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If all US internet companies stopped existing tomorrow the world would be no worse off for it.

The internet infrastructure is great. Networking hardware is great. Private internet companies built on top of it? Big whoop

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The big whoop is the 100s of billions of dollars of revenue that flow to American internet companies from the rest of the world every quarter (and the high profit margins on that revenue—much higher than the margins of say Foxconn or DJI).

And that money would stay in their countries respective economies and everyone would be better off for it. Maybe someone would start a local alternative. It would be used productively instead of on ads that make everyone’s lives worse.

My purpose was to cast doubt on Rayiner's assertion that "Since the 1980s, the U.S. economy has become highly financialized. It’s disputed how much American economic dominance is real versus on paper today."

I was not commenting on whether the world would be better off if the US were less economically dominant.

And I’m saying that that dominance is mostly in irrelevant categories like ads and entertainment, so it would be at best an annoyance if those companies were to disappear.

There’s very few internet companies doing truly unique, irreplaceable work.

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