Tag: big business

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

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big government, big tech, big business surveillance, censorship

For well over a century, politicians have pushed Big Government/​Big Business partnerships. The policy, indeed, is as old as politics. While we who like free markets often like [some of] the products of today’s biggest businesses, we must recognize that much of what these corporations sell us comes with strings attached — as we’ve found out to our dismay in the corruption of major social media outfits; as proven by the attacks on our speech and to the undermining of free elections.

Before the #TwitterFiles revelations, Michael Rectenwald, author of The Google Archipelago and other books, wrote a commentary that appeared in the pre-​Christmas edition of The Epoch Times: “Who Really Owns Digital Tech?” In less than a thousand words, Rectenwald makes clear how deep governments have been involved in the tech space — particularly the Internet Space.

“Given the evidence of government start-​up funding,” Rectenwald reasons, “we may have to concede the argument that the internet might have developed differently, more slowly, or not at all if the Defense Department hadn’t been involved at the outset. Likely, what we know as the internet would have become a system of private networks” — and in this dispersed-​power system, free speech would not become a major issue, because not as easy a target.

As it is, however, “Twitter has operated as an instrument of the uniparty-​run state, squelching whatever the regime deems ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’” Rectenwald writes, giving us an ominous list of the topics of xinformation:

  • warfare
  • economics
  • pandemics
  • elections
  • climate change catastrophism
  • the Great Reset

There are big gains for … some. Big Biz/​Big Gov partnerships imply gains for both partners: business people gain access to governmental power and favors, and politicians and functionaries gain leverage to mold the citizenry. 

And that is where we have seen the partnership’s worst.

So far.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with DALL-​E2

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Categories
First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

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For well over a century, politicians have pushed Big Government/​Big Business partnerships. The policy, indeed, is as old as politics. While we who like free markets often like [some of] the products of today’s biggest businesses, we must recognize that much of what these corporations sell us comes with strings attached — as we’ve found out to our dismay in the corruption of major social media outfits; as proven by the attacks on our speech and to the undermining of free elections.

Before the #TwitterFiles revelations, Michael Rectenwald, author of The Google Archipelago and other books, wrote a commentary that appeared in the pre-​Christmas edition of The Epoch Times: “Who Really Owns Digital Tech?” In less than a thousand words, Rectenwald makes clear how deep governments have been involved in the tech space — particularly the Internet Space.

“Given the evidence of government start-​up funding,” Rectenwald reasons, “we may have to concede the argument that the internet might have developed differently, more slowly, or not at all if the Defense Department hadn’t been involved at the outset. Likely, what we know as the internet would have become a system of private networks” — and in this dispersed-​power system, free speech would not become a major issue, because not as easy a target.

As it is, however, “Twitter has operated as an instrument of the uniparty-​run state, squelching whatever the regime deems ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’” Rectenwald writes, giving us an ominous list of the topics of xinformation:

  • warfare
  • economics
  • pandemics
  • elections
  • climate change catastrophism
  • the Great Reset

There are big gains for … some. Big Biz/​Big Gov partnerships imply gains for both partners: business people gain access to governmental power and favors, and politicians and functionaries gain leverage to mold the citizenry. 

And that is where we have seen the partnership’s worst.

So far.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-​E2

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

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crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Serving Consumers? Punish!

Amazon, monopoly, trusts, antitrust, trade, free trade, big business, economic myths

New media ballyhooer Douglas Rushkoff made waves this week. Citing an un-​named friend who went hysterical about Amazon​.com’s purchase of Whole Foods, he asserted that such “unease is widespread, and has raised new calls for breaking up Jeff Bezos’s impending monopoly by force.”*

The company has “surely,” he claimed, “reached too far.”

Apparently, serving customers exceptionally well is bad for business.

Yes, he almost totally ignored the pro-​consumer benefits of Amazon. Had to — his case makes no sense when you factor in us consumers. He focused, instead, on Amazon’s success in terms of its recent “online and offline retail sales growth” and its control of 40 percent of cloud storage and streaming services.

He went on to spin a bizarre fantasy about how disruptive bigness is in business. His economically illiterate farrago reminds me of the sad case made against pre-​antitrust Standard Oil, a company which, during the whole time of its growth prior to break-​up, kept on producing more fuel at ever-​decreasing prices.** Broken up because of … fears about how businesses change. And of bigness itself.

As long as consumers are being served, this reaction strikes me as paranoid. When businesses get big (and even near-​monopolistic) and then cease to serve customers, they fail. While serving customers, there is no call for fretting over businesses that move from one success to another  — which is what Rushkoff has the gall to worry about. 

The call for Amazon’s break-​up over-​sells government and necessarily under-​serves consumers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Rushkoff’s piece in Fast Company was the first I heard of such a “call.” Rushkoff is the coiner of the term “media virus” and a sort of populist pusher of market skepticism.

** For the bizarre story of the Standard Oil case, and how it made no economic sense whatsoever, see Dominick T. Armentano, Antitrust: The Case for Repeal (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), p. 41 – 43, and Antitrust and Monopoly (Independent Institute, 1990), pp. 57 – 60.

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Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture

Big Business vs. Big Liberty

“Incumbents Fear Cantor’s Loss Will Fill Tea Party’s Sails” is the headline.

Before a few days ago, GOP establishmentarians felt that they had finally quelled the Tea Party notion that Republicans should be more than 2 to 4 percent different from Democrats on whether the country should suffer a socialist health care industry, endless tsunamis of red ink, etc.

Coca-ColaCertain big businesses also hate Tea-​Party-​style boat-​rocking. In his article “Big Business Vs. Libertarians in the GOP,” David Boaz observes that candidates who plausibly oppose crony capitalism are drawing opposition from firms like Coca Cola, Delta, Georgia Power, and AT&T. These and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce created a “Georgia Coalition for Job Growth” to defeat Republican Charles Gregory and other candidates who are “just too libertarian” for them.

What do these anti-​liberty businesses — in Georgia, Kentucky, California and elsewhere — fear? The lower taxes that real-​deal Tea Party candidates support?

No.

And it isn’t “gay marriage or foreign policy that seems to annoy big and politically connected businesses,” writes Boaz. Who they oppose are representatives who refuse to “bring home the bacon,” who “actually take seriously the limited government ideas that most Republicans only pay lip service to.”

Don’t be shocked to witness big businesses working against limited government, welcoming regulation and subsidy as a way of life.

Why? Because the “mixed economy” approach (whether mercantilist, “progressive,” fascist, what-​have-​you) allows them to rig the system in their favor, usually by discouraging competition.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.