Reading this article in the NY Review of Books from Tasmin Shaw about the Big Five (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) should disabuse us of the juvenile nature of the whole "government needs to get out of the way" libertarian narrative, but...most won't read this all the way through, and most won't think about why modern Ayn Rand tinged libertarian philosophy is, at its essence, adolescent.
The government is always present in any capitalist development, from government removing "The Commons" in England in the 1790s through the late National Security State era we are now in. And the more historians analyze the evidence surrounding the development of slavery in the period of 1600-1800, they realize slavery was a feature, not a bug, of nascent industrial and international capitalist development.
Public investment, private profit, is also what the overall pattern shows. This has been true of the tech industry. And it was true of railroads and steel before that, and agriculture before that.
Anyway, what the author of this article does not provide for us is a solution. I can think of one: turn the Internet into a public utility, and have its commission and commissioners have to run for office. It is not foolproof, as anyone who has ever invested time in a political race for say Insurance Commissioner (in those states where the Commissioner is elected). But it has the salutary effect of opening up a system that could be easily abused for more nefarious purposes.
Though, hey, don't read the NYRB article, and don't think of the implications from a public policy perspective. Read instead, and comment, Oh yes, Comment!, about Donald Trump, Jr.'s wife filing for divorce. So much more important....My take on such things is, leave the couple alone. We want to rail against Don, Jr. for his public abuse of trust? Fine. But, in this, leave the couple alone.
