ok, but the valid business prop is to be a dependent on anthropic, indistinguishable from just being a second class citizen, since your entire networth can't be extracted from anthropic.

Go nuts with it, but we're at the SciFi dystopia test with: how do mega corporations even form? Well, this is certainly the plausible reality, they just start aggregating random income streams because their product is essentially the only thing that makes the business profitable. Without it, it can't compete.

Hopefully this sounds skeptical, but I don't see how you can have an independent business and be entirely dependent on third party for your operations.

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solyin an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> I don't see how you can have an independent business and be entirely dependent on third party for your operations.

All businesses are reliant on multiple third parties doing their thing in order for the business to be viable. A lot of companies exist at the whims of Amazon or Walmart.

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intrasight an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is no such thing as an "independent company". They are all dependent on the federal government to protect them from the marauding herds.

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bluefirebrand an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I don't see how you can have an independent business and be entirely dependent on third party for your operations

This isn't new though. A ton of software companies are already completely dependent on AWS or Azure or whatever.

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sandworm101 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

>> I don't see how you can have an independent business and be entirely dependent on third party for your operations

Like a lumber mill that buys logs from a logging company? Who subcontracts to individual fallers? Who buy their chainsaws from a chainsaw company, their fuel from a petrochemical company? No business isn't entirely dependent on third parties. That's what it means to exist in a healthy economy.

A "farm-to-table" megacorp that owns everything from the source of every raw material through to the finished product is a nightmare, an entity that needs to be reigned in and broken up. Capitalism is a competitive game, but a game that can never be allowed to end.

	▲	versteegen 37 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		But what about the digital economy? It's interesting that the length of the supply chain for digital goods and knowledge work is nothing like physical goods. Google, Microsoft, and Apple are end to end, don't have to depend on any other software company if they don't want to (until LLMs, anyway, except Google).
	▲	davemp 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The difference is that the lumber mill isn't giving the logging company all the information required to run a lumber mill and the logging company isn't turning around and selling said information to anyone for $200/mo.