Robert Reich Calls for Internet Companies to be Split Up

He writes at NYT (my highlight)

[A]s has happened before with other forms of property, the most politically influential owners of the new property are doing their utmost to increase their profits by creating monopolies that must eventually be broken up...

 Despite an explosion in the number of websites over the last decade, page views are becoming more concentrated. While in 2001, the top 10 websites accounted for 31 percent of all page views in America, by 2010 the top 10 accounted for 75 percent. Google and Facebook are now the first stops for many Americans seeking news — while Internet traffic to much of the nation’s newspapers, network television and other news gathering agencies has fallen well below 50 percent of all traffic. Meanwhile, Amazon is now the first stop for almost a third of all American consumers seeking to buy anything. Talk about power.

Reich doesn't understand the difference between market power and government power. No one is forcing web surfers go to Google, Facebook or Amazon. There is large traffic to these sites because those sites provide services that a large part of the population considers useful.

Reich emphasizes his confusion with his closing paragraph in the essay:

Yet as long as we remain obsessed by the debate over the relative merits of the “free market” and “government,” we have little hope of seeing what’s occurring and taking the action that’s needed to make our economy work for the many, not the few.

Free markets are never about coercion, government regulations always are,

 -RW