I can't help thinking that a lot of anticompetitive cases will be won outside the US now that the US is in all-out trade war with the rest of the universe.
tossandthrow · 3h ago
The US has shown absolutely no willingness to carry out antitrust cases the past many years - at a significant harm to a lot of people.
The implied corruption is likely not from these other countries that start making these cases now, but is a persistent feature of US governance.
seydor · 2h ago
i thought it was strategic - to ensure global dominance in tech
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
It is. Some members of congress somehow magically end up buying tech stocks right before they go to the moon or selling them right before tariffs hit.
It's as if they have some insider knowledge or something, and also a lot of skin in the game to protect these monopolies.
pnw · 52m ago
You can buy the Pelosi ETF (NANC) and enjoy the same upside!
1over137 · 6m ago
Too bad the MER is so high at 0.74%.
ProofHouse · 2h ago
Precisely. Trump not smart enough to think about these retaliations. Would in some cases make tarrifs neutral
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 2h ago
Big Tech isn't exactly Trump's base. Trump collects wins[1] for his base at the expense of his non-supporters. Not sure how this makes Trump "not smart".
1 - Regardless of what you think of tariffs, his base largely considers them wins.
amanaplanacanal · 47m ago
They are gonna win so much they'll be completely indigent before it's over.
ljlolel · 2h ago
Because he lives in a country. Going to war with half the people around you makes the whole country much poorer.
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 2h ago
Works both ways.
ChocolateGod · 3h ago
You're also about to see a lot of the 'Brussels effect' due to the EUs DMA.
I strongly doubt that US-Australia trade relationships played any role in the judges decision on this case (and, of course, everything else in this case occurred before Trump was even re-elected). Judges aren't in a role where they are negotiating, or particularly care about, international trade at all. Judges are intentionally separated from the political wing of the state in just about every western democracy.
hopelite · 1h ago
In some ways you are probably right, however do not discount the fact that America’s relative weakness has opened up avenues for this type of action that otherwise would have likely not happened out of internal pressure due to concerns about that relationship, external pressure on the government to scuttle these kinds of efforts, and/or general lack of alternatives to the American market.
Especially with the rise and seeming power of BRICS there is surely a sense that the pressure is a bit off from the USA, America will be unwilling to add on to pressure against Australia that is close to core BRICS, etc.
Do not discount the rising awareness of the real weakness the “American” empire finds itself in suddenly.
xbmcuser · 2h ago
Lol at you believing courts or judges don't follow their countries dictates. Most of the time such cases would be routed to a judge that will do what is asked without making any noise.
xbmcuser · 1h ago
Where I come from, there is no need to route cases. I used to believe in Western justice systems, but as I've grown older, I've come to realize that much of the corruption money from Asia, Africa, and South America is parked in these same Western countries. Many of the corrupt officials who have fled their home countries are now living in these same Western countries, and in many cases, their families have been granted citizenship. The behavior of the ruling elite in Western countries tells me all I need to know about their justice systems. It seems that a large portion of the population has willingly, maybe unknowingly, put on blinders to their own countries' systems and behaviors.
whimsicalism · 1h ago
maybe wherever you are from that’s true, but not really in the developed anglosphere
shagmin · 1h ago
This stuff is true in the US to some extent.
whimsicalism · 57m ago
no it's not, but i get that it's "in" to hate on the US political structure. essentially all federal cases are randomly assigned
camdroidw · 1h ago
Judiciary and law enforcement are some of the most corrupt people
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 3h ago
I think they would have been won regardless because the US has lacked the balls to enforce their own antitrust laws.
benoau · 3h ago
The DOJ is literally suing Apple for many of the same reasons right now -
That was the ‘old’ DOJ, Tim Apple was in the Oval Office a few days ago to pay tribute in gold… it got them exemptions from tariffs and I wouldn’t be surprised if the DOJ dropped this case soon.
Maybe, but if Trump wanted this to go away he's had a good 7 months to make that happen and he got a million dollars cash gift for his inauguration, certainly worth more than a gold bar trophy stand. This antitrust stems from a 2019/2020 congressional investigation into "Big Tech" that occurred during his first term too.
That investigation in 2019/2020 came from the Democrat-majority House Judiciary - not from the DOJ. The DOJ was likely investigating in the background but nothing of public substance actually happened until 2024 when they filed suit. And looking at the docket now, every one of the DOJ attorneys who had filed that initial suit in 2024 have left the DOJ.
Several states joined the suit so things very well may continue but the stench of corruption is pretty thick on everything the current DOJ touches.
saubeidl · 3h ago
The corruption is so out in the open, it's ridiculous.
It's so unsavory to see Tim Cook grovel like that. No backbone at all, what a pitiful human.
scottyah · 3h ago
Grovel? I thought it was making fun of the POTUS. What made it even funnier was that it'd go right over DT's head. Excellent messaging- pleases the wanna be monarch, shows investors that he's willing to work with any country's heads to ensure the success of Apple, and makes a mockery of the office with such a gaudy display.
mikeyouse · 2h ago
> Cook presented Trump with an engraved piece of glass designed by a former Marine Corps corporal who works at Apple. The base of the glass plaque was made of 24 karat gold, Cook said, as he set it up on the Resolute Desk in front of Trump. “You’ve been a great advocate for American innovation and manufacturing,” Cook told Trump. Apple, Cook said, is “going to keep making investments right here in America and we’re going to keep hiring in America.”
jen20 · 2h ago
And yet, the actual publicized investment plans are barely any different from what they were under Biden and likely would have been under Harris.
Nevermark · 2h ago
> the actual publicized investment plans are barely any different
On the contrary.
> The base of the glass plaque was made of 24 karat gold
My recollection, which may be way off, is Biden preferred fine grade silver dinner ware and free Uber passes...
It is amazing how quickly centralized power can not just become deeply and openly corrupt, but operate free of credible challenge. The centralization in this case being years of tightened coordination within one party, acting on all three branches. The internal leverage created by such processes provides a natural habitat for final consolidation by an opportunistic individual.
And suddenly the standards of governance are unrecognizable. The unsurprising result of successfully centralized power.
It has long occurred to me that by not having limits on party power (seat limits? term limits? Cross state limits? Cross branch limits?), the US Constitution left a huge power coordination loop hole, free of checks and balances.
That loophole holds up an eternal carrot of legal one party rule. Temporary one party rule in theory, but the constant drive for that grinds down bipartisanship and respect for any shared power.
No one party should ever have a dominant majority of congress, much less dominate all three branches.
At that point, in-party incentives overwhelmingly push party solidarity above any other issue.
(Another great side effect of party seat/term limits would be the breakup up of the party duopoly which even when "working" lowered the bar for each party to the floor, i.e. neither party needed to do much but not be the latest disappointing incumbent. And a duopoly is incapable of providing choices reflecting a complex reality. They are reduced to competing via team identification/shibboleths.
whimsicalism · 1h ago
Compared to Europe, the US has significantly more neutral enforcement of laws for domestic prize jewels. The EU, by contrast, barely enforces its own provisions (such as anti-bribery law) against shining European stars.
drdec · 1h ago
As a US citizen I am curious to hear examples of the EU holding back enforcement. That's not the sort of thing that would get reported here.
realusername · 1h ago
I don't know how you got to that conclusion, every single court case against a US giant is waived in the US.
See Boeing which got pardoned recently as another example.
While not perfect, the justice system seems usually more neutral in most EU countries.
TheRealPomax · 3h ago
looks at all the cases that never happened even well before Trump got elected
You should probably be thinking that the only places they can be won is outside the US.
tiahura · 3h ago
The administration has indicated that the EU shakedown efforts are going to be addressed. It's reasonable to assume that EU crown jewels like LVMH are going to be subject to a reciprocal shakedown.
gausswho · 2h ago
Shakedown is their propaganda. What it actually is is proper market stewardship. The US now threatens other sovereignties to drop to its dysfunctional levels just so its own corporate zombies can continue trawling the world.
seydor · 2h ago
The administration has a particular affinity for luxuries and shiny objects. I dont think that's going to happen
Winsaucerer · 3h ago
I heard they are targeting Andromeda with the next round of tariffs.
ratelimitsteve · 3h ago
as long as they leave Squornshellous Zeta alone until I get my mattress
whimsicalism · 1h ago
Speaks a lot to the legal process outside the US if that is true..
barbazoo · 1h ago
I imagine much of not going after big tech was probably politics and the unwillingness to offend a major geopolitical and trading partner.
9dev · 3h ago
It warms my heart to think about how much Thiel must hate to read this.
bootsmann · 2h ago
Well there are still quite some og tech monopolies left, but it does seem like the tide is starting to turn.
Good. Maybe if everywhere else makes them do things right, they'll just give up and not region-lock the good stuff. Apple.
burnte · 1h ago
Probably not. Large corps are willing to bear the costs of maintaining a lot of control over customers just to keep them from being exposed to a competitor. If they ever open it up, it'll be due to laws, not change of heart on Apple's part.
stego-tech · 3h ago
> “Well son, I think I speak for your mother and I when I say, UH DUHHHHHHH.”
Man, it just doesn’t work outside GIF form, but the point is the same. Anyone with two brain cells could understand how vertical monopolies are still monopolies, and the walled gardens created by Big Tech are just company towns customers pay into and can’t leave without enormous disruption. All of that came through rubber-stamped M&As that depleted the market of competition and, now that ZIRP is over and AI is riding high, depleted the market of well-paying jobs in the process.
Competition is efficient, in that it creates more jobs and more opportunities for money to flow between customers and businesses. When your goal is to have all the money, though, competition is bad and must be destroyed.
At least with tech we can force change through code instead of armed law enforcement like monopolies of old.
cubefox · 3h ago
> Epic may have lost its antitrust battle against Apple in the U.S., but it won its lawsuit against Google, which was found to have built an illegal monopoly in the Android market.
Amazing. You can install third-party app stores on Android, just not via Google's own Play Store. Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.
The iOS case is far more egregious. It seems the US courts are heavily biased in favor of Apple.
GeekyBear · 2h ago
Walled gardens are not illegal under existing law. You have to change the law before walled gardens become illegal, as the EU did with the DSA.
Nintendo's various platforms, Microsoft's XBox, and Sony's PlayStation have been perfectly legal walled gardens for decades.
However, claiming to introduce an open platform and then using anticompetitive means to retain control of that "open" platform is plainly illegal under existing law, as Google found with Android and Microsoft found with Windows.
cubefox · 2h ago
First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim". Moreover, what you are suggesting is that it is okay to do something bad if you say it's bad, but not to do something slightly bad if you say it's good. That's absurd. What Apple is doing with iOS is objectively much worse than what Google is doing with Android, irrespective of any alleged "claims".
GeekyBear · 2h ago
> First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim".
They explicitly made the claim that Android was open on many occasions.
Remember when a major Android selling point was that Android was "open source" before they started moving all the updated versions of the developer APIs into the Play Store?
Apple is what, less than 20% of phone sales? So it's hard to see how that constitutes a monopoly. And if banning 3rd party apps is enough for a lawsuit, then why doesn't that apply to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for their game consoles? Why doesn't it apply to Amazon's Fire tablets, or Kindles, or Huawei phones, or Oculus headsets? All of those devices have similar restrictions.
Unless customers are coerced or misled, or returns/refunds are difficult, I don't see the need for government intervention. Apple's software restrictions hurt the iPhone's market share. The same goes for charging high fees for app purchases. Customers and developers can (and often do) choose other devices for being less restrictive about what software can be run on them. If an informed adult chooses a locked down platform because they prioritize other features, why should the government stop them?
I can see an argument for requiring labeling (similar to warnings on cigarettes), but a total ban seems like overreach.
SomeHacker44 · 57m ago
I did some... Googling.... Anyway, it seems many sites estimate iOS as about 57% of the US market, not 20%.
> Customers and developers can (and often do) choose other devices for being less restrictive about what software can be run on them
Well no, there's only two operating system with very similar policies and pricing. If there's any competition there, it's not obvious where.
The only pricing change ever made was made as a reaction of an antitrust lawsuit... Just that fact alone should be enough to raise some eyebrows.
Workaccount2 · 2h ago
The craziest part of this is:
Apple wasn't a monopoly because they didn't share their platform with anyone
The judge in the Google case said that Android couldn't be compared to iOS because iOS is only available to Apple products.
So while I can kind of squint and see this, the obvious signal the court is sending is
"If you don't want to be monopolistic, don't open your platform to anyone".
amelius · 2h ago
Huh, third party developers are what made iOS big ...
Workaccount2 · 2h ago
Hardware platform.
Which is even stranger because Samsung, by far the largest Android phone distributor, ships their phones with the galaxy app store on them.
bootsmann · 2h ago
People complain about it here often, but the EU setting clear rules in the DMA is probably a significantly better way to ensure a level playing field instead of relying on judges and agencies to figure it out. Apple winning the case while Google lost theirs seems increasingly arbitrary.
ZekeSulastin · 2h ago
Wasn’t the legal difference that Apple never said you could whereas Google did then added roadblocks?
benoau · 3h ago
US courts haven't really begun dismantling this status quo, but there's quite a few things going on that challenge it:
Is any of these realistically expected to result in the possibility of installing third-party apps and app stores, similar to Android?
benoau · 3h ago
All of them challenge Apple having exclusive app distribution, except the Epic injunction and the class action accusing Apple of doing a shit job.
LoganDark · 2h ago
> Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.
Apple did malicious compliance and only technically complied with the requirements in a specifically geo-restricted area (the EU) without allowing anyone else to benefit. (Although I think it was later ruled that they didn't actually manage to comply thanks to all the malice.)
immibis · 1h ago
AFAIK it was on the basis that Google pretends to be an open ecosystem, while Apple is pretty upfront about the fact they control everything you do with your device.
betaby · 3h ago
What that ruling means in practice? 30% fee will be reduced?
elAhmo · 3h ago
Most likely nothing
jmyeet · 3h ago
Amazon already handles purchases on iOS and Android via their own payments infrastructure for physical good. Apple and Google carve out a weird exception for "digital" goods so you can't, for example, buy Kindle books directly on an app. You get directed to a website.
There is absolutely no reason sufficiently large companies can't handle their own payment infrastructure. You should be able to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu or Disney+ without paying the Apple Tax.
A 30% cut is somewhat defensible for small companies that have no payments infrastructure or simply don't want to manage that. There are all sorts of compliance issues. There's something to be said for a seamless user experience.
But 30% for a large company becomes a huge incentive for large companies to attack you in the courts (as Epic did or prodding Attorneys-General to file suit) or by lobbying governments.
I've consistently said that courts and/or governments will end up dismantling the app store monopolies because of the payment monopoly and it'll be far, far better for Apple and Google in the long term if that happens on their terms, not the terms set by courts and governments.
Qualify certain providers to handle their own payments and take 0-5% to pay for things like malware scanning, distribution, etc and you've addressed the strongest monopoly argument (ie payments) and reduced the financial incentive for competitors to attack you.
Attacking you could even risk your qualified payments partner status and you could lose that privileged position. It's such an easy win.
kevingadd · 4h ago
> In a judgment that spanned 2000 pages, Australian Federal Court Justice Jonathan Beach, ruled that Apple had a substantial degree of market power. The Judge said both Apple and Google had breached Section 46 of Australia’s Competition Act. The companies had abused their market power to stifle the competition. But, it wasn't all in favor of Epic Games. Beach rejected the claim that Apple and Google had breached consumer law, he also said that the companies had not engaged in unconscionable conduct.
2000 pages! I can see why the case took something like 5 years.
It sounds like a mixed ruling so Epic didn't get everything they wanted here, but if they're able to launch the Epic Games Store on iOS in Australia that's a pretty big win by itself.
lucianbr · 3h ago
While courts take years and write multiple volumes to justify any kind of measure at all, the corporations move fast and keep changing the way they extract value from society.
I'm not sure the system will ever catch up this way.
Plus, if a regular citizen without deep pockets breaks the law, somehow it never takes years and thousands of pages to convict them. I can easily believe it's not about the complexities of the case, but the depth of the pockets.
If it really was "just a complex situation", you would expect equal percentages of simple and complicated cases for regular joes and huge corporations, no?
joshuacc · 3h ago
> If it really was "just a complex situation", you would expect equal percentages of simple and complicated cases for regular joes and huge corporations, no?
Obviously not. Regular joes almost always have relatively simple situations relative to multinational corporations, otherwise they wouldn't be regular joes.
abtinf · 3h ago
The more irrational the law, the more words must be said about it.
Same for religious philosophies.
IIAOPSW · 3h ago
If length of ones writing is a measure of irrationality, everyone who's ever written a thesis must be absolutely unhinged.
add-sub-mul-div · 3h ago
They might be the first to agree with you.
bigyabai · 3h ago
Not really? The court likes having as much salient evidence as it can get.
Imustaskforhelp · 2h ago
ah yes australia court finds that every 60 seconds, a minute passes!
How amazing!
/satire of course
The implied corruption is likely not from these other countries that start making these cases now, but is a persistent feature of US governance.
It's as if they have some insider knowledge or something, and also a lot of skin in the game to protect these monopolies.
1 - Regardless of what you think of tariffs, his base largely considers them wins.
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en
Especially with the rise and seeming power of BRICS there is surely a sense that the pressure is a bit off from the USA, America will be unwilling to add on to pressure against Australia that is close to core BRICS, etc.
Do not discount the rising awareness of the real weakness the “American” empire finds itself in suddenly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2024)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https%3A...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/06/tech/congress-big-tech-an...
Several states joined the suit so things very well may continue but the stench of corruption is pretty thick on everything the current DOJ touches.
It's so unsavory to see Tim Cook grovel like that. No backbone at all, what a pitiful human.
On the contrary.
> The base of the glass plaque was made of 24 karat gold
My recollection, which may be way off, is Biden preferred fine grade silver dinner ware and free Uber passes...
It is amazing how quickly centralized power can not just become deeply and openly corrupt, but operate free of credible challenge. The centralization in this case being years of tightened coordination within one party, acting on all three branches. The internal leverage created by such processes provides a natural habitat for final consolidation by an opportunistic individual.
And suddenly the standards of governance are unrecognizable. The unsurprising result of successfully centralized power.
It has long occurred to me that by not having limits on party power (seat limits? term limits? Cross state limits? Cross branch limits?), the US Constitution left a huge power coordination loop hole, free of checks and balances.
That loophole holds up an eternal carrot of legal one party rule. Temporary one party rule in theory, but the constant drive for that grinds down bipartisanship and respect for any shared power.
No one party should ever have a dominant majority of congress, much less dominate all three branches.
At that point, in-party incentives overwhelmingly push party solidarity above any other issue.
(Another great side effect of party seat/term limits would be the breakup up of the party duopoly which even when "working" lowered the bar for each party to the floor, i.e. neither party needed to do much but not be the latest disappointing incumbent. And a duopoly is incapable of providing choices reflecting a complex reality. They are reduced to competing via team identification/shibboleths.
See Boeing which got pardoned recently as another example.
While not perfect, the justice system seems usually more neutral in most EU countries.
You should probably be thinking that the only places they can be won is outside the US.
Per: https://www.comcourts.gov.au/file/Federal/P/NSD1236/2020/act...
Man, it just doesn’t work outside GIF form, but the point is the same. Anyone with two brain cells could understand how vertical monopolies are still monopolies, and the walled gardens created by Big Tech are just company towns customers pay into and can’t leave without enormous disruption. All of that came through rubber-stamped M&As that depleted the market of competition and, now that ZIRP is over and AI is riding high, depleted the market of well-paying jobs in the process.
Competition is efficient, in that it creates more jobs and more opportunities for money to flow between customers and businesses. When your goal is to have all the money, though, competition is bad and must be destroyed.
At least with tech we can force change through code instead of armed law enforcement like monopolies of old.
Amazing. You can install third-party app stores on Android, just not via Google's own Play Store. Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.
The iOS case is far more egregious. It seems the US courts are heavily biased in favor of Apple.
Nintendo's various platforms, Microsoft's XBox, and Sony's PlayStation have been perfectly legal walled gardens for decades.
However, claiming to introduce an open platform and then using anticompetitive means to retain control of that "open" platform is plainly illegal under existing law, as Google found with Android and Microsoft found with Windows.
They explicitly made the claim that Android was open on many occasions.
Remember when a major Android selling point was that Android was "open source" before they started moving all the updated versions of the developer APIs into the Play Store?
https://medium.com/@coopossum/how-open-source-is-android-8d1...
Unless customers are coerced or misled, or returns/refunds are difficult, I don't see the need for government intervention. Apple's software restrictions hurt the iPhone's market share. The same goes for charging high fees for app purchases. Customers and developers can (and often do) choose other devices for being less restrictive about what software can be run on them. If an informed adult chooses a locked down platform because they prioritize other features, why should the government stop them?
I can see an argument for requiring labeling (similar to warnings on cigarettes), but a total ban seems like overreach.
Example: https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics
Well no, there's only two operating system with very similar policies and pricing. If there's any competition there, it's not obvious where.
The only pricing change ever made was made as a reaction of an antitrust lawsuit... Just that fact alone should be enough to raise some eyebrows.
Apple wasn't a monopoly because they didn't share their platform with anyone
The judge in the Google case said that Android couldn't be compared to iOS because iOS is only available to Apple products.
So while I can kind of squint and see this, the obvious signal the court is sending is
"If you don't want to be monopolistic, don't open your platform to anyone".
Which is even stranger because Samsung, by far the largest Android phone distributor, ships their phones with the galaxy app store on them.
- DOJ antitrust case going to trial soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2024)
- 2021 Epic injunction that Apple defied followed by 2025 Epic injunction that recently forced Apple to allow links to competing payment options: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/01/apple_epic_lies_possi...
- Open Markets Act from 2020 has some new life: https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/06/25/bipartisan-open-a...
- App Store Freedom Act from 2025: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3209...
- 2011 class action on excessive fees going to trial next year: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4178894/in-re-apple-iph...
- 2025 class action on excessive fees: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70356851/korean-publish...
- 2025 class action for monopolizing app distribution: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gkvlagedmpb/...
- 2025 class action for doing a shit job of monopolizing app distribution: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70526762/shin-v-apple-i...
Apple did malicious compliance and only technically complied with the requirements in a specifically geo-restricted area (the EU) without allowing anyone else to benefit. (Although I think it was later ruled that they didn't actually manage to comply thanks to all the malice.)
There is absolutely no reason sufficiently large companies can't handle their own payment infrastructure. You should be able to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu or Disney+ without paying the Apple Tax.
A 30% cut is somewhat defensible for small companies that have no payments infrastructure or simply don't want to manage that. There are all sorts of compliance issues. There's something to be said for a seamless user experience.
But 30% for a large company becomes a huge incentive for large companies to attack you in the courts (as Epic did or prodding Attorneys-General to file suit) or by lobbying governments.
I've consistently said that courts and/or governments will end up dismantling the app store monopolies because of the payment monopoly and it'll be far, far better for Apple and Google in the long term if that happens on their terms, not the terms set by courts and governments.
Qualify certain providers to handle their own payments and take 0-5% to pay for things like malware scanning, distribution, etc and you've addressed the strongest monopoly argument (ie payments) and reduced the financial incentive for competitors to attack you.
Attacking you could even risk your qualified payments partner status and you could lose that privileged position. It's such an easy win.
2000 pages! I can see why the case took something like 5 years.
It sounds like a mixed ruling so Epic didn't get everything they wanted here, but if they're able to launch the Epic Games Store on iOS in Australia that's a pretty big win by itself.
I'm not sure the system will ever catch up this way.
Plus, if a regular citizen without deep pockets breaks the law, somehow it never takes years and thousands of pages to convict them. I can easily believe it's not about the complexities of the case, but the depth of the pockets.
If it really was "just a complex situation", you would expect equal percentages of simple and complicated cases for regular joes and huge corporations, no?
Obviously not. Regular joes almost always have relatively simple situations relative to multinational corporations, otherwise they wouldn't be regular joes.
Same for religious philosophies.