In the corporate world, Goliath slays David

By all popular accounts, the internet is a wonderful place to be since it allows all manner of opinions to be posted, all manner of goods to be bought and sold, information is free, democracy thrives, and competition is encouraged. If this were really true, then how do you explain the power wielded by just five companies – Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft – in controlling our day-to-day activities on the web? And how did they acquire so much power?

The answer is simple – just eliminate the competition by any means, fair and foul. What better way is there to fend off competition than buying up a competitor and shutting it down? What better way is there to prevent patents from being turned into innovative products than buying up the patents and never making use of them? For example, Amazon Pay acquired the Bengaluru start-up Tapzo, and shut it down days later in 2018. Amazon, Google, IBM and Facebook buy up patents and companies on a regular basis to forestall competition, never mind the collateral damage resulting from such actions.

In the global marketplace of ideas and things, while initially there are many offerings, in course of time, due to fierce competition and unfair trade practices, the few that come out on top seem to fit the ‘survival of the fittest’ Darwinian evolutionary model. In reality, however, a better explanation is to be found in an idea proposed by Greek philosophers over 2,000 years ago but popularised by the 19th century French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. This now-discredited idea, labelled Lamarckism, posits that the traits of individuals were acquired from contact with the environment, and that such acquired characteristics could be inherited by their offspring.

To see how Lamarckism actually applies in the corporate world, in specific the IT sector, a few facts are needed.

First, corporations are considered to be people, and enjoy the same rights of free expression as citizens. This was made clear in the definitive US Supreme Court 2010 ruling in the Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission case on election campaign financing. As a consequence of this ruling, Google became a person, as did Alphabet. Strictly speaking, though Alphabet is the ‘parent’ of Google, the fact that Google created Alphabet cannot be denied, the Freudian implications of which are better left unaddressed.

Second, while corporations enjoy freedom of expression, this same right does not extend to their employees, since it is standard practice nowadays for companies to require their staff to sign highly restrictive non-disclosure agreements (NDA). NDAs are the corporate version of the ‘Official Secrets Act’ of governments. They serve to prevent company whistle-blowers from making public any issues pertaining to the work environment – things such as inadequate health and safety standards, or wage, gender and race discrimination problems.

At a much deeper level, NDAs pose grave ethical problems for computer professionals who develop algorithms for AI-driven automated decision-making programmes, such as those used by Facebook in determining what constitutes fake news and what doesn’t, or in the case of facial recognition systems, whether a particular non-white face in a crowd represents a threat or not.

If you work for the government and violate their Official Secrets Act, you end up in prison. When you violate a company’s NDA, you can be sued for millions of dollars in damages and end up destitute.

Third, when companies hire new employees, these employees are forced to sign paperwork containing ‘non-compete’ clauses, which essentially prevent employees from ever working for competing firms, though the salaries and working conditions may be better at these other companies.

The same applies to IT products. For example, banning Huawei based on national security concerns or preventing AstraZeneca vaccines based on inadequate testing would appear to be bogus arguments, since the real reasons might as well be attributed to squelching competition.

As the saying goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”.

Check out latest DH videos here