I got asked to write up my main current regulation ideas by a bunch of academics so I decided to publish / stake claim to them a little more widely:
What historical analogies best illustrate the power of today’s dominant platforms?
This obviously depends on the aspects of the technology you are interested in; e.g. apparently there are parallels with national newspapers in the US leading up to the Civil War. But my present relevant research focuses simply on the wealth and power concentration such as we saw in the late 19C. These were similarly insufficiently regulated, but at that time it was because the appropriate means of regulation hadn’t been innovated yet, not because the nominally-local government wasn’t enforcing its own laws.
What lessons can be drawn from earlier attempts to regulate infrastructure (e.g. railroads, telecommunications networks, chartered trading companies)?
The lesson I’m focussing on is that there can be just too big of size, the wrong scale of power. According to Wu and some others, there was initially a question of whether size was only a problem in “bad” companies, but then after some switches of party dominating the government, it became evident that “bad” wasn’t sufficiently well defined, and that the point had to be ensuring a democracy can regulate the entities over which it has regulatory obligation.
Where do these analogies break down? What elements of platform power are fundamentally novel?
In my opinion, the only thing really novel here is reach. In fact, electricity, railways, telephones etc. could always have been transnational, but they were more evidently essential to national security, and still more limited in their ability to independently build up infrastructure. So, anyway, they were adequately restrained into being national. Though cf. this draft
Big Telcos Aren’t Necessarily Better: A Case Study of EU versus US Market Concentration
JJ Bryson, H Malikova, L Garbe, D Backovsky
SocArXiv
The US is screwing up and allowing too much power to its telcos now too.
What insights can historical analysis offer for contemporary debates surrounding digital antitrust, industrial policy, and democratic governance?
I think the main point is that with new power in the market comes the need for new innovations in governance. National antitrust was sufficient more or less until 1980, but then no one had the sufficient combination of motivation and capacity to continue recognising and regulating new utilities, yet their rate of emergence is accelerating (fueled IMO with AI-enhanced capacities for planning & logistics, and here I do not mean genAI, this is oldschool AI bread & butter. Cf
Bessen, James. The new goliaths: How corporations use software to dominate industries, kill innovation, and undermine regulation. Yale University Press, 2022.
Now that the new utilities are transnational we need transnational treaties to regulate them. “Transnational” here does not mean “global.” We’ve seen enough of veto players. This needs to be something that national governments can quickly drop in and out of. The motivation for staying in should be deriving adequate redistribution (taxes) from the regulated industries. Presumably some redistribution should happen in proportion to data, customers, and infrastructure derived per region, but enhanced redistribution for those who participate in the costs of the regulating, which include boycotting or otherwise penalising corporations that are not compliant with agreed guidelines.
Observe two things:
As with any mature sector, these new “goliaths” should be in talks with and helping negotiate and shape the legislation that will regulate them.
This system of treaties should also serve as an incentive for governments to stay within the rule of international law. The majority of the planet – both in terms of population, but also at this stage in terms of GDP, particularly if we consider PPP, but even if we do not – benefits from fairness. As we continue to empower individuals through technology, and to facilitate trade, the world will continue becoming more equal, so it is important to all that we create better stabilising rudders.
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| It's OK some things are bigger. You just have to tend them differently. |
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