Chamath @ 01:18:47Inconclusive
governmenttechmarkets
Within roughly ten years of when he originally made that 2019 statement (by around 2029), governments will enact significant legislation or regulatory action against large tech platforms in order to protect political incumbents’ power, thereby undermining the long‑term durability of those platforms’ current earnings trajectories.
the market doesn't believe that their earnings potential is durable, because the market is sure that in the next ten or so years, governments will start to act because they care about their own self-preservation. So if you get very reductionist, at the end of the day, that's what governments care about. And so they're going to legislate to protect their monopoly, which is the ability to have power.View on YouTube
Explanation
As of November 30, 2025, the time window of the prediction (“within ten or so years” from a 2019 statement, i.e., by around 2029) has not yet elapsed, so it cannot be definitively judged.
What we can say so far:
- Governments have indeed begun enacting significant regulations and bringing major enforcement actions against large tech platforms since 2019:
- The EU has passed and begun implementing the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA), which impose strict obligations on large “gatekeeper” platforms such as Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and others, including interoperability, self‑preferencing limits, and content‑moderation and transparency rules.
- The U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have brought major antitrust suits against Google (search and ad tech), Meta (acquisitions and competitive conduct), Amazon (marketplace practices), and others, seeking structural or behavioral remedies.
- The UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act and the Online Safety Act similarly assert strong regulatory control over large online platforms.
- However, these actions are publicly justified mostly on grounds such as competition, consumer protection, privacy, and online safety—not explicitly as measures to “protect incumbents’ power,” even if one can argue that political self‑preservation is an underlying motive. That motive is interpretive and hard to prove empirically.
- Despite regulatory headwinds, the largest U.S. tech platforms’ earnings as of 2025 remain very strong, with companies like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta reporting robust revenues, high margins in key segments, and large market capitalizations. Markets continue, on balance, to price in long‑term earnings durability rather than a sharp collapse attributable to regulation.
Because (1) the deadline (around 2029) has not yet arrived, and (2) it is too early to say whether regulation will ultimately undermine the long‑term durability of these firms’ earnings trajectories in the way implied, the correct status today is “inconclusive (too early)”, not clearly right or wrong.