Elizabeth Warren's plan to regulate big tech is ‘anti-capitalistic’ and ‘anti-competitive’: Herman Cain
Elizabeth Warren looks to break up big tech companies
The New Voice CEO Herman Cain discusses Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) plan to break up big tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google.
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pushing to break up tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google.
"Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy," Warren wrote in a Medium post. "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."
The Massachusetts senator wants the federal government to ensure the biggest and most powerful U.S. companies "plays by the rules" so the next batch of American tech companies can become successful.
"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."
In a campaign blog post, Warren laid out her plan to regulate big tech companies. Her first step is to appoint regulators to break up mergers like Facebook's deal with Instagram and WhatsApp and Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods.
The second step would ban companies from providing a marketplace where they could sell products. Tech companies would fall into two different categories, those with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more, and those with one of $90 million to $25 billion. According to an article by the New York Times, "The upper tier would be required to "structurally separate" their products from their marketplace. Smaller companies would be subject to regulations but would not be forced to separate themselves from the online marketplace."
Lastly, her plan prohibits companies from sharing user's data with third parties.
When asked for a comment on Warren's proposal by FOX Business’ Deirdre Bolton, Google pointed to a blog post by the Information and Technology Innovation Foundation that says, "The Warren campaign's call to break up big tech companies reflects a ‘big is bad, small is beautiful’ ideology run amok. The proposal ignores the fact that many of the services big tech companies now provide free used to cost consumer's money. Breaking up large internet companies just because they are large won't help consumers. It will hurt them by reducing convenience, reducing quality of service and innovation and in some cases leading to the introduction of priced services."
Amazon and Facebook both declined to comment.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 197.12 | -1.26 | -0.64% |
| FB | NO DATA AVAILABLE | - | - | - |
| GOOGL | ALPHABET INC. | 164.76 | -2.87 | -1.71% |
Former Republican presidential candidate and New Voice CEO Herman Cain called Warren's plan "anti-capitalistic" and "anti-competitive." He told FOX Business’ Charles Payne that that there are already rules in place to "keep these companies from going crazy."
Cain also said that the plan is just an attempt by Warren to "out big government, out regulate, out increase taxes over all of the other candidates that are democrat presidential wannabes in order to distance herself."
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He added that Warren’s proposal for big tech are socialist ideas that will never be successful and says politicians like Warren have never been more out of touch with what the American public wants.
"The people that are throwing out these Green New Deal ideas, Elizabeth Warren ideas, are out of touch with reality and they are out of touch with most of the American people," Cain said on Friday. "They have no solutions to offer that have proved to work and many of them are throwing out socialist ideas...socialism has never worked since the beginning of time."
The proposal comes on the same day Warren will hold a rally in Long Island City, the Queens neighborhood in New York City that was to be home to Amazon new headquarters