech giants are not only due for a correction, but to be broken up like the monopolies they are.  There is great danger in someone like Google (or Alphabet, whatever) controlling the vast majority of search.  Facebook has long shown that it can’t be trusted with users’ information (and is a crap platform to begin with).  Nearly all of the big tech giants are doing really creepy things when it comes to privacy and censorship — and it’s time for that crap to stop.  Only Apple, of all companies, seems to take privacy seriously and is actually working actively to preserve it for its users.

Amazon, well, I dunno — Amazon is so diversified and allows so many small businesses to use its portal that I’m not sure it’s actually a danger to anything but your local big box department store.  It will never really be a danger to the corner grocery because nobody wants to wait two days to get a quart of milk or a pound of butter when they’re out of them.  And while it may be responsible for local small booksellers for closing their doors, I suspect most such booksellers were living on the ragged edge of disaster anyway, in a world that has gone head-over-heels for ebooks.  Again, the booksellers really being killed by Amazon are more likely big-boxes like Borders (dead) and Barnes and Noble (dying).  But Amazon is really another story for another post, because Amazon isn’t acting as a gatekeeper of information the way Google and Facebook are.  Amazon carries a lot of books and publications that probably horrify the censorship staff at Google and Facebook, for one thing.  And who is truly evil, if that’s the case?

No, I suspect the smart investors are getting out of tech because they see the beginning of the end for the large monopolistic conglomerates.  If there is a better predictor that the GOP will hold onto Congress next week, I don’t know what it would be.  Because if the GOP really does hold onto Congress, there’s a really good chance that Trump will be able to set some monopoly-busting into motion.  And I submit that’s good for the economy and the country in the long run.