ShrinkingWild

There's no force involved here, this is just Basecamp being upset they now have to pay Google for what they do.

Basecamp made a value judgement that the value google provides through its search results is worth the price of paying for ads. This is revealed preference in action, Google has done nothing wrong here other than be the best at what they do.

I've never understood this, all economic transactions are voluntary, who am I (or in this case, you) to tell people they can't make that decision?

People who make bad decisions shouldn't be protected from the consequences of their actions. I do agree that loot boxes and gambling mechanics are pretty bad methods of monetizing a game, that's why I don't buy them, but I don't presume to tell other people what they should think of them or the business owners whether or not they can add them in.

The idea that all the insurance companies would go bust at the same time is laughable, it's a hypothetical with no basis. Even taking your hypothetical though, my opinion remains unchanged, people reaping the rewards, or in this case punishments, of their reliance on others is just. Granted, I'm not saying you shouldn't be relying on others, just that you understand exactly who you're relying on and the consequences of that should they let you down.

The pragmatic argument you're making saying the economy would freeze up isn't really relevant. You can only be pragmatic within a moral framework, with a value that you're aiming at and I'm speaking to that underlying moral framework. I would rather live in a moral, failing world than an immoral and thriving one.

That's all accepting your premise that regulation helps the economy though, I think the reality is that an unregulated (and therefore more moral by my estimation) economy would come back and be stronger having learnt not to rely on insurance so much.

Its abhorrent to me that you think the "social good" is a good enough reason to violate the rights of the individual. Access to food is a social good, but we don't say we should have the state provide universal access to food. We don't say that in housing. You could argue that access to technology is a social good, should the state be providing universal technology? Some people believe anyone with a skin colour that isn't white is adding to "unpleasant social outcomes.

My point really isn't that these things are or aren't social goods, but that the limits to social good and what it can be used to justify are far too vague and far reaching, ending up with the line being drawn only by the person who happens to be in charge at the time. Social good is the justifying call of tyrants.

I advocate for individual rights and property rights for everyone, allowing them to be free from the state using force. That includes the business men making decisions over their companies which is their property and their employees who choose whether or not they want to sell their labour to them.

I don't reconcile that distinction, it's based on the false premise that you do have the right to the provision of electricity. I don't agree with that on the same premise as healthcare, even if 'society' has agreed.

I think we may have a different conception of what is determined as a right: I tend to conceptualise rights as inherent, things required to allow a human to live to the best of their ability. When we think of rights in this way, they aren't things that can be given; they can only be taken away or protected. If I build a hut when I'm stranded on a desert island, that's my hut and I shouldn't be forced out of it and no one else stranded on the island has a "right" to the product of my labour. If I spend time and effort gathering food, the other people on the island who haven't put that effort in don't deserve some of that food just because they're hungry. Now if I give them some out of pity or for the benefits of keeping a group around me, that's a different story than if they take it by force. If they take it by force, they've committed a moral wrong and violated the right required to live for me.

My approach is unforgiving but its from the perspective of individuals and their property rights. It doesnt exclude empathy and willing charity, just excludes forced empathy and charity.

This is likely the core of our disagreement; Healthcare is not essential, it's a luxury that has been afforded to us by those who were willing to study and learn how to do it in an advanced manner. No one has a 'right' to a healthcare professionals time and effort, same as no one has a right to my programming ability or an uber drivers driving capabilities. To phrase that in the positive light, everyone has the right to the product of their own labour, including healthcare professionals, regardless of the social cost that brings.

Leaving healthcare to 'market forces' is nothing more than leaving doctors alone to do healthcare as they please and for a profit that they earn, rather than using government to force prices down and make them work for less than they're worth.

I'm not opposed to a health care option provided by government, but it has to be optional both to pay in and use in order to be a morally sound imo.

Only if you're enforcing the "livable" wage. Those people who would be working for under your "livable" wage would still be out of that money though.

No one would, uber would be forced to either pay higher or go out of business due to a lack of supply in drivers. As it stands though, supply of drivers way outweighs demand for drivers, so they get paid less.

A "liveable wage", whatever that is, isn't a workable solution for a lot of businesses, simply because the actual value of their work may be lower than the liveable wage. Now instead of getting some money for food to eat or a place to stay, they now get nothing because it just isn't viable to pay the liveable wage for the value they supply.

I don't agree that that is unacceptable, regardless of what "we as a society" have deemed. The consumers being held to account for their own business dealing is the reality of the situation, they're giving their money over to the business and in doing so accept the risk. Taking that risk and putting it on everyone who didn't take that risk through bailouts using tax money is unacceptable. Analogizing to a more personal scenario to highlight the moral wrong: It's as unacceptable to me as it would be if I had an accident in my car and forced everybody in the nearby vicinity who wasn't involved to pay for the repairs.

Businesses having separate funds to protect against it is a good idea but it shouldn't be mandatory to have one, only to tell the consumer whether there is one. I imagine most consumers would happily pay a little more and choose the company with one than the one without.

Parent mentioned it would have to be the case, it doesn't have to. If it makes you feel any better replace it with "shouldn't" in your head.

Those people lose their money. I can't think of a good reason why they'd expect to get that money back, they were paying for a service that was being provided up until the company could no longer provide it.

Losing your money to a failed company is a cost of doing business sometimes, it's a risk everybody takes when they purchase things in advance. The company/owner would owe a refund for the service not provided due to company collapse, whether or not they can pay that is another matter and should be accepted as part of the risk. There's no such thing as risk free business and attempts to remove the risk inevitably remove part of the value too.

>It would be great until there was a hard year and the insurance companies would have the be bailed out by the taxpayers.

Surely that wouldn't be the case? They wouldn't have to be bailed out; If a company hadn't planned ahead well enough to survive a bad year then they deserve to go under. In an unregulated economy, bailing out failed companies shouldn't be an option.

Surely they "dance to the tune" because in reality their work just isn't worth enough to allow them that freedom of choice? That's hardly Ubers fault and I don't see why Uber should have to suffer to make up for that.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean, they're part of the market whether you like it or not and so they created a market desire for DRM in browsers. DRM isn't inherently evil, it's an attempt to protect the property rights of the producers of downloadable content. Granted sometimes this attempt is disastrously bad (e.g: any attempts at DRM before steam in the realm of video games) but as far as I can tell this browser DRM hasn't caused issues and it hasn't certainly hasn't been intrusive for me.

That's not a reasonable effort for the average consumer but then the average consumer also probably doesn't care about DRM that much, the whole computer is a giant black blob of code to them with no clue what it's actually doing. The average consumer likely just wants to be able to access their content via the internet and the DRM facilitates that by giving the option to companies that would be unwilling to distribute their content without it.

In the case of DRM, chrome is fulfilling a market desire that firefox had to follow suit with once the companies that adopted it realised their desire could be fulfilled. This is an issue with the companies implementing the DRM, not chrome saying "Yes we can meet that need that no one else is providing for". Also firefox still allows you to disable that feature, so you still have that choice not to allow DRM content.

All of this though is still based on the premise that leveraging their market influence is a bad thing, I just don't see it as an issue. If they use that influence to push a product or service that people don't like, people will not use the product and they'll have lost influence.

In the example of mail servers being "harder to maintain" because of over zealous gmail filters all I have to say is: Tough. People like not getting spam and having over zealous filters is a method of achieving that. If you want to be able to send mail to Google's mail service, you'll have to meet their rules.

I'd actually be very surprised if the filters are intentionally ruling out alternative mail because that would hurt the marketability of gmail.

In fact, that's the crux of it. That's why the legal definition doesnt match the reality of monopoly, because in order to be a monopoly you have to be providing the best on the market and if you're not, a competitor will and you stop being a monopoly.

Can you name an actual example of this happening or are you stuck with hypotheticals? Because my version can go very different to yours and with no concrete examples that your hypothetical is based off there's no moving forward except in our imaginations.

E.g. Chrome implements x and prevents things from working as they should, chrome starts hemorrhaging users because people really hate x, chrome reverses the change or loses its market share.

If people don't like it enough, people stop using it. If people are willing to out up with it, it's obviously worth the inconvenience to them. So even if it goes your way, I still think that's fine, because the people who don't like it enough to stop using it will create a market for browsers without x.

As for your email problem, I've never had a problem receiving mail from non gmail addresses and if I did, I would switch mail provider. As would a lot of people.

Nazis also drank water and some probably even had pets.

A lot of things started because people have said bad things, a lot of things also haven't started even though some people said bad things. The problem is something has to start and in order for that to happen, action has to be taken.

Taking action based on the fact that some bad people one time said the same things is a bad idea, you're initiating the actions and inevitably they'll respond with more than just the words they started with.

I mis-worded my comment there so this misunderstanding is my fault. I meant the definition you provided is used to leverage government regulation and in fact your Quora link is exactly what I meant. It's used as a legal definition because otherwise they wouldn't be able to use the monopoly excuse for regulation. Either way this is only semantics and not particularly productive.

I'm yet to get anything substantial explaining why Google shouldn't be allowed to push chrome on their web search page or only allow YouTube from inside chrome. These services are their property, so they have the right to do whatever they like with them.

There are lots of email services that aren't Google, Apple are directly competing with android for phone OS and there are definitely other video hosts. Just because they're not popular doesnt mean they aren't competing. It just means Google is winning. Even in search there's competition, it just isn't as good as Google is.

Back in its day, yeah. Then Microsoft got sued for providing it free with their OS instead of people having to wait for a long download or buying a browser. Internet explorer didn't keep up, so now it's not as good as it could be. Things change over time and that doesnt change the monopoly issues.

This is the definition used by regulators so they can leverage government regulation against companies, pretty much because monopolies don't exist. The actual definition of a monopoly is a company that has exclusive control over a supply of a commodity or service, which Google doesn't have.

Leveraging your existing, earned, market power isn't bad and wont work if the product it's being leveraged for isn't fit for purpose. Google's omniprescense has been gained by providing a service that everyone likes and wants to use. I don't see what's wrong with any of that.

Yes, Google promoted themselves on their own services, what's the problem with that? The influence gained from their prowess in web search was legitimate, I don't see a problem with them leveraging that. If chrome was garbage it wouldn't have helped.

And yes, Google's products and services work best inside Google's browser. There's no problem there either, they can stop you using them in other browsers completely if they like, it's their property to do with as they please.

You're free not to use chrome or any of Google's services, there are other options, so Google is not a monopoly.

I think the main difference here is that the nazi's were actually doing bad things as well as saying bad things.

In this case, bar the rare exception by individuals, these are people who are vocal that they think they're superior based on a superficial biological trait and nothing more.

What resources have chrome monopolised to prevent other browsers from being provided?

If chrome is a monopoly, why can I just go download firefox or opera or internet explorer?

Chrome isn't a monopoly, it's just the most popular/best on the market at the moment.

Disagreement with a particular provider or producers actions within the free market is not equal to disagreement with the free market in general. AFAIK Gab isn't calling for regulation of the market to prevent this, so there's no contradiction here.

In fact gab is participating in the free market exactly how you'd expect a believer in the free market to act, they're creating their own browser: https://github.com/gab-ai-inc/defiant-browser