Big Tech's Perfect Storm

Key Takeaways

[Music] we talk a lot about the four and the preferred treatment they receive Apple Amazon Facebook and Google by Wall Street our government and our society we engage in a gross idolatry of innovators that has reached a tipping point the perfect storm is growing around the floor and society is beginning to regurgitate on the notion that these firms are at Universal good and some their perceptions or their images are moving from chicken salad to chicken [ __ ] it appears that we have had enough some stats Amazon since 2008 Walmart has paid sixty four billion dollars in corporate income tax well amazon has paid 1.4 billion this despite the fact that in the last 24 months amazon has added the entire market capitalization of wal-mart to its value the most uncomfortable question in business and my view is how do we pay our soldiers firefighters and teachers if a firm can ascend to four hundred and sixty billion dollars in value fifth most in the world without paying any meaningful corporate taxes and now mayors are tripping over each other throwing tax breaks and abatements to get Amazon to open their second headquarters in their city every mayor wants to detonate a prosperity bomb in the city square however what's more likely to happen is an Olympic like bidding intoxication where there's a lot of high-fives and celebration for 12 months followed by years of economic analysis and hangover that this was a bad deal what should Amazon do they should starts their hat white become a better citizen pick Detroit and revitalized the Metro and invest in education and Riaan gauging and re employing some of the engineers laid off in the auto industry Apple we have our religion our new Jesus Christ has Steve Jobs the iPhone X should be called the iPhone cross we've decided the iPhone is holier than any other object someone gets thrown into a trunk you can get a court order to search that car but don't try and search the iPhone that's holier at Apple's recent product unveiled the company's head of retail Angela Aaron said the company no longer refers to its shops as stores we call them towns that's like calling the playground at Grace Church that wanted to charge my kid 48 thousand dollars a year to play with blocks Central Park what [ __ ] this company is the most profitable firm in the world and they deserve that but they have decided that privacy laws no longer apply to them Facebook arguably the most successful media company of the last 20 years has simply put become Putin's [ __ ] they need to overcorrect and take responsibility and thus far the response has been underwhelming with the social platform citing concerns about censorship and saying they can't be an arbiter of truth this isn't about censorship it's not about free speech it's about you refusing to inject friction and cost into your scalable business model this will be complex and it will be expensive so is democracy Google the search engine enjoys 90% plus sheriffs search across many of its largest markets and search is now a bigger business than the entire ad market of any nation with the exception of the US are we comfortable with one for-profit entity getting to decide the answers to 90% of the queries posed to our modern God search our governments have implicitly communicated to these firms with their fines that are the equivalent of a 25 cent parking ticket that the smart thing to do the shareholder driven thing to do is to break the law before need to get out ahead of this issue fast that's wrapping themselves in a neon blue pink or rainbow blanket as an illusionist trick to distract people from the belief that they validated an age-old truth power corrupts the worm has turned we'll see you next week [Music] Oh [Music]