And breaking up the phone company didn't improve anything. We just got AT&T again from their well-performing Texas shard. Companies need to be regulated to provide the services the author is looking for.
Now that fractional shares can be bought with no commission, essentially everyone who wants to can invest in those FAANG companies and get returns on capital. They're better than lottery tickets (a popular "investment" for the poor).
Harry Truman said in 1945 about the atomic bomb, "We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies". I feel the same way about FAANG and Silicon Valley as a whole (and Wall Street, and Hollywood, and SpaceX/Tesla, and the Ivy League), that they are in the United States.
That doesn't mean I approve of everything they do. That doesn't mean I can't or won't decry their putting thumbs on scales toward a certain type of bien-pensant ideology. That does mean that, overall, I am very, very glad that they are American instead of Russian, Chinese, or even British, French, or German.
Taiwan has TSMC (which has a comparable market cap), and it hasn't exactly transformed that nation, other than perhaps becoming a technological source of strategic importance.
It seems like your post argues for their importance due to the benefits that investors can receive from them. But you always could buy blue chip stocks and $SPY.
A flood of tax money due to Amazon has flooded into the city. If the city doesn't spend it well, they aren't going to do better if prosperity flees the city.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zillow/2018/01/19/what-amazons-...
I didn't say unalloyed.
Alibaba is unlikely to be able to capture US regulators to quash its newly energized and more numerous US competitors.