重点 (Top highlight)
Four of the world’s most powerful people will testify to Congress on Wednesday as part of a long-running investigation into whether their companies are, well, too powerful. After sending various underlings to previous hearings, this time Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai will personally face questions from members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, turning what would otherwise be a routine proceeding into something of a media spectacle. It’s the sixth in a series of hearings on competition problems in digital markets that the subcommittee began in June 2019 and is expected to culminate in a bipartisan report to Congress later this year.
作为我们对自己的公司是否实力太强的长期调查的一部分，我们这个世界上最有权势的人将在周三向国会作证。 在为之前的听证会提供各种依据之后，这次亚马逊首席执行官Jeff Bezos，苹果首席执行官Tim Cook，Facebook首席执行官Mark Zuckerberg和Google首席执行官Sundar Pichai将亲自面对美国众议院司法委员会反托拉斯小组委员会成员的提问，否则将是什么。例行公事进入媒体视界 这是该小组委员会于2019年6月开始的一系列有关数字市场竞争问题的听证会的第六次，预计将在今年晚些时候提交给国会的两党报告中达到高潮。
At stake is a possible paradigm shift in antitrust law to adapt to the internet age — one that could reshape the playing fields that have allowed the largest U.S. tech companies to become some of the most dominant entities in world history.
为适应互联网时代，反托拉斯法可能发生范式转变，这可能会重塑这一格局，重塑公平竞争环境，使美国最大的科技公司成为世界历史上最主导的实体。
Watching closely will be Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance and one of Amazon’s most influential critics. She testified as an expert witness in the second of the hearings last summer, and earlier this year was profiled by the New York Times as one of the people whose ideas have shaped the case against Amazon.
非营利组织地方自力更生研究所的联合主任，亚马逊最有影响力的批评家之一的斯塔西·米切尔(Stacy Mitchell)将密切关注。 去年夏天，她在第二次听证会上作证为专家证人。今年早些时候，她被《纽约时报》 ( New York Times)形容为是其想法对亚马逊提起诉讼的人之一。
Last week, Mitchell made news by stepping down from her fellowship at a Yale University antitrust project, along with fellow antitrust scholar Sanjukta Paul. The two resigned their positions after The American Prospect reported that the project’s director, Yale economist Fiona Scott Morton, disclosed that she is a paid advisor to Amazon and Apple.
上周，米切尔(Mitchell)与同行的反托拉斯学者Sanjukta Paul辞去了耶鲁大学反托拉斯项目的奖学金 ，这是一个新闻。 在《美国前景》报道该项目的负责人，耶鲁大学经济学家菲奥娜·斯科特·莫顿(Fiona Scott Morton)透露她是亚马逊和苹果公司的有薪顾问之后，两人辞职。
“I think that makes it hard to achieve the project’s goal of creating a space to grapple w/ the antitrust implications of Big Tech,” Mitchell said in a Twitter thread announcing her departure. She nodded to the irony of Amazon and Apple extending their reach to an antitrust project named after Thurman Arnold, the top trust-buster in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration.
米切尔(Mitchell)在宣布离职的Twitter帖子中说：“我认为这很难实现该项目的目标，即创建一个可以解决Big Tech的反托拉斯影响的空间。” 她点了亚马逊和苹果的讽刺意味，将他们的影响力扩大到了以富兰克林·罗斯福(Franklin D. Roosevelt)政府中最大的信任破坏者瑟曼·阿诺德(Thurman Arnold)命名的反托拉斯项目。
I spoke with Mitchell by phone on Thursday, the same day she announced the move, about Amazon’s power, the upcoming antitrust hearing, and what people are getting wrong about why it matters.
我在星期四与米切尔通过电话进行了交谈，就在她宣布这一举动的同一天，她谈到了亚马逊的权力，即将举行的反托拉斯听证会，以及人们为何对此表示怀疑。
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
为了清楚起见，本次采访已经过编辑和整理。
OneZero: This must be a hectic day for you. I noticed your tweet announcing your resignation from the fellowship is blowing up.
OneZero：对您来说，这一定是忙碌的一天。 我注意到您宣布自己辞职的推文正在爆炸。
Stacy Mitchell: I feel a little sheepish, actually. I do have a day job. [Mitchell works full-time as co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance; her Yale fellowship was an affiliation.] I expected a few people to notice, but I wasn’t really expecting it to be kind of this thing. I think a lot of people mistakenly assumed it was some sort of big sacrifice on my part.
斯泰西·米切尔(Stacy Mitchell)：实际上，我有点sheep。 我有一份日常工作。 [米切尔全职担任地方自力更生研究所的联合主任； 她的耶鲁大学奖学金是从属关系。]我希望有几个人注意，但我并不是真的希望这是一件事情。 我认为很多人错误地认为这是我的重大牺牲。
I wonder if it resonated partly because it illustrates how these companies are so influential that, even at an antitrust project, you can’t escape their influence.
我想知道它是否在一定程度上引起共鸣，因为它说明了这些公司的影响力如何，以至于即使在反托拉斯项目中，您也无法逃脱他们的影响。
Right, and that’s not always transparent to people. They’re funding think tanks, nonprofit groups, academics, and even small-business front groups. There was that New York Times piece a couple days ago about the Global Antitrust Institute.
是的，这并不总是对人们透明。 他们资助智囊团，非营利组织，学者，甚至是小型企业前线组织。 前几天， 《纽约时报》刊登了有关全球反托拉斯研究所的文章。
There’s also this advocacy group called the Connected Commerce Council, and it was placing op-eds from small business owners supporting the big tech companies. You’d read something they’d written and you’d assume they were genuine — that it was simply their opinion. In some of these cases, reporting has revealed the business owners had no idea they were having these things attributed to them. [The Washington Post’s Tony Romm reported on this practice here, and Alex Kantrowitz added more details in his newsletter Big Technology.]
还有一个名为“互联商业委员会”的倡导组织，它正在安置小企业主的意见，以支持大型科技公司。 您读过他们写的东西，并认为它们是真实的-那仅仅是他们的意见。 在某些情况下，报告显示企业主不知道他们将这些东西归因于他们。 [《 华盛顿邮报 》的托尼·罗姆(Tony Romm) 在这里报道了这种做法 ，而亚历克斯·坎特罗维兹(Alex Kantrowitz)在他的时事通讯《 大技术》中 添加了更多细节 。 ]
Yeah, that’s pretty deceptive. So what do you think we might get from this hearing that we haven’t gotten from the previous ones? Having the CEOs instead of lower-ranking executives draws more attention to these types of hearings. But at the same time, it can distract from the main point because people get caught up in this or that soundbite, or in some of the less intelligent questions that the lawmakers ask.
是的，这很具有欺骗性。 那么，您认为我们可能从这次听证会中得到什么，而我们没有从以前的听证会中得到什么呢？ 由首席执行官而不是较低级别的高管引起人们对这类听证会的更多关注。 但与此同时，它可能会偏离重点，因为人们陷入了这种或那种声音的咬合中，或者陷入了立法者提出的一些较不明智的问题中。
The format of having all four of them in one hearing is not ideal. The companies fought for that, and unfortunately they seem to have won that battle. Each of the four companies is distinct, and raises distinct antitrust issues. Not having an opportunity to dig in deep on each one of them, one at a time, I think is really problematic. And it may prove to doom this hearing in terms of its effectiveness.
一次听完全部四个听觉的格式并不理想。 这些公司为此奋斗，但不幸的是，他们似乎赢得了这场战斗。 四个公司中的每个公司都是不同的，并且会提出不同的反托拉斯问题。 我认为没有机会深入研究其中的每个，一次确实很成问题。 就其有效性而言，这可能证明注定了这场听证会。
I can say from the hearing last July [in which Mitchell testified], the subcommittee members asked very sharp, well-informed questions. I guess not all of them, but most of them did. In that sense, it’s less like maybe Zuckerberg’s hearing before that Senate committee a couple years ago. [Much of the coverage of that hearing focused on Senators’ uninformed questions and Zuckerberg’s ability to dance around them.]
我可以说，从去年7月的听证会上(米切尔作证)，小组委员会成员提出了非常敏锐，见多识广的问题。 我猜不是全部，但大多数都可以。 从这个意义上讲，这不像扎克伯格在几年前参议院委员会之前的听证会。 [该听证会的大部分报道都集中在参议员的不知情的问题以及扎克伯格在他们周围跳舞的能力。
A lot is going to depend on the subcommittee members’ ability to ask follow-ups. When Jeff Bezos gives an effective answer, how do you pin him down? If you don’t understand enough about Amazon’s business, you’re not going to be able to do that. My hope is that because this subcommittee has been engaged in this investigation, the members will be prepared to do that. If they can’t, what we’re going to get is a lot of evasive answers that eat up the time and don’t accomplish anything.
很大程度上取决于小组委员会成员进行跟进的能力。 当杰夫·贝索斯(Jeff Bezos)提供有效答案时，您如何确定他的身份？ 如果您对亚马逊的业务了解不足，您将无法做到这一点。 我的希望是，由于该小组委员会一直在进行这项调查，因此成员将准备这样做。 如果他们做不到，我们将获得很多回避性的答案，这些答案会浪费时间并且什么也做不了。
“This feels like the wheels of democracy’s oversight mechanism finally sputtering back to life.”
“这就像民主的监督机制的车轮终于重生一样。”
So is this hearing maybe less of a big deal than it’s being made out to be, in terms of being a venue in which to finally get answers from the people who have ultimate responsibility at these companies?
那么，就作为最终从这些公司负有最终责任的人那里获得答案的场所而言，这次听证会可能没有什么大不了的。
Not necessarily. The thing to remember is that this is part of this long-running investigation. Congress has not done an investigation into monopoly power like this for about 40 years. It used to do these regularly, the most famous being the monopoly committee back during Thurman Arnold’s day in the late ’30s, early ’40s. They interviewed hundreds of witnesses and released numerous reports, and it took place over several years. That led to changes in antitrust law, at least one major antitrust case, and changes in patent law. In the ’50s and ’60s they continued to take on monopoly power in particular industries. That was the end of doing this.
不必要。 要记住的是，这是这项长期调查的一部分。 大约40年来，国会没有对这种垄断力量进行过调查。 它过去经常做这些事情，最著名的是30年代末40年代初在瑟曼·阿诺德(Thurman Arnold)时期的垄断委员会。 他们采访了数百名证人，并发表了许多报告，报告历时数年。 这导致了反托拉斯法的变化，至少一个重大的反托拉斯案件以及专利法的变化。 在50年代和60年代，他们继续在特定行业中占据垄断地位。 到此为止。
So this feels like the wheels of democracy’s oversight mechanism finally sputtering back to life. My hopes are not so specific to this hearing, but rather that the hearing sits within a larger investigation that is going to produce a report and set of policy recommendations.
因此，这就像民主的监督机制的车轮终于重生。 我希望这次听证会的希望不是那么具体，而是希望听证会处于更大的调查范围之内，它将产生一份报告和一系列政策建议。
The real effectiveness of these hearings will depend on the report — the bipartisan support it has, and how it’s received in Congress, are in some respects much more significant than this hearing itself. This hearing is not for show. You know, we have a lot of hearings that are about giving an opportunity for Congress to demonstrate its concern about an issue that’s in the news. Whereas this is actually part of an investigation that’s meant to really accomplish something.
这些听证会的真正效力将取决于该报告，在某些方面，该听证会本身得到了两党的支持，以及在国会中如何获得它的支持。 这次听证会不作展示。 您知道，我们有很多听证会，旨在为国会提供一个机会来证明其对新闻中的问题的关注。 而这实际上是调查的一部分，旨在真正完成某项工作。
Why should the average consumer care about these antitrust issues?
普通消费者为什么要关心这些反托拉斯问题？
This whole shift in thinking that happened in the 1980s and ’70s, where we embraced this idea of big corporations — we really embraced bigness, and the idea that big corporations were better, that they would deliver more, and we should allow them free rein. It’s really quite remarkable that what we have seen in the intervening 40 years is this incredible concentration of economic power, and most Americans are demonstrably not better off.
整个思想转变发生在1980年代和70年代，当时我们接受了大公司的想法–我们确实接受了大公司的想法，大公司更好，可以提供更多成果的想法，我们应该让他们自由地束缚自己。 。 确实非常值得注意的是，在过去的40年中，我们看到的是这种令人难以置信的经济实力集中度，而且大多数美国人的境况也没有得到改善。
That was what we were sold on — the idea that there would be broad benefits to these companies’ success. And instead, we have just an incredibly unequal society, where huge numbers of people are unable to make a sustainable living.
那就是我们被卖掉的想法，即这些公司的成功将获得广泛的利益。 相反，我们只有一个令人难以置信的不平等社会，在那里，许多人无法维持可持续的生活。
The thing that I hear most, the undercurrent of what I hear a lot of Americans express when they talk about what’s wrong with the country, has to do with a sense of domination and a sense that their lives are controlled by corporate forces. They experience this at work a lot, of course. But there’s also a feeling that your institutions are controlled and run by big business. That’s a pretty broad feeling, not limited to the left or the right.
我最常听到的事情，是我听到很多美国人在谈论该国出了什么问题时所表达的潜意识，这与统治感和他们的生活受到公司力量的控制有关。 当然，他们在工作中会经历很多。 但也有一种感觉，您的机构是由大企业控制和运营的。 这是一种相当宽泛的感觉，不仅仅限于左侧或右侧。
Part of how we have not paid attention to those linkages is that we have adopted this consumer mindset. Where we tend to default to this idea that our only response to corporate power is, you know, a boycott, or canceling your Amazon Prime membership, instead of really recognizing that we have tools to restructure markets in ways that would broaden the benefits and opportunities they deliver.
我们没有注意这些联系的部分原因是我们采用了这种消费者心态。 我们倾向于违背这种想法，即我们对公司权力的唯一React是抵制或取消您的Amazon Prime会员资格，而不是真正意识到我们拥有工具来以扩大利益和机会的方式重组市场他们交付。
I think most people actually do experience and carry the concerns that are at the root of this investigation. But it isn’t about your shopping choices as much as it is about this sort of broader power.
我认为大多数人实际上确实会经历并承载着本调查的根源。 但这与您的购物选择无关，而与这种更广泛的力量有关。
You talked even before the pandemic about how this concentration of corporate power, and in particular the growing reliance on Amazon, would leave us vulnerable as a society. And of course we’ve seen that borne out in dramatic ways. What are you focusing on in your work these days?
您甚至在大流行之前就谈到过这种公司权力的集中，尤其是对亚马逊的日益依赖将如何使我们这个社会变得脆弱。 当然，我们已经以戏剧性的方式证明了这一点。 您最近在工作中专注于什么？
On the good side of the ledger, if I can locate a silver lining here, there’s just more attention: A lot of people have suddenly realized that small local businesses matter, and there’s something rigged in the system. Because people tended to see Amazon’s growing dominance as just part of progress, market evolution, where traditional small businesses couldn’t compete. Now people’s eyes are more open. So I’m busy talking and writing about that. It’s particularly interesting on the left, which has kind of had an antagonistic relationship to small businesses for many years. There’s a new opening to say, that’s a mistake, and here’s why.
在分类帐的有利方面，如果我能在这里找到一线希望，那就需要更多关注：很多人突然意识到，小型本地企业很重要，并且系统中存在某些操纵行为。 由于人们倾向于将亚马逊日益增长的支配地位视为进步的一部分，因此市场在不断发展，传统的小型企业无法与之竞争。 现在人们的眼睛更加睁开了。 所以我忙于谈论和写作。 左侧尤其有趣，它多年来一直与小企业有敌对关系。 有一个新的说法可以说，这是一个错误，这就是原因。
“So many American companies, large and small, live in fear of Amazon.”
“如此众多的美国公司，无论大小，都对亚马逊感到恐惧。”
I’ve been researching the Congressional hearings that led to the tobacco settlement in the ’90s. A turning point was when Big Tobacco lost the support of the Republican party, and that happened in part because it had lost the public’s support, and then the Democrats started painting the GOP as the Party of Big Tobacco. And that was untenable for the GOP. So with Big Tech I’m wondering, is it realistic to expect that both the Democrats and Republicans agree that their power is a problem in this sort of bipartisan way? Or is the more likely path that one party starts hammering on this idea that the other one is the party of Big Tech, until the other party eventually backs down?
我一直在研究导致90年代烟草和解的国会听证会。 一个转折点是大烟草失去了共和党的支持，部分原因是它失去了公众的支持，然后民主党人开始将共和党描绘成大烟草党。 这对于共和党来说是站不住脚的。 因此，我想知道，使用Big Tech时，期望民主党人和共和党人都同意他们的权力以这种两党共进的方式存在问题是否现实？ 还是更有可能的一种方式是，一方开始敲定另一方是大技术方，直到另一方最终退出这一想法？
I think the struggle you’ve outlined is the right one. The Democratic party actually has to be aggressive about hanging this around the necks of Republicans. What’s happening to small businesses, especially — Amazon’s market power is their number-one threat. There’s survey data and all sorts of stuff to back that up. Republicans have been able to pretend to be the party of small business, and of fair and open markets, or free markets. But I mean, who’s free in this scenario? So many American companies, large and small, live in fear of Amazon. There is nothing about this that is the land of the free. The missing piece, it seems to me, is that the leadership of the Democratic Party is not doing what you’re describing with tobacco. Yet. That seems to be the place where that needs to change.
我认为您所概述的斗争是正确的。 民主党实际上必须大胆地将其挂在共和党的脖子上。 小型企业正在发生什么，尤其是-亚马逊的市场力量是他们的头号威胁。 有调查数据和各种支持它的东西。 共和党人能够假装是小型企业，公平开放市场或自由市场的政党。 但是我的意思是，在这种情况下谁有空？ 如此众多的美国公司，无论大小，都对亚马逊感到恐惧。 没有什么是免费的土地。 在我看来，缺失的部分是民主党的领导层没有按照烟草的描述去做。 然而。 那似乎是需要改变的地方。
I hope that the policy recommendations are strong that come out of the investigation. The report they’re planning to release in early fall. Obviously it’s going to come out in the context of the election, and the changeover in Congress is part of that. The things to watch are, is it a strong report that calls for meaningful policy changes? How does Congress react, and what happens next? And if Biden wins, who does he begin to appoint?
我希望从调查中得出强有力的政策建议。 他们计划在初秋发布报告。 显然，它将在选举的背景下出现，国会的换届就是其中的一部分。 需要注意的是，是否有一份强有力的报告要求进行有意义的政策变更？ 国会如何React，接下来会发生什么？ 如果拜登获胜，他将任命谁？
I think the pandemic has laid bare their incredible power in our society and it’s undeniable. Arguments that I had been making for a long time about the fact these companies have become like essential infrastructure really have proven to be the case. And all of the ways in which we’ve realized the incredible injustice and inequality. I mean, Jeff Bezos made $13 billion on Monday.
我认为这种流行病已经在我们的社会中暴露出了他们难以置信的力量，这是不可否认的。 关于这些公司已经变得像基本基础设施这样的事实，我已经争论了很长时间，事实确实如此。 以及我们已经实现了令人难以置信的不公正和不平等的所有方式。 我的意思是，杰夫·贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos) 星期一赚了130亿美元 。
扫一扫
474
被折叠的 条评论
为什么被折叠?
到【灌水乐园】发言
