Why big left-leaning companies don't mind government regulation

Jeff Zuckerberg overtly welcomes Leviathan's involvement in his organization's activities:

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is under fire, so he’s running behind the Big Government barricade that has sheltered Big Businesses for decades.

“The question,” the Facebook CEO said in an interview with Wired this week, “isn’t 'Should there be regulation or shouldn’t there be?' It’s, 'How do you do it?'”

No, that's the reverse of the truth. The core question remains whether or not there should be regulation. Business embracing government is nothing new. We’ve seen this retreat to regulation before countless times, and the results aren’t pretty.

He knows Facebook is already positioned to throw resources at whatever government requires of Facebook that any other social-media company is going to be hard-pressed to amass:

 . . .what regulations is Zuckerberg thinking about?

He suggested that “companies have a responsibility to use [artificial intelligence] tools to kind of self-regulate content ...” That is, maybe social media platforms should be forced to have advanced software to detect and block the posting of “hate speech.” (That, of course, raises the specter — actually, it's already a reality — of left-liberal dominated tech companies deciding what news and opinion they will allow customers to read).
This wouldn’t be too hard for Facebook, Zuckerberg explained. “We’re a successful enough company that we can employ 15,000 people to work on security ...”

What about smaller companies that don’t have that sort of staff, or can’t afford artificial intelligence technology? Under Zuckerberg’s regulation, they’d be crushed.
This is the beauty of the retreat to regulation. Washington and most of the media applaud your embrace of it as a sign of “taking responsibility.” Meanwhile, you’re just strengthening your hold on your market and making it less competitive and therefore poorer at serving customers.

Philip Morris supported former President Barack Obama’s tobacco regulation. Mattel supported federal regulation on toy manufacturing. Goldman Sachs said of Dodd-Frank, “We will be among the biggest beneficiaries of reform.” H&R Block is still fighting for federal regulation on tax preparers.

We could go on for an entire editorial, but the point is this: When a big business starts helping build regulatory barricades, we shouldn’t applaud.
Regulation, by raising costs, acts as a barrier to entry. It rewards those who, like Microsoft and Goldman Sachs today, have the best lobbyists and the most access to power. In so doing, it protects monopolies and oligopolies.

The single biggest problem with Facebook, from a consumer perspective, is its sheer market power. Users who want more privacy don’t have anywhere else to go. Regulations that keep out competitors and thus cement Facebook’s position would be counterproductive.

Zuckerberg surely knows this. He remembers former titans of tech, such as Netscape and MySpace. He knows how fickle the market is. So, he is seeking safety today, behind the barricade of big government. 

When talking about corporate America's statist and collectivist leanings, I often use the example of diesel-engine giant Cummins, due to my living in the city where it's headquartered. I remember, during the Most Equal Comrade's time of gripping post-America by the throat, then-CEO Tim Solso standing behind the MEC at a Rose Garden signing ceremony for stricter fuel-emission standards. The smile on Solso's face, conveying a mindset of "Yes, Dear Leader, tell us more about how to make our products" was hurl-inducing indeed.

I suppose the degree to which any of these corporate leaders really swallow their own self-congratulatory hooey about making the world cleaner or more fair or whatever varies from on to the next, but you can be damn sure they're all aware that it elbows the little pipsqueak contenders our of their markets.