Fight Monopoly or Live in Tyranny

Whenever I see a new post by Joel Kotkin I make it a priority to read. But even if it is published in the Daily Beast? Well, Instapundit linked it, so who am I to refuse to read it?

Kotkin writes in part,

Congressional posturing about tech firms may have quieted for the moment, but the existential crisis that these firms are creating remains as now unchecked. Even faced with opposition on both sides of the aisle, the oligarchs—those five tech giants that now constitute the world’s five most wealthiest companies—continue to rapidly consolidate economic, cultural, and, inevitably, political power on a scale not seen for over a century.

…Given their virtual monopoly status, a laissez-faire approach will likely result in more consolidation; only government action of some kind can stop them now. Current concerns are large enough now that both the Trump administration and many Democrats oppose Facebook’s bid to issue its own currency. That’s a hopeful first step.

No surprise then that tech firms are radically boosting their DC operations—Google is the top corporate spender in D.C., while Facebook and Amazon (whose CEO owns The Washington Post) are in the top 20. Money is the mother’s milk of politics, and the oligarchs have more of it than anyone in a capital that has all the scruples of the Roman Praetorian Guard, with loyalties always at sale for a little silver.

…At the same time, they wish to restore their dominance of the Democratic Party, something they (particularly Google) tried under President Barack Obama’s “Android administration.” They showed early interest in former Vice President Joe Biden but are now pinning their hopes on Kamala Harris, who has longstanding ties to big media companies, telecom providers, Hollywood, and, most of all, Silicon Valley. She seems more amenable to beating on old white men than curbing younger, richer ones exercising oligarchical power.

…The Ultimate Power: Information
John D. Rockefeller tried to control energy distribution through his Standard Oil. Later, the Big Three ran the automobile businesses. These were powerful firms, but they could not, like Google, create algorithms that determined what people see, tilted not only toward their own commercial interest but their political predilections as well. In this way, what the techies are doing is oddly reminiscent of China’s efforts to control and monitor thoughts, sometimes assisted by these same U.S. tech firms.

In contrast to the late futurist Alvin Toffler’s hoped for “demassified media,” we see increasingly centralized control by a few companies. Nearly two-thirds of readers now get their news through Facebook and Google. Long after Trump has retreated to his world of golf links and gold-plated faucets, an embarrassment at best, oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, and Lauren Jobs, widow of the late Steve Jobs, will have gained ownership over the nation’s fading traditional media.

We are already headed toward a world controlled by these super-snoopers. With their enormous financial resources and control of the key digital channels, they are positioned to dominate older industries like entertainment, education, and retail, as well as those of the future: autonomous cars, space-exploring drones, and most critically artificial intelligence. Particularly vulnerable to “disruption” will be Wall Street, long the epicenter of American wealth, but increasingly threatened by the rise of “quant jocks” and “fintech” firms, who may well be shifting much of the financial industry’s weight from New York to the Bay Area.

Fight Monopoly or Live in Tyranny
In a normally functioning competitive environment, such firms would risk consumer wrath that could open the door to newcomers. But with their near-monopoly status intact, these firms, as tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel notes, don’t have to “worry about competing with anyone” or alienating customers. They can continue de-platforming groups they don’t like and enforcing orthodoxy among their employees, who fear they may find themselves unable to move up or even be fired if they step out of line. What aspiring code-writer would risk offending bosses at Facebook, Google, Apple, and the oligarchical firms?

…Our past generation of old industrialists may have been far more openly racist and sexist, created pollution and pockets of poverty, but they also built middle- and working-class opportunity; the oligarchs do neither. The Valley was once an exemplar of the American dreamscape but is now an increasingly narrow plutocracy dependent on non-citizen foreign labor, which constitutes upwards of 40 percent of their workforce as well as a cadre of young, largely temporary workers.

…Even in the Valley, once the exemplar of suburban egalitarianism, life has become increasingly hierarchical and feudal. Some 76,000 millionaires and billionaires call Santa Clara and San Mateo counties home, while hundreds of thousands of people struggle to feed their families and pay their bills each month. Nearly 30 percent of Silicon Valley’s residents rely on public or private assistance. This is a far away from democratic capitalism.

Once, the tech moguls legitimately could be sold as exemplars of American exceptionalism. But now, if unrestrained, the moguls are likely to be its assassins. Once, it was wise to let them work their magic unimpeded. But now, if we do this, we will create a society that is profoundly hierarchical, uncompetitive, and undemocratic. They need to be stopped, and now, or the world of tomorrow will not be a place we would like our children to inherit.

Read more here.