Big Tech; Big Mafia By Brian Simpson

     I like the following article that compares big Tech to organised crime. Indeed, the metaphor can be extended to cover much of modernity, where not only does government blend into crime syndicates, with corrupt cops, politicians and everyone in between, but entire institutions, such as the universities reek of criminality, treason, degeneracy, you name it. Corruption and rottenness is  everywhere, a universal sewer flowing throughout the land, which is what we would expect in a world undergoing decomposition:
  http://archive.is/oxMtl

“On Wednesday, the House's top antitrust subcommittee grilled big-tech CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos, who appeared via videoconferencing software. Some people called it tech's "Big Tobacco moment" while others compared it with past antitrust investigations of Microsoft and AT&T. To me, the hearing - and the ongoing investigations - conjured another set of hearings from 70 years ago: the probe into mob activity led by Sen. Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn. Those hearings led to a wave of enforcement, new laws and eventually, in 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. What we learned at Wednesday's hearing suggests the behavior of Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon calls for a comparably comprehensive and forceful response. (Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.) There are more than a few similarities between the organized crime and these four companies. Like the Mafia, the threats that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google pose to American democracy flow from the power they have over key services (from email to social media to music and film), the way they use dominance in one area to achieve dominance in others and their ability to use fear to stop challenges to their control. Like the Mafia, they are a resilient, surveillance-based shadow government. So citizens are dual subjects - of the country, and of the flawed online markets created by these companies. Like the mob, big tech has friends in very high places. Likewise, big tech is an oligarchy with several bosses, who compete in some territories but generally divide power among themselves, without consulting elected officials. Obviously, I am not saying Facebook and Google murder and kneecap their opponents, or burn down businesses that refuse to play by their rules; I am not equating tech companies with the mob. While just about every Mafia enterprise was illegal, big tech operates in a legal gray area; these companies argue that they have broken no laws. They evade taxes using legal loopholes, not as the mob does by simply refusing to report income. Still, the analogy is useful, because it helps us think about a certain kind of oligarchic governing power that exists alongside - is interwoven with - responsive democratic systems. It helps us to think through what an effective governmental response to systemic interference with, dominance of, and bullying of businesses with less power might look like. The hearing, compressed into one afternoon with all the CEOs present at one time, was not ideal, but arguably the best Congress could get without getting dragged into an extended legal fight over subpoenas. In one of the funnier moments, Bezos said, "I don't want to be sitting here," and then trailed off, revealing a basic truth.”

     It would have been nice if Trump had at least put Big Tech in its place, but now it censors him, and in November, destroys him putting a senile old fool on the throne, to be replaced by a communist diverse woman. It is how the West sinks, because good men have done nothing for too many generations, seeking consumer comforts. God though made man to be a warrior, to struggle and overcome, no merely a machine just for digesting fine food and wine. After the collapse, the remnant will relearn basic lessons of nature.

 

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Thursday, 28 March 2024

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