[bestbits] [governance] Platform competition

Wed Oct 15 17:41:45 EDT 2014

And of course we have platforms (corporate monopolists) <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/ooh-la-la-the-french-get-internet-neutrality-right-its-all-about-the-monopolies-google-amazon-facebook-twitter-etc/>  who use their wealth and power to tip the scales (of regulation/non-regulation) in their own favour.

M

From: bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net [mailto:bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net] On Behalf Of Ian Peter
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2014 1:53 PM
To: Ian Peter; governance at lists.igcaucus.org; bestbits at lists.bestbits.net
Subject: Re: [bestbits] [governance] Platform competition

Just a bit more on this reading on -

Wikipedia provides a good article and other examples of two-sided markets here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market

which helps to clarify the issues.

Another quote

One takeaway from Tirole's work on regulation in general is that to a greater extent than people appreciate, policy problems sometimes exist because the questions are genuinely difficult rather than because policymakers are corrupt or feckless.

And it seems that one reason why the questions are genuinely difficult is that regulatory regimes were written in an era where such problems did not really exist.  We don’t have laws which are applicable. And often we don’t have legislators who understand the nature of the problems. (and, sure, we don’t have the will to introduce new laws or amend them either).

Ian

From: Ian Peter <mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com>  

Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 7:01 AM

To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org ; bestbits at lists.bestbits.net 

Subject: [governance] Platform competition

This is a highly interesting article about the work of Nobel Prize winning economist Jean Tirole and how the concept of platform competition relates to internet markets. It explains how Google and Facebook can make enormous profits and dominate markets while offering their products free of charge. Similar issues exist in some other industries, but this article concentrates on Internet.

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6968423/jean-tirole-platform-competition

To quote “And an important question for the world going forward is to how to think about regulating that kind of market. Since Google doesn't charge its mass customer base anything at all, you're never going to find evidence of monopoly power in price hikes.”

As Mark Rotenberg comments, “The key insight is not no regulation but different regulation. This is also why competition law and privacy law need to be updated not ignored.”

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