OPINION:
The emerging progressive war on our nation’s most successful tech companies is destructive on so many levels. The economics are horrible, and the divisive politics of class warfare will lead to more anger and hatred of the “rich.” Our nation should put up statues for the entrepreneurs who founded tech companies that created search engines, smart phones, door-to-door delivery of anything you want and social networking that has made every persons’ life in America measurably better.
The call to break up Amazon, Facebook and Google is class warfare. Sadly, there is an appetite for the politics of envy on both sides of the aisle in Congress.
The Democratic Party has become so reactionary against President Donald J. Trump that they have embraced the Democratic socialist agenda of the most left-wing party members, including radicals Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat and Rashida Talib, Michigan Democrat. They have embraced the socialist ideas of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent, that were considered fringe ideas three years ago. The Democrats are using kamikaze-style politics by attacking our most successful companies.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Masschusetts Democrat, is desperate to outflank socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders on hating big business, therefore she has rolled out a plan to use government power to take a hammer to our nation’s most successful companies. Ms. Warren published her idea on Medium on March 8, 2019, where she argued, “today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation.” Ms. Warren is light on evidence of these crimes against the American people, but heavy on rhetoric.
Ms. Warren implies that somehow these companies are cheating. The senator argued, “I want a government that makes sure everybody — even the biggest and most powerful companies in America — plays by the rules.” These rules seem to consist of the idea that if you are a big company, then you are, by definition, bad. She falsely claims that big is inherently bad when she claimed “and I want to make sure that the next generation of great American tech companies can flourish. To do that, we need to stop this generation of big tech companies from throwing around their political power to shape the rules in their favor and throwing around their economic power to snuff out or buy up every potential competitor.” Her solution is for using the massive power of government to punish success.
Amazon, Facebook and Google are American success stories. Amazon is a company ranked eighth by Forbes in profitability of American companies and was founded by Jeff Bezos in a garage in 1994. The company has revolutionized online shopping. I am willing to bet that most of Ms. Warren’s staff use Facebook to stay in touch with friends.
According to a history provided in The Street, “Founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook has rapidly become one of the biggest social networking sites in the world. Within the year, the social networking site accrued over 1 million users — which has since grown exponentially to hit over 2 billion in 2018.” Google ranked #22 by Fortune and is described as “nearly everyone uses Google search, YouTube, or the Android operating system. As a result, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has prospered. Its annual sales grew $20.5 billion to $110.8 billion in 2017, vaulting it into the top 25 of the Fortune 500 list.” Ms. Warren wants to use the power of government to destroy these three successful American businesses.
Some Republicans support Ms. Warren and a Daily Beast story titled “Trumpland is Loving Elizabeth Warren’s Plan to Break P Silicon Valley Giants” cites Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican, and Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, as supporters of some of her ideas. I can’t imagine they would support Ms. Warren’s platform at to “designate a new category for large companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more that ’offer to the public an online marketplace, an exchange, or a platform for connecting third parties” and prohibit them from “both owning the platform and any of its participants.” Nationalizing our big tech companies is something more appropriate for communist China or socialist Venezuela than the freedom-loving United States of America.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s idea is an affront to free markets and the American tradition of light-touch regulation of capitalism. It might be time to repeal antitrust laws that have been used to threaten mergers and break up big companies, because those laws give the government too much power over the private sector. Ms. Warren’s ideas are truly dangerous for a democracy that treasures private property rights and free markets.
• Brian Darling is former senior communications director and counsel for Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican.
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