The Curious Case For Breaking Up Tech Giants

By Karen Webster

There’s no question that the world’s weather patterns are undergoing a massive change.

In the last few months alone, we’ve seen snow in Rome and three powerful nor’easters in Boston in the space of two and a half weeks — with some forecasts predicting a fourth this week. 2017 was the most destructive hurricane season in 82 years, with Harvey, Irma and Maria pummeling parts of the U.S. and the Caribbean, leaving tens of billions of dollars in damage in their wake. In Sept. 2017, more than 230 people lost their lives when Mexico City was struck by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake.

To name but a few.

This must all be because Beyoncé and Jay-Z had twins in July.

Think about it — did any of this happen before they had those twins?

It did not.

Those twins were born July 2017. All of these bad things happened after that.

Cause and effect.

Their twins. Our really, really bad weather.

I’d say there’s about as much of a correlation between our bad weather and the birth of those cute little twins as there is between Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon’s fortunes getting bigger and middle class wages getting smaller.

Yet, that’s the claim being made by Scott Galloway — serial entrepreneur and adjunct faculty member at the Stern School of Business who wrote a book, participated in numerous TV interviews and composed a 7,000-word article in Esquire saying just that.

His thesis is based almost entirely on what statisticians call spurious correlation — inferring cause and effect from the seeming correlation between two unrelated things. A famous one is the correlation between sunspots and murder rates — there is none.

Galloway’s narrative asserts that “the four” — Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google — should be broken up.

And that we should do that not because they’re tax evaders or evil — all things he said they, like all of us, are.

And not even because they’re job destroyers, which he said is the natural consequence of innovation, and innovation is goodness.

But because not breaking them up throws cold water on the American dream — which is to work hard, save money, be prosperous and even become a millionaire, as he told CNBC in a recent interview.

So, as capitalists, he said, it’s now time to “oxygenate” the economy and “prune [the] firms [that have] become invasive, cause premature death and won’t let other firms emerge.”

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