In 2020, the European Commission announced its Digital Services Act and its Digital Markets Act, two packages aimed to regulate online monopolistic platforms such as Google or Facebook. While the monopoly of corporations has been widely discussed in the last few years, it has also found influential advocates, such as American entrepreneur Peter Thiel, author and co-founder of PayPal and Donald Trump’s supporter. Ideological upheavals are like shifts in continental plates. At first, they happen almost imperceptibly, underground, but their tremors can shake the world. Peter Thiel triggered such an earthquake with his book, From Zero to One. On its cover, the slim volume first published in 2014 claims to be a manual for aspiring startup founders. Inside, it outlines a radical way of thinking that has had a massive influence on Silicon Valley. Spun out of a course Thiel gave at his alma mater, Stanford University, its main message is that competitive markets destroy profits. Therefore, Thiel writes, aspiring founders should try to seek monopolies wherever possible. “Competition is for losers”, as he later summarized it. Weight is given to his claims by his successes: Thiel co-founded PayPal, was turned into a billionaire by the stock market, and invested into Facebook, Airbnb and LinkedIn early on.
via voxeurop: Peter Thiel, Donald Trump’s friend and the Monopoly’s fiercest advocate