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Market Exploitation of Human Networking

As Internet popularity grows more and more, users tend to flock to sites that other people are using due to the fact that all of their real life connections are using the same sites. As a result, the companies owning these sites have monopolies over the markets they preside on. For example, Google has a monopoly over all information research and web directing while Amazon manages a large portion of all Internet sales. The difficulty in regulating these Internet market is determining the separation of government and free markets. What makes matters even more difficult is the patents these companies pay for and utilize to maintain their monopolies over their products. When technology was a matter of physical products, as during the Industrial Revolution, determining whose ideas where whose was an easy process because patenting a physical contraption is much easier than patenting an idea. Since ideas are so free flowing in the vast networks we’ve created through modern day technology, the whole industry lies in a murky grey legal area.

This article discusses the consequences of the way we form networks nowadays and the difference between convenience and exploitation. Since all markets are working towards equilibrium, the government and the markets themselves can be seen as working towards equilibrium as well, but in terms balancing civil unrest with anger from big companies. Additionally, allowing businesses to maintain monopolies over markets means that all other firms are discouraged from entering the market, so the Nash equilibrium is weighted unfairly where monopolies make all of the profits and any other firms only make negative profits if they do enter the market. These Internet organizations have learned how to successfully exploit our weak and strong social ties, utilizing how close we are to other people and what we look up to gauge our interests and sell us even more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/is-big-tech-too-powerful-ask-google.html?ref=topics&_r=0

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