As the American Dream continues to dwindle in an unrecognizable mass of protoplasm absent from the visible universe, the modern framework of digital consumerism and bureaucracy highlights the loaded Atlantic City fight card of an evening of heavy weight boxing equivalent to a decade defined by trillions of dollars at stake, the allocation of power, and an imposing strain on the country’s legal system. The nuclear dystopia dating game dispensing lethal doses of radiation between government and big tech highlights the quandary faced by a societal crossroads, with generational financial fortunes at stake.
A landmark legal decision by a judge in the District of Columbia ruled that Alphabet, Inc., the parent company of subsidiaries such as Google violated anti-trust laws, has opened up a literal Heidi Fleiss brothel pleasure island of perpetual discreet encounters, allowing smaller vendors in the online food chain to prompt enforcement of accountability and fair-market practices at the expense of the tech world behemoths.
Judge Amit P. Mehta, found the vast corporation of being monopolistic, in the case launched by the Department of Justice (DOJ), accusing the organization of the “illegal” distribution of preloaded search engine software on devices, most notably the Android platform, equating to data hording and hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue, while supporting the assertion that the company is unfairly squashing any semblance of entrepreneurial resistance from other digital businesses. As the similarities to the Microsoft browser (Internet Explorer) antitrust suit of 2001 are eerie, if not indicative of lessons not learned by elected officials and CEO’s, the contemporary technological environment supporting the dense framework of the Information Age, presents tedious challenges not faced at the cusp of the .dot com boom in the early 2000’s. The balance between regulation and preserving free market principles across the entire expanse of the software marketplace remains an arduous task in allocating justice.
The culmination of the DOJ case has resulted in a myriad of other economically-based antitrust lawsuits, including a complaint filed by Epic games reaching an ultimate ruling in October, as a Northern District Court Judge of California ordered the Google brand to reconfigure its “Play” digital storefront in allowing for competitors to have a presence on the platform without limitations, a decision representing the emphasis of government in policing private business for the sake of self-preservation and continued growth. Hunting season has officially opened on the prodigious, as the remnants of Ma Bell’s conscience observes the transpirations light years from Earth as the floodgates have opened in the legal system being utilized to compartmentalize the digital private sector. Though bi-partisan support is prevalent in attempting to dissolve massive big tech firms for residual benefits, skeptics are wary of blatant overreach and the ulterior motives of senior politicians existing on all levels.
Ironically, government relies on the major players in Silicon Valley to remain buoyant and satisfy the insatiable lust of Federal bureaucracy to thrive, even in municipalities, cities and states, where elected officials attempt hopelessly to trim budgets and bandwidth in serving the best interests of constituents, while big tech dictates the online ebb and flow of information and overall influence of the electronic environment. With the burgeoning Artificial Intelligence as a super taxon of enhancing the invaluable attribute of efficiency and heightened productivity, the rule of the capitalistic ecosystem is there are no rules, when the sport is officiated by a construct of computer chips, servers, and Qubits, and a programmable indifference to fair business practices.
While AI cannot distinguish the subtleties of antitrust violations, politicians have gaffed in recognizing the scope and nuances of what commerce methods are monopolistic. Survivability in the procedural and the political realm is not conducive to holding big tech entirely accountable and especially in the wake of the launch of the recently deployed digital minds of ChatGPT and derivatives. The inability, or unwillingness of Executive Branch agencies and various committees and task forces to accurately identify the hierarchy and layers of the tech business landscape is only part of the underlying issue.
In embracing reality and reverse engineering the fiscal flow chart of digital corporations, all points lead to the apex predators of the food-chain, a fact that those informed are wary of, especially with the mutualistic dynamic between government and the Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world, the latter stocked with limitless legal resources. Within this ecosystem, big tech has both the influence and arsenal to withstand an aggressive and coordinated assault from unrelenting restrictive legislation, that parallels a guileless landlord ruling egregiously over hapless tenets, the metaphor relevant as Americans and small businesses alike face a horrific emulation of a caste system founded amid innovation.
When business cannot be distinguished from certain facets of government and vise-versa, and citizens are stifled between the savage forces of internecine, the love affair has concluded and the brawl for securing the near future ensues.
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