Thursday, October 27, 2016

AT&T and Time Warner: not perfect together


AT&T wants to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion.

This should be an easy call for the regulators: no way this acquisition should be approved.

Let’s just leave aside for a moment the colossal impact this merger would have on the telecommunications and entertainment industries. It would concentrate too much power in these rapidly evolving consumer industries.

We hear so much—including all the wrong stuff—about the compelling benefits of the so-called “free market.” This kind of consolidation is totally destructive to the arguable advantages of the “free market,” and, in fact, this kind of reality confirms the persistent failure of the “free market” to effect anything that’s much good for the average person.

At a fundamental level, this combination creates a manifestly unmanageable organization. Initially, the merged company would have more than 300,000 employees. No group of human beings can successfully and strategically manage an organization with that many human components. Just. Not. Possible.

I won’t even bother to speculate about how many of those 300,000-plus employees would retain their jobs.



Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

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