Fall 2021
Dear Friends and Family,
A seeming alliance between Big Tech and Big Government has enabled Big Tech to act tyrannically in a number of ways, many of which have already been highlighted in this series. Segment 6 provides some additional examples, but more importantly provides some insight as to how the U.S. government has aided and abetted this behavior on the part of Big Tech.
My Takeaways:
Big Government/Big Tech Alliance aspects:
Next: Segment 6 concludes the section on Big Tech. Next we move to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Segment 7 focuses on some of the incredible opportunities that AI could provide society in the future. Some ink is also devoted to some of the disruption it could pose to society.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
A seeming alliance between Big Tech and Big Government has enabled Big Tech to act tyrannically in a number of ways, many of which have already been highlighted in this series. Segment 6 provides some additional examples, but more importantly provides some insight as to how the U.S. government has aided and abetted this behavior on the part of Big Tech.
My Takeaways:
Big Government/Big Tech Alliance aspects:
- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has enabled Big Tech to control the information flow throughout the country with taking little if any responsibility for its content or accuracy. How?
- Section 230 allows Big Tech to take down content for no reason with no recourse available to the person or entity who posted the content on the platform.
- Section 230 permits Big Tech to post illegal or false information on their platforms with no recourse being available.
- Section 230 enables Big Tech to run roughshod and bully consumers and small businesses who depend on them. Yet, there is no recourse available.
- Net, users have no control whatsoever concerning Big Tech’s actions.
- The Digital-Millennium Act protects Big Tech from being prosecuted for any copyright infringements.
- Big Tech has the second largest lobbying group in the U.S. only exceeded by Pharma. The lobbyists are very active and quite successful in getting what Big Tech wants from the government.
- As monopolies they pay little attention to their customers, as they don’t need to.
- As globalists they are not particularly committed to the United States
- There are multiple ways to challenge the tyranny and takeback power from Big Tech, which is outlined in the excerpts, but to date our government has not seen fit to do so.
Next: Segment 6 concludes the section on Big Tech. Next we move to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Segment 7 focuses on some of the incredible opportunities that AI could provide society in the future. Some ink is also devoted to some of the disruption it could pose to society.
Happy Learning,
Harley
BIG TECH & AI – SEGMENT 6
CHALLENGING THE TYRANNY OF BIG TECH – EXCERPTS
AN ALLIANCE OF BIG TECH AND BIG GOVERNMENT:
Section 230: Big Tech was (and is) desperate to protect its special relationship, its sweetheart deals with Big Government. Big Tech has not grown big on its own, and the tech barons know it. Perhaps the most revealing, Big Tech is desperately afraid of public criticism, of someone taking a public stand. Big Tech’s reactions have convinced me not only was I on the right track in criticizing the special treatment it received, but the alliance of Big Tech and Big Government must be broken. To challenge the Big Tech corporate aristocracy, we must challenge the political choices that brought it to power.
In Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (adopted in 1996), Congress provided that an internet company that merely edits some content does not thereby become a “publisher.” It is liable only for the content it edits or develops. At Big Tech’s behest, the courts soon changed the entire framework. They dramatically narrowed what behavior counted as publishing, granted internet companies broad discretion to make editorial decisions, including altering content, without becoming liable for the content they altered. Section 230 had been completely rewritten. Further, under the new statute, tech companies could take down content without any show of good faith or fair dealing and could display content they knew to be illegal – and no one could challenge any of it in court. No other media concerns – no newspaper, no television network, no entertainment or film company – enjoyed this kind of immunity.
The value of this redrafted statute was very nearly incalculable. Behind the shield of Section 230, Google and Facebook and Amazon proceeded to build the modern digital platform, that amalgam of shared user content, for-profit advertising, product sales, and journalism all in one place. Thanks to Section 230, tech could produce nothing and control everything. Big Tech would now have all the power to control information flow with none of the responsibility that the common law would demand of any corporate actor in a similar role of influence in the physical world. Section 230 gave Big Tech the means to constrict the global flow of information. Big Tech’s handouts from Big Government made the tech class what it is.
Source: The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley (2021)
Of the special perks that America’s “public servants” have given to Silicon Valley one that stands out in particular is a law that enabled Big Tech companies to ride roughshod over the rights of the consumer and small businesses that depend on them. It is called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It is the impregnable wall that prevents the tech giants from suffering any legal repercussion for trampling of the rights of their users. Section 230 is a censorship law – the perverse “right” that tech companies claim for themselves under Section 230, and it’s a monstrously unfair. Users have no control whatsoever. All the power is in the hands of the tech companies. The internet has been seized by a handful of all-powerful tech lords who now determine whose voices are heard in the digital public square, whose causes are suppressed and whose are promoted, and whose businesses thrive and fail. Silicon Valley will even determine who wins elections and who loses them. This cannot continue – and only a massive shout from the citizens of America will make Washington take action.
Source: #Deleted by Allum Bokhari
The root cause of Big Tech’s power and abuse goes back to the protection granted it by Congress in 1996 under Section 230. A handful of Big Tech companies are now controlling the flow of most information in free society, and they are doing so aided and abetted by government policy.
Source: American Marxism by Mark R. Levin (2021)
Copyright Law: Google, Facebook, and other large platform players were the chief beneficiaries of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which protected online service providers from being prosecuted over copyright infringement. The law essentially allowed platforms to bully content creators – anybody putting things online really – into giving up their work for free if they wanted it to be searchable on the biggest platforms, while at the same time accepting the fact that the platforms would be the ones to benefit most from the content, monetarily, in exponential measure. Silicon Valley wanted everyone to believe that the information should be free, and that the value created by others – be it books, music, or any other type of content – was a commodity that could be mined on the cheap.
Eventually, under pressure from some 143 groups, both non-profit and private sector, the U.S. Department of Justice took on the issue, claiming it had granted Google too many anticompetitive rights. The judge ruled in Google’s favor, on the basis that the project offered “significant public benefits.” That Google would now have a monopoly on the digital sale of some thirty thousand books was deemed less important. Google, Facebook, and others tried to use some of the same tactics in Europe in 2019, in advance of an EU decision around new copyright rules that will now force platform companies to take more responsibility for removing unauthorized copyright content, and/or pay publishers and other content creators for its usage (albeit with a relatively small fee). The directive passed the European Parliament by a wide margin.
Regulation: Most Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans have been bought out by Big Tech’s extensive lobbying. Silicon Valley is onto a good thing, and, naturally enough, they want to keep it going – which is why they’ve been silently upping their lobbying presence in Washington, both overtly and covertly. Big Tech is now the second largest lobbying group in our nation’s capital, right behind Pharma, with Google’s parent company Alphabet frequently weighing in as the single largest individual corporate lobbyist in Washington.
Source: Don’t Be Evil by Rana Foroohar (2021).
Insider Influence: The investigative team of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Competition concluded Google’s “conduct has resulted – and will result—in real harm to the consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets.” The staff report found Google had illegally stolen content from rival platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and even Amazon to improve its own services. A week after FTC investigators began issuing subpoenas for documents related to the case, Google hires twelve new lobbying firms. And then Google really got down to business. The company tapped every connection, called in every favor, and activated every ounce of influence it possessed in every corner it could reach. And its reach was impressive. In the day following the FTC investigative report, Google representatives sat down repeatedly with FTC officials to try and clear up this unfortunate misunderstanding. And they did … at the White House. Google was the second-largest source of corporate contributions to President Obama’s 2012 campaign. Within a few weeks, it was a done deal. In January 2013, the FTC commissioners voted unanimously to shut down the Google investigation. No suit. No charges.
Source: The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley
Mafia, or Just Government? When the interests of government and business are fused in the interest of surveillance, what becomes of the individual who wants to speak her mind freely, think out loud, wander without being tracked, investigate the world without fearing private or public retaliations? The freedom of that person is a threat to the power of both Google and the formal government and both benefit from taking that freedom away. This new form of government shares some features of constitutional monarchism – centralized control bound by norms set by a leader. But unlike monarchism, it gives controlling power to multiple monopolists, not one individual, and the companies’ constitutions are constantly subject to change.
Mark Zuckerberg offers a vision of a strong leader, a centralized economy, and tools that allow for quick centralized decision making under a unified ideology. Unlike the fascism of the 1930s, however, Facebook’s fascism is not state based, and it is not unitary. The modern monopolists may not be allied with Hitler of Mussolini, but there are close parallels between how the fascists defended their economic model and how the modern monopolists do. The Mafia may be the closest analogue to these tech monopolies, because, like the Mafia, corporate monopolists coexist with democratic forms of government, so citizens are dual subjects: of the country, and of one of many monopoly bosses. Like the Mafia, big tech companies make sure they have friends in high places. Unlike democracy, or monarchism, this form of mafia-corporate governance has no serious intellectual pedigree. Unlike democratic models of government, there is no implied moral obligation of these companies to look out for the welfare of their subjects. Local journalism now lies in the hands of Zuckerberg and Pichai (CEO of Google) who have shown no interest in supporting independent journalism—that is independent from themselves.
Source: Break’em Up by Zephyr Teachout.
COMMITMENT TO THE CONSUMER: It’s not as if Facebook customers love Facebook. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) reports that social media has one of the lowest scores of all the industries it tracks. “With an industry average of 72, social media’s score is lower than even health insurance and airlines.” Facebook meanwhile earns a score of 67, which is, for comparison purposes, not only lower than the social media average but lower than almost every single American airline currently flying. Why do customers continue to use a social media platform they find middling at best that pushes ads they don’t want to see, that violates their privacy in ways they do not approve? Because they have no real choice. That is what a monopoly looks like.
Source: The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley (2021)
COMMITMENT TO AMERICA: America’s biggest and richest companies have been at the forefront of globalization since the 1980s. How then, can such companies be perceived as being “totally committed” to the United States, or indeed to any particular country? Their commitment, at least the way American capitalism is practiced today, is to customers and investors, and when both of them are increasingly global, then it’s hard to argue for any sort of special consideration for American workers or communities in the boardroom. Tech firms are more able than any other type of company to move business abroad, because most of their wealth isn’t in “fixed assets”: but in data, human capital, patents, and software, which aren’t tied to physical locations (like factories or retail stores) but can move anywhere.
Source: Don’t Be Evil: The Case Against Big Tech by Rana Foroohar (2021)
TAKING POWER BACK: We are in the early stages of a major battle to reinvigorate the anti-monopoly movement. There are huge toolboxes of existing laws that can be enforced right now; a lot of bad Supreme Court precedents that can be overturned by Congress; and new laws that will need to be passed to address weaknesses in the old laws and new obstacles. The new antitrust era, to meet the crisis of concentration we now face will require us to do all three.
We have done this before, in particular sectors. No depository institution is allowed to be larger than 10% of the market. Congress should also pass laws to break up companies by function. Glass-Steagall forced the separation of investment and depository institutions. For instance, we can decide that a search company cannot also be an ad company, or a store, or a map provider. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, as it is currently interpreted allows big tech companies to avoid liability for everything that is shared on their sites, and it needs a total overhaul. Taking these steps would mean that Facebook and Google would no longer be competitors against the news organizations they serve, and local news would have an opportunity to compete against each other instead of serving Google and Amazon – and democracy would have a fighting chance again. It’s better to err on the side of decentralized private power. Democratic governance is messy and will lead to mistakes, but corporate government will lead to tyranny.
Source: Break’em Up by Zephyr Teachout (2020)
The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) strongly admonished Big Tech against its tyrannical practices in a January report. As this Report shows, the platforms have no reasonable expectation that their censorship will end crimes or even diminish it, as no empirical evidence exists linking increased hate speech with hate crimes. No doubt, the NTIA will be ignored. That is the nature of ideologically driven decision making. In fact, at a Senate hearing in November 2020, the Democrats on the committee demanded that Big Tech do more and faster, to silence speech on their platforms.
Source: American Marxism by Mark R. Levin (2021)
The most problematic aspect of Facebook’s power is Mark Zuckerberg’s unilateral control over speech. There is no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people. Make it three billion and counting. The simplest, most direct solution to this quandary is also the best and involves once again Section 230. Treat the tech companies like the publishers they truly are, and let individuals sue them for acts of censorship or other breaches of good faith. Corporate liberalism turns out to be a political economy of aristocracy, very much of the kind the founders feared and warned against. The battle to end the tyranny of Big Tech is ultimately a battle to break the hold of corporate liberalism. Ending Big Tech’s sovereignty is about takin back our own, and we can begin to do that in the lives we live together.
Source: The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley
CONSIDERING THE FUTURE: In the U.S., we suffer from a tragic lack of foresight. We operate with a “nowist” mindset, planning for the next few years of our lives more than any other timeframe. Nowist thinking champions, short-term techno logical achievements, but it absolves us from taking responsibility for how technology might evolve and for the next-order implications and outcomes of our actions. Is it any wonder, therefore, that we’ve publicly traded companies whose achievements are remarkable but whose financial interests do not always align with what’s best for our individual liberties, our communities, and our democratic ideals.
A new epoch is dawning, where power will be concentrated in the hands of those that control AI-based algorithms that drive the digital platforms. But today, private companies are accumulating immense power based on their ability to leverage AI and Big Data as tools to influence, manipulate and even control the minds of people. Some of these private companies may soon become more powerful than many nation-states, but the shift will not be obvious.
In the United States these days, it is not only small firms that are being squashed, but medium-sized and even large players, too. The country cannot compete with China on top-down approaches to competitiveness. Nor should it. But it could reassert the merits of a more decentralized system by curbing the companies that threaten it. In the U.S., the answer isn’t to shift toward socialist-style state planning by creating national champions, but rather to enrich the innovation ecosystem as a whole, and to reshape the market system to focus more on stakeholder rather than merely shareholder well-being.
Source: Don’t Be Evil: The Case Against Big Tech by Rana Foroohar (2021)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
CHALLENGING THE TYRANNY OF BIG TECH – EXCERPTS
AN ALLIANCE OF BIG TECH AND BIG GOVERNMENT:
Section 230: Big Tech was (and is) desperate to protect its special relationship, its sweetheart deals with Big Government. Big Tech has not grown big on its own, and the tech barons know it. Perhaps the most revealing, Big Tech is desperately afraid of public criticism, of someone taking a public stand. Big Tech’s reactions have convinced me not only was I on the right track in criticizing the special treatment it received, but the alliance of Big Tech and Big Government must be broken. To challenge the Big Tech corporate aristocracy, we must challenge the political choices that brought it to power.
In Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (adopted in 1996), Congress provided that an internet company that merely edits some content does not thereby become a “publisher.” It is liable only for the content it edits or develops. At Big Tech’s behest, the courts soon changed the entire framework. They dramatically narrowed what behavior counted as publishing, granted internet companies broad discretion to make editorial decisions, including altering content, without becoming liable for the content they altered. Section 230 had been completely rewritten. Further, under the new statute, tech companies could take down content without any show of good faith or fair dealing and could display content they knew to be illegal – and no one could challenge any of it in court. No other media concerns – no newspaper, no television network, no entertainment or film company – enjoyed this kind of immunity.
The value of this redrafted statute was very nearly incalculable. Behind the shield of Section 230, Google and Facebook and Amazon proceeded to build the modern digital platform, that amalgam of shared user content, for-profit advertising, product sales, and journalism all in one place. Thanks to Section 230, tech could produce nothing and control everything. Big Tech would now have all the power to control information flow with none of the responsibility that the common law would demand of any corporate actor in a similar role of influence in the physical world. Section 230 gave Big Tech the means to constrict the global flow of information. Big Tech’s handouts from Big Government made the tech class what it is.
Source: The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley (2021)
Of the special perks that America’s “public servants” have given to Silicon Valley one that stands out in particular is a law that enabled Big Tech companies to ride roughshod over the rights of the consumer and small businesses that depend on them. It is called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It is the impregnable wall that prevents the tech giants from suffering any legal repercussion for trampling of the rights of their users. Section 230 is a censorship law – the perverse “right” that tech companies claim for themselves under Section 230, and it’s a monstrously unfair. Users have no control whatsoever. All the power is in the hands of the tech companies. The internet has been seized by a handful of all-powerful tech lords who now determine whose voices are heard in the digital public square, whose causes are suppressed and whose are promoted, and whose businesses thrive and fail. Silicon Valley will even determine who wins elections and who loses them. This cannot continue – and only a massive shout from the citizens of America will make Washington take action.
Source: #Deleted by Allum Bokhari
The root cause of Big Tech’s power and abuse goes back to the protection granted it by Congress in 1996 under Section 230. A handful of Big Tech companies are now controlling the flow of most information in free society, and they are doing so aided and abetted by government policy.
Source: American Marxism by Mark R. Levin (2021)
Copyright Law: Google, Facebook, and other large platform players were the chief beneficiaries of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which protected online service providers from being prosecuted over copyright infringement. The law essentially allowed platforms to bully content creators – anybody putting things online really – into giving up their work for free if they wanted it to be searchable on the biggest platforms, while at the same time accepting the fact that the platforms would be the ones to benefit most from the content, monetarily, in exponential measure. Silicon Valley wanted everyone to believe that the information should be free, and that the value created by others – be it books, music, or any other type of content – was a commodity that could be mined on the cheap.
Eventually, under pressure from some 143 groups, both non-profit and private sector, the U.S. Department of Justice took on the issue, claiming it had granted Google too many anticompetitive rights. The judge ruled in Google’s favor, on the basis that the project offered “significant public benefits.” That Google would now have a monopoly on the digital sale of some thirty thousand books was deemed less important. Google, Facebook, and others tried to use some of the same tactics in Europe in 2019, in advance of an EU decision around new copyright rules that will now force platform companies to take more responsibility for removing unauthorized copyright content, and/or pay publishers and other content creators for its usage (albeit with a relatively small fee). The directive passed the European Parliament by a wide margin.
Regulation: Most Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans have been bought out by Big Tech’s extensive lobbying. Silicon Valley is onto a good thing, and, naturally enough, they want to keep it going – which is why they’ve been silently upping their lobbying presence in Washington, both overtly and covertly. Big Tech is now the second largest lobbying group in our nation’s capital, right behind Pharma, with Google’s parent company Alphabet frequently weighing in as the single largest individual corporate lobbyist in Washington.
Source: Don’t Be Evil by Rana Foroohar (2021).
Insider Influence: The investigative team of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Competition concluded Google’s “conduct has resulted – and will result—in real harm to the consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets.” The staff report found Google had illegally stolen content from rival platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and even Amazon to improve its own services. A week after FTC investigators began issuing subpoenas for documents related to the case, Google hires twelve new lobbying firms. And then Google really got down to business. The company tapped every connection, called in every favor, and activated every ounce of influence it possessed in every corner it could reach. And its reach was impressive. In the day following the FTC investigative report, Google representatives sat down repeatedly with FTC officials to try and clear up this unfortunate misunderstanding. And they did … at the White House. Google was the second-largest source of corporate contributions to President Obama’s 2012 campaign. Within a few weeks, it was a done deal. In January 2013, the FTC commissioners voted unanimously to shut down the Google investigation. No suit. No charges.
Source: The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley
Mafia, or Just Government? When the interests of government and business are fused in the interest of surveillance, what becomes of the individual who wants to speak her mind freely, think out loud, wander without being tracked, investigate the world without fearing private or public retaliations? The freedom of that person is a threat to the power of both Google and the formal government and both benefit from taking that freedom away. This new form of government shares some features of constitutional monarchism – centralized control bound by norms set by a leader. But unlike monarchism, it gives controlling power to multiple monopolists, not one individual, and the companies’ constitutions are constantly subject to change.
Mark Zuckerberg offers a vision of a strong leader, a centralized economy, and tools that allow for quick centralized decision making under a unified ideology. Unlike the fascism of the 1930s, however, Facebook’s fascism is not state based, and it is not unitary. The modern monopolists may not be allied with Hitler of Mussolini, but there are close parallels between how the fascists defended their economic model and how the modern monopolists do. The Mafia may be the closest analogue to these tech monopolies, because, like the Mafia, corporate monopolists coexist with democratic forms of government, so citizens are dual subjects: of the country, and of one of many monopoly bosses. Like the Mafia, big tech companies make sure they have friends in high places. Unlike democracy, or monarchism, this form of mafia-corporate governance has no serious intellectual pedigree. Unlike democratic models of government, there is no implied moral obligation of these companies to look out for the welfare of their subjects. Local journalism now lies in the hands of Zuckerberg and Pichai (CEO of Google) who have shown no interest in supporting independent journalism—that is independent from themselves.
Source: Break’em Up by Zephyr Teachout.
COMMITMENT TO THE CONSUMER: It’s not as if Facebook customers love Facebook. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) reports that social media has one of the lowest scores of all the industries it tracks. “With an industry average of 72, social media’s score is lower than even health insurance and airlines.” Facebook meanwhile earns a score of 67, which is, for comparison purposes, not only lower than the social media average but lower than almost every single American airline currently flying. Why do customers continue to use a social media platform they find middling at best that pushes ads they don’t want to see, that violates their privacy in ways they do not approve? Because they have no real choice. That is what a monopoly looks like.
Source: The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley (2021)
COMMITMENT TO AMERICA: America’s biggest and richest companies have been at the forefront of globalization since the 1980s. How then, can such companies be perceived as being “totally committed” to the United States, or indeed to any particular country? Their commitment, at least the way American capitalism is practiced today, is to customers and investors, and when both of them are increasingly global, then it’s hard to argue for any sort of special consideration for American workers or communities in the boardroom. Tech firms are more able than any other type of company to move business abroad, because most of their wealth isn’t in “fixed assets”: but in data, human capital, patents, and software, which aren’t tied to physical locations (like factories or retail stores) but can move anywhere.
Source: Don’t Be Evil: The Case Against Big Tech by Rana Foroohar (2021)
TAKING POWER BACK: We are in the early stages of a major battle to reinvigorate the anti-monopoly movement. There are huge toolboxes of existing laws that can be enforced right now; a lot of bad Supreme Court precedents that can be overturned by Congress; and new laws that will need to be passed to address weaknesses in the old laws and new obstacles. The new antitrust era, to meet the crisis of concentration we now face will require us to do all three.
We have done this before, in particular sectors. No depository institution is allowed to be larger than 10% of the market. Congress should also pass laws to break up companies by function. Glass-Steagall forced the separation of investment and depository institutions. For instance, we can decide that a search company cannot also be an ad company, or a store, or a map provider. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, as it is currently interpreted allows big tech companies to avoid liability for everything that is shared on their sites, and it needs a total overhaul. Taking these steps would mean that Facebook and Google would no longer be competitors against the news organizations they serve, and local news would have an opportunity to compete against each other instead of serving Google and Amazon – and democracy would have a fighting chance again. It’s better to err on the side of decentralized private power. Democratic governance is messy and will lead to mistakes, but corporate government will lead to tyranny.
Source: Break’em Up by Zephyr Teachout (2020)
The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) strongly admonished Big Tech against its tyrannical practices in a January report. As this Report shows, the platforms have no reasonable expectation that their censorship will end crimes or even diminish it, as no empirical evidence exists linking increased hate speech with hate crimes. No doubt, the NTIA will be ignored. That is the nature of ideologically driven decision making. In fact, at a Senate hearing in November 2020, the Democrats on the committee demanded that Big Tech do more and faster, to silence speech on their platforms.
Source: American Marxism by Mark R. Levin (2021)
The most problematic aspect of Facebook’s power is Mark Zuckerberg’s unilateral control over speech. There is no precedent for his ability to monitor, organize and even censor the conversations of two billion people. Make it three billion and counting. The simplest, most direct solution to this quandary is also the best and involves once again Section 230. Treat the tech companies like the publishers they truly are, and let individuals sue them for acts of censorship or other breaches of good faith. Corporate liberalism turns out to be a political economy of aristocracy, very much of the kind the founders feared and warned against. The battle to end the tyranny of Big Tech is ultimately a battle to break the hold of corporate liberalism. Ending Big Tech’s sovereignty is about takin back our own, and we can begin to do that in the lives we live together.
Source: The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley
CONSIDERING THE FUTURE: In the U.S., we suffer from a tragic lack of foresight. We operate with a “nowist” mindset, planning for the next few years of our lives more than any other timeframe. Nowist thinking champions, short-term techno logical achievements, but it absolves us from taking responsibility for how technology might evolve and for the next-order implications and outcomes of our actions. Is it any wonder, therefore, that we’ve publicly traded companies whose achievements are remarkable but whose financial interests do not always align with what’s best for our individual liberties, our communities, and our democratic ideals.
A new epoch is dawning, where power will be concentrated in the hands of those that control AI-based algorithms that drive the digital platforms. But today, private companies are accumulating immense power based on their ability to leverage AI and Big Data as tools to influence, manipulate and even control the minds of people. Some of these private companies may soon become more powerful than many nation-states, but the shift will not be obvious.
In the United States these days, it is not only small firms that are being squashed, but medium-sized and even large players, too. The country cannot compete with China on top-down approaches to competitiveness. Nor should it. But it could reassert the merits of a more decentralized system by curbing the companies that threaten it. In the U.S., the answer isn’t to shift toward socialist-style state planning by creating national champions, but rather to enrich the innovation ecosystem as a whole, and to reshape the market system to focus more on stakeholder rather than merely shareholder well-being.
Source: Don’t Be Evil: The Case Against Big Tech by Rana Foroohar (2021)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| 6l_big_tech_6l_challenging_tyranny_--_segment_6.pdf |