Whether measured by population or business, Georgia is one of the fastest growing states in the country. A big reason for that has been the cultivation of business-friendly policies that make the state an attractive destination for families, start-ups and established companies.
Recently, this has been especially true for the tech industry. While not quite at the level of Silicon Valley, Atlanta can be frequently found near the top of lists ranking cities for categories like tech innovation, talent pools, educational pipelines and successful startups.
To some observers, the influx of new businesses – and the novelty of the innovations that come with them – are exciting prospects, and it’s just as exciting to see Atlanta getting into the mix.
The tech industry is constantly growing and changing, and there are many areas of science and business that fall under “tech.” Partly for that reason, Americans have mixed views on what is commonly referred to as Big Tech. For example, most Americans believe that social media companies wield too much power over politics, and that they have a general negative effect on the country.
Party affiliation outlines some splits on opinion polling, too. For example, most Republicans believe their views are unfairly censored or otherwise unsupported in comparison to liberal perspectives on social media. While Republicans tend to have a more negative view of social media than Democrats, Democrats poll as more in favor of government regulation of major tech companies.
A back and forth between optimism and wariness influences not only opinion polling, but public policy as well. Over the past few years, Georgia has illustrated the same dichotomy through its joining of federal antitrust lawsuits.
In 2020, when Republicans still held the White House, Georgia joined 10 other states and the federal government in a lawsuit against Google. The suit claimed that the tech company had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act with its anticompetitive business practices. This year, Georgia joined 15 other states in a similar lawsuit against Apple. There have been several other antitrust lawsuits filed against tech companies over the past few years, but these examples involve recognizable companies, Georgia’s involvement and notably, both the Trump and Biden Departments of Justice.
Both lawsuits, however, illustrate the philosophy through which some, including several attorneys general, are beginning to view tech. That is, tech companies are being targeted not for creating unfair monopolies, but because they are perceived as being too big, whether by market share, revenues or industry lobbying power.
As Reason Magazine has pointed out multiple times over the course of the slew of antitrust cases, this is a shift away from the “consumer welfare standard,” or the prioritization of considering whether customers are positively or negatively affected, that had been the norm in antitrust cases since the 1980s.
Now, the process is becoming expressly political. The case against Apple asserts that the company restricts and undermines developers that would make consumers less reliant on Apple products like the iPhone. In practice, the implication is that Apple must be compelled to cater to the needs of its competitors. Elizabeth Nolan Brown pointed out in a March article for Reason that this would be akin to the government ordering Target to make space in its store for street vendors or competitors like Walmart and Macy’s to peddle their wares. This would no doubt create some benefit for consumers. It would also be completely ridiculous. Brown posits that one reason why people don’t see the Apple case this way is because of the unique way tech is perceived.
It is also not true that Apple holds a monopoly over the smartphone market. Yes, the iPhone is popular and ubiquitous, but in the United States, it holds a market share of a little over 60%. Furthermore, it is actually Android that holds the majority market share worldwide at over 70%.
The case against Google makes a little more sense in that respect, as it holds about 90% of the global market share. However, that suit is an even starker example of how market perceptions and principles are uniquely warped when the market in question is tech.
A few weeks ago, we discussed maintaining principles of growth and optimistic policy when it comes to artificial intelligence. This is despite fears of the future, from workforce replacement to plagiarism to killer robots. As we argued with AI, if people adhere to free market principles elsewhere, they should still apply them to tech. The case against Google is not born of free market values. It is consistent with textbook progressive policy of seeking to break up or otherwise hinder companies, not for the sake of consumers, but simply because they’ve gotten big.
What’s odd, then, is the trend of Republicans and other conservatives latching themselves to liberal, anti-market efforts like these. Indeed, Republican legislators have expressed support and Georgia was among many conservative-leaning states to join the DOJ in these suits.
Tech policy is always new and is always changing by nature. It only makes sense that developments in the field will surprise and worry us. But just like with AI, we have the opportunity to frame how we want to view tech as an area of public policy. We apply market principles because market principles work. They make us richer, healthier, smarter and safer.
Georgia’s status as the best state for business, and as a rising tech hub, became so because of business-friendly and industry-attractive policies. While safeguards should be ensured, especially when it comes to newer issues like data privacy and internet safety, we should not jettison the principles by which we reach this point of advantage and prosperity. We should advance them in order to reach our full potential.