And why, you may be asking, do I think it is like a ‘performance bond’ (whatever that may be)? Here is a historical analogy:
The symbolic gesture of obeisance to Germany, made by Hungary [in winter 1938-9] but refused by Poland, was adherence to the Anti-Comintern Pact. … It was, of course, known in Berlin that the Hungarian, like the Polish, leaders of the time were vehemently, even violently, anti-communist; adherence to a German-sponsored Anti-Comintern Pact could not make them any more so. It could however be recognised as a sign of willingness to take orders from Berlin – and it was so regarded at the time. … this pact had become for the Germans a sort of performance bond to be exacted as a test of distance from the Western Powers and subordination to herself. (‘A World At Arms’, Gerhard L. Weinberg)
The Dean of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Dr Leslie Neal-Boylan, has been fired for this:
I am writing to express my concern and condemnation of the recent (and past) acts of violence against people of color. Recent events recall a tragic history of racism and bias that continue to thrive in this country. I despair for our future as a nation if we do not stand up against violence against anyone. BLACK LIVES MATTER,
If she’d stopped there, she’d still have her job – but she persisted:
but also, EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS. No one should have to live in fear that they will be targeted for how they look or what they believe.
It is, of course, known in the University that the ex-Dean is vehemently (though not violently) anti-racist (when she was hired a few months ago, a now deleted University website page praised her ‘visonary’ advocacy of diversity and inclusivity, especially of the disabled in the nursing field). Making her say ‘black lives matter’ and not say ‘all lives matter’ could not make her any more so. On the contrary, just as signing the anti-comintern pact meant the signers would acquiese in Hitler’s alliance with Stalin a few months later (only the Japanese, ignorant of European mores, protested against Germany’s “outrageous violation of the pact” in August 1939), so demanding the Dean say “black lives matter” but not “all lives matter” was precisely to assure her acquiescence in theories that discriminate by race and in deeds that cost black (and other) lives.
Neither the former Dean’s situation, nor the Hungarian example you analogise, have anything to do with performance bonds.
The term you’re looking for is “password” or, better, “shibboleth”. Something one as to do or say to be protected or show group membership.
A performance bond is a completely different thing, a promise by a third party to pay one party if a second party fails to complete a contractual obligation.
The Boston Arts Commission has voted to remove Boston’s copy of the Emancipation Memorial (Freedman’s Memorial), which shows Lincoln freeing a slave. The original in Washington was paid for by funds raised by freed slaves. Earlier Antifa vandalized the famous panel honoring the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, a black regiment that served in the Civil War.
Woodrow Wilson is publicly disowned by Princeton, Theodore Roosevelt’s statue in NYC is removed, and the statue of Christopher Columbus in front of the Columbus, Ohio, City Hall is gone. The busts carved into Mount Rushmore will be dynamited.
The destruction of America’s history is ongoing. Iran’s Ayatollahs are rejoicing. Now even American’s chant “Death to America.”
Sad.
staghounds (July 3, 2020 at 12:30 pm), the appropriate alternative term is in my post:
This is more than a shibboleth or a password – neither of those humiliate the performer or invest their ego in the deed. And therefore neither of those impose the same kind of retraction cost on the performer. The analogy to a performance bond is that the performer is forced to ‘invest’ their ego in the “symbolic gesture of obeisance”. If they did not wish to make the statement, it is, in their mind, an endured ritual of humiliation. Even if they felt OK with making the declaration, their ego is now bound to that public declaration. Either way, it imposes a cost on retracting – a cost on them and a cost for them with the public before whom they made the gesture.
(In this case, the “gesture of obeisance” is explicitly to endorse the idea that anti-racism requires you to withhold the statement “All Lives Matter”. The logical absurdity of this effects the obeisance and/or humiliation.)
That said, you made me aware that the original I quoted actually had “this pact had become for the Germans a sort of performance bond” – I had missed “sort of” when copying the post’s quote, so thanks for that. I have now corrected the post, and rephrased my first two sentences for greater clarity. It is not literally a performance bond, but I when I first read the original book, I felt it communicated well by using the analogy. YMMV.
Please excuse me for stating the obvious regarding Cambridge University.
David Starkey says “so many damned blacks”.
Priyamvada Gopal says “white lives don’t matter”.
One is sacked, the other is promoted.
John (July 3, 2020 at 1:40 pm), trivial clarification. I think it is very obvious that Starkey meant “the idea that the western slave trade was attempted genocide is damned silly because there are so many blacks … “, rather than actually wishing to imply that blacks were damned because they were black or because they were many. The place at which ‘damned’ occurred in his spoken sentence was unfortunate – especially for him. (Indeed, it would have been fortunate if Darren had challenged him on it because it would have let him clarify.)
By contrast, Gopal has received much ‘understanding’ of her clarification that white lives don’t matter “as white lives”. In the process of clarifying, she said, “Yes, all lives matter. White lives as white do not.” It does seem to me that her original written sentence – “White lives don’t matter.” – was also unfortunate, though it has been fortunate for her.
Thank you Niall. I’m having trouble working out what “White lives as white do not” actually means. As a clarification it leaves much to be desired but that’s just my opinion. More important people were evidently satisfied.
Mr.Kilmartin-
Mr. Weinberg doesn’t understand what a performance bond is.
Not being picky, but you used a term of art with a specific meaning, and unlike the Woke, we ought not to play Humpty Dumpty with the language.
A performance bond is neither symbolic, nor a gesture, nor submissive. It is a contract that obligates one party to do a particular act if a condition precedent occurs. In fact the obliged party to a performance bond is usually far more economically powerful than the one who pays for it. That’s the point of it, really.
None of the elements of a performance bond are present in the Dean’s example. Who is guaranteeing whose performance? What’s the condition precedent?
Nor were they in the Anti Comintern pact, which was just an information sharing and planning coordination agreement. It’s not an alliance, where one country obligates itself to war if another is attacked by a third. That’s still not a performance bond, but it’s similar because one party is obligated based on the act of a third, non contracting party.
Auto da Fe might be a better term. Or performance art. I still prefer Shibboleth, the magic incantation that means you’re in the club.
As a child I grew up in a Communist country. There you learn very early (maybe pre-kindergarden) what you can say and what not. All you say, *ALL*, is a lie. And you know perfectly well that what others say to you is a lie, too.
So, being well trained – here it goes: BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Me too, but I can see two alternative possible meanings at this time.
1) It could be read as a variant of “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” All lives matter, but black lives matter more than others because they are black whereas white lives do not matter because they are white.
2) It could be read as an attempt to pretend BLM ideology does not mean what it says. Just as some PC commentators tried to claim that “Defund the Police” did not actually literally mean “Defund the Police” – and were promptly told by BLM “Yes, it does”, so some PC commentators may seek a way of claiming that “Black Lives Matter (and don’t you dare say that All Lives Matter)” does not literally mean what it appears to, though they themselves, never mind BLM, sometimes stray off that narrative.
The late Justice Scalia was correct – “Viewpoint Discrimination” is a terrible threat to the survival of our civilisation and undermines the whole concept of Freedom of Speech and Liberty of Conscience.
If a person can lose their job and be generally persecuted just for peacefully expressing their political and cultural opinions then LIBERTY IS DEAD – the Marxists, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, know this.
Herbert Marcuse (Frankfurt School Marxist who came to be based in California) called Freedom of Speech “Repressive Tolerance” (he had an Orwellian way of speaking and writing) and worked to exterminate liberty.
Now the education system, the media, the institutions and BIG BUSINESS dance to the Frankfurt School of Marxism tune – and persecutes anyone who does not.
In the United Kingdom the Conservative Party dances to the Frankfurt School tune – and persecutes anyone who does not.
This is what the Marxists call “cultural hegemony” and as politics-is-downstream-from-culture we have to expect a Marxist future.
The Italian Marxist Gramsci essentially turned Classical Marxism on its head – instead of the “economic base” determining the “cultural superstructure” – the culture (Marxist control of the education system and so on) would determine the economic base.
And the Frankfurt School Marxists turned away from the Classical Marxist interest in USING industrial workers (in really it was USING – as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels did not actually give a toss about industrial workers) to USING racial groups, women, homosexuals (and so on) to help exterminate “capitalist” society.
Now Big Business strongly supports the Marxist effort to….. exterminate Big Business itself.
The Duke of Orleans and the French Revolution – the richest man in France (the Duke of Orleans) pushed Revolutionary ideas for years and financed the Revolutionaries – and his “friends” robbed and murdered him.
The same thing will happen to the high ups of Google, J.P. Morgan and all the rest – and it is very hard to care.
What should be done?
Hard to recreate a Free Speech Culture when the education system and the mainstream media have destroyed it.
However, President Trump should sign an Executive Order (today – now) saying that the Federal Government will not cooperate or support any organisation, including hospitals and universities, that practice VIEWPOINT DISCRIMINATION.
It will soon be too late – under a “President Biden” it will be to late, as all dissent against the left will be de facto banned.
If you think the Corporations are bad now – “you have seen nothing yet”. With a government totally under the control of the modern left (with Mr Biden as a puppet) dissent will be totally crushed – as much by the “Woke” Corporations as by the government itself.
Barack Obama was from a Marxist background – but he was also timid (essentially a coward) – if the Marxists have total control of the government again now they have an iron grip over the Corporations, it will be GAME OVER for any freedom.
I would say that LIBERTY IS DEAD if I was forced to keep employing someone who peacefully expressed his agreement with the policies of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan (white devils and Jews must die), or with those of Karl Marx or Nicolas Maduro.
If I were spending public monies in employing people instead of my own money, it might be different. But so long as I’m paying, I get to decide with whom I associate.
Bob Sykes: Earlier Antifa vandalized the famous panel honoring the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, a black regiment that served in the Civil War.
That was the moment I knew these people were ideological frauds, uninterested in equality before the law, which is what ending slavery is about, and instead pushing a mad, nihilist agenda that as you rightly says, has more in common with the Iran of the Mullahs post-1979 than what America is meant to be about.
What should be done?
Paul, as you can imagine what one of my ideas would be, it would be to substantially “defund” Higher Ed. as it operates in much of the West. It is in what Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds calls a bubble. Much of what is taught is brainwashing; students leave with qualifications that employers don’t value but the students think they are geniuses. Their rage is partly borne of frustration at the reality of this. The entire higher education system in the West is dysfunctional, and actively harmful. It should be viewed with the same hostility (outside of certain STEM and related fields, such as entirely private colleges) as a statist mess that needs to be burned to the ground.
Of course this is only part of it. But I increasingly think that Higher Ed, and the rot that goes on there, is at the core of many of our discontents and problems.
(I invite thread-readers to ignore the side-thread comments on performance bonds, unless interested in them. 🙂 I suggest anyone who chips in make it clear when a comment is about performance bonds, not the OP.)
staghounds (July 3, 2020 at 3:05 pm), you obviously know performance bonds from construction or similar. Such relevant financial work as I have done is more in the area of clearing-house role in futures contracts and suchlike. The Wikipedia article on performance bonds begins:
Wikipedia expands the ‘Good faith money’ link to an article entitled ‘Earnest Payment’:
While it seems bit pedantic to me to complain that the analogy lacks the explicit 3rd-party insurer of e.g. a modern construction-related performance bond (obtained from that 3rd party by one of the primary parties at its expense to protect the other party) – as if one complained of analogising some political act to a ‘transaction’ because a literal financial transaction would be handled by a 3rd-party bank updating the two parties’ bank accounts – the German-born (1 January 1928) Jewish Mr Weinberg may anyway have been more accustomed from his background to the second meaning given above. (Note that my guess here is making some typical assumptions about the kind of background financial knowledge available in Jewish culture. 🙂 )
While Wikipedia’s earnest-payment definition is much more general than my clearing-house experience – which typically demands updated deposit of the entire margin, not just an ‘earnest penny’ – that background let Weinberg’s usage make sense to me as an analogy.
But of course, YMMV, staghounds: if the analogy doesn’t work for you then, fair enough, it doesn’t work for you. You will appreciate I cannot rewrite Mr Weinberg’s book. And you will appreciate that the Nazis’ lack of interest in the anti-comintern pact’s ostensible aims makes a very good analogy to BLM’s lack of interest in whether their tactics decrease or increase the rate at which black lives are lost.
Perhaps the proper term is “Loyalty Oath”. To quote from Catch-22:
There is, of course, more to this whole episode. It permeates all of the book. But perhaps “… unmoved by his logic.” is the key to understanding.
bobby b (July 3, 2020 at 4:01 pm), +1 to your specific point.
I would very much like to live in a culture where there was more separation of concerns – where work, entertainment, dining out, charity endeavour, art, etc., were less immanently political (and felt less imminently so).
Jonathan Pearce.
As I have remarked before: more intellectual stimulation is to be derived from tertiary syphilis than from tertiary education. Universities, to misquote Maurice Bowra slightly, ‘do not even make a contribution to ignorance’; they are much more dangerous than being ‘money grubbing academic slums’, to quote the long retired head of Melbourne University Press.
Sort of off topic:
The world today is absolutely crammed with stupid monkey dominance games, head games, social signaling, etc. I wonder how much room all this crap takes up in our heads that could be better spent elsewhere? Certainly, pay attention to how crazy your country is getting every so often so as not to blunder into a dangerous zone. Certainly try to protect children from what I’m sure saner future generations will class as mental abuse. (If there was anything I would have wanted to tell my younger self, it’s that no: all this incomprehensible social nonsense *is* just about as dumb as it looks (or worse) and that the brighter, more worthwhile parts of life are away from all that.)
But take a vacation from politics every so often. I’ve been heads down learning about a new field (machine learning and all the stuff people have been doing lately with neural networks.) It’s been a bit of a welcome relief from the politics.
All this stuff is stupid, cultish, and insane. It’ll remain stupid, cultish, and insane with or without my participation, so why participate? (Not running for office, 1/300 millionth of a say every 2 years…) The universe is so much larger than the cramped and barbaric world of western politics.
“symbolic gesture of obeisance”
“Smell the glove”
Smells like old leather with an undercurrent of steel.
@bobby b
If I were spending public monies in employing people instead of my own money, it might be different. But so long as I’m paying, I get to decide with whom I associate.
I think your point would be fair was it not for the fact that enshrined in law are a specific list of exemptions to this. So, for example, if I run a traditional men’s club and I want to only allow men to enter, I may not chose to associate (or not associate) in that situation. If I bake wedding cakes and my religion precludes me from participating in gay unions then my right to not bake the cake is very much in jeopardy.
So, sure, I would love it we had freedom of association but we don’t. So if that is the case then we all have a right to argue what categories go on the list of “you can’t do that.” Adding “don’t discriminate on the basis of political views” seems a pretty small step along a well worn path.
I am reminded of the, allegedly, Churchill quote “we have already established you are a prostitute madam, now we are just negotiating the price.”
@MadRocketSci
The universe is so much larger than the cramped and barbaric world of western politics.
That is certainly true, and, personally, I’d love never to think about politics or politicians ever again. Unfortunately politicians and politics won’t let me do that. They constantly intrude into everything I do without my invitation. They insist on my attention, my money, my freedom and my business. And the present revolution starting in Minneapolis but spreading to poison all the the western democracies is an even more insistent pest, sticking its nose into more and more of my business.
Please remember that a serious slogan from these people is “Silence is Violence”.
O’Brien did not just take Winston and Julia out back and shoot them. No, he demanded their minds and souls first. It isn’t enough to obey, you must also believe.
Because how can you be forced to condemn yourself by your own words if you choose not to speak?
🙄
Nothing ever changes with Commies, Marxists and the rest of the left-wing scum.
Would you be more amenable to my statement if I phrase it as “we have more freedom of association than do most of the rest of the people in the world, and it is a significant amount of freedom”? Because I think that we do and it is, and I think that we can still mostly count ourselves on that winning side in spite of the “we’re not perfect” outlook.
If you substitute that phrase into my comment above, it still says what I wanted it to say. While the enforcement of the associational proscriptions gets carried away – we ought not be treating some like crap simply because they’re black or gay or female, but the cake thing was a bridge too far – I feel some empathy for the whole “immutable” idea, or at least fighting against it isn’t a hill I’d die on.
“…we ought not be treating some like crap simply because they’re black or gay or female…”
Nor like exempted royalty, unknowing children, or catered invalids.
bobby b. I think you are wrong to expect your employees to share your political opinions; surely the only thing that matters, is how well they do their jobs. Politics, religion and entertainment choices should all be disregarded as they are outside the area of employment. Of course this rule should also apply to the woke corporations and universities but unfortunately they often exercise an overwhelming intolerance.
The only acceptable reason for dismissing an employee should be their poor performance; their opinions and beliefs are irrelevant. The claim that an employee is ‘bringing the organisation into disrepute’ is also spurious if comments have been made as an individual and not specifically in the name of the organisation.
We should press for legislation which would guarantee our freedom of speech and make it impossible to dismiss employees because of their opinions.
I think that depends on how and how much your employees share their political opinions. Rantings in the lunchroom or offices make people nervous; and on the factory line, they could be dangerous.
In a strictly utilitarian sense, I’d agree – I ought not allow my company’s productivity or profits to suffer because I fired a capable Antifa-ite in favor of a less capable Trump-ist.
But I don’t have that Randian dispassion. I simply don’t want to be around the Antifa-ite. I don’t wish to associate with him an any sense. And, so long as being a member of Antifa isn’t a personal immutable characteristic, I have that freedom to choose. So, whether they spout their cause in the office or not, I can jettison them – not for the actual danger to production that they might engender, but for my own satisfaction.
And I value that freedom.
Neither did Ayn Rand in a simple-minded sense. ‘The Fountainhead’ contains a detailed worked example of a newspaper owner discovering that his left-wing editor has over the years talked him into hiring enough left people to the key positions that he cannot prevent his paper serving a thoroughly dishonest left-wing propaganda line that is strongly against his wishes. He is depicted as going to extreme measures in the 1930s, when an owner’s power, e.g. to fire, was far less trammelled than today, and yet being defeated by the narrative and eventually forced to yield.
Her message is that it is unwise to ignore an employee’s political opinion that you are not their employer but their oppressor, and they have a duty and a right to take effective ownership from you, leaving you only as the figurehead to be blamed, as and when opportunity offers.
As a libertarian, I defend your right as an employer merely to find AntiFa offensive, but the abstract right can be safely combined with a tolerant culture (what I mention in Niall Kilmartin, July 3, 2020 at 5:00 pm) if you redefine offensive as “what is planning to take the offensive against me and deny me my right to disagree.”
bobby b – I am NOT talking about the work place.
You can command your employees to say nothing you disapprove of – whilst AT WORK.
But if you are saying you want to control everything they say or write when they are NOT at work – indeed demand they go back in time (people have been fired for stuff they wrote THIRTY YEARS AGO) and take out of the “time line” everything they have said or written in their lives that you disapprove of, then you are wrong Sir.
By the way – name me one person who has lost their job for writing stuff in support of Malcolm X or Louis F?
I believe you live in Minnesota Sir.
In which case the Attorney General of your State has said (and you must know this) lots of nice things about Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan.
“You can be free as long as you, at no time, express a political or cultural opinion with which I disagree” is the same as saying “you can NOT be free”.
It might be different in an economy of thousands of different employers – but in an economy dominated by a few large corporations (for example only two big payment processors Mastercard and Visa, BOTH leftist – and a handful of banks) with these large corporations and banks backed by the FEDERAL RESERVE….
Well in a country like that – saying that your employer can punish you for things you say OUTSIDE work (indeed perhaps years before you were were employed by them) reduces the population to servitude.
Everyone would live in fear of ever expressing (or having ever expressed) a political or cultural opinion that the “Twitter mob” would demand their employer dismiss them over.
Full disclosure – I used to hold much the same view as booby b.
But it never occurred to me that so many employers and other private organisations would behave in the utterly despicable way that they have over the last few years.
I do not agree with the late John Keynes on much – but I agree on this, “when the facts change – I change my opinions”.
I did not believe that they (private organisations) would show such fanatical hatred for freedom and such a fanatical desire to persecute people for peacefully expressing their “reactionary” political or cultural opinions.
It is as if Herbert Marcuse was on every Board of Directors – and, in a sense, HE IS – as the Frankfurt School of Marxism doctrines he pushed are taught at the universities the future Big Business executives go to. In the Business Schools this Frankfurt School Marxism is packaged as “Social Responsibility”.
When private organisations, the Mafia, universities (such as the “Baptist” College that drove out a young lady for making a TOTALLY TRUE “tic tock” film on how people do not care when black people kill black people or black people kill white people – but go wild when, very rarely, a white person kills a black person) behave despicably they must be treated accordingly.
A university can not drive out students for TELLING THE TRUTH and then expect “student loans” to be backed by the government.
And a private business should not get subsidies or government contracts if it persecutes staff for peacefully expressing their political or cultural opinions OUTSIDE of work time.
If people can not peacefully express their political and cultural opinions OUTSIDE of work time – then the 1st Amendment is a Dead Letter.
Paul, I’m not the state. I lack the power of a state. If I can control anything, it is my direct surroundings only – and only those direct surroundings that I own.
I wouldn’t associate willingly with a rapist or a thief if I could help it. I wouldn’t associate willingly with someone espousing white supremacy, or black supremacy, or my own slavery. I don’t care if they express that opinion on my premises or elsewhere – if I know of their beliefs, I know enough to make this decision for myself.
I cannot make such a decision when it involves power that the state gives to me, with state money or premises or influence. That’s a violation of the agent-principle relationship, plus the First Amendment prohibits that. But I am not the state.
Now, if I do exercise my property and associational rights in such a manner, I ought not complain when laws enacted to give me common carrier protections are removed. I’m not a common carrier of philosophies – and so I ought not complain when the protections granted to common carriers no longer apply to me when I do exercise my personal individual right of association. Common carriers expressly abdicate that personal right.
But no one has written a Section 230 of the CDA that applies to me, nor should they. I’m not a common carrier.
bobby b – as I said, I used to hold the same opinion as you, and I explained why i changed my opinion.
By the way – I suspect that would not be allowed to fire someone for praising Malcolm X or Louis F. in their private lives. The trial lawyers would destroy you in court, if the BLM mob did no destroy your business first. And the Attorney General of Minnesota (f you live there) would have you on a Civil Rights violation.
“A private employer has the right to fire someone for their opinions” really means “an employer (private or state) has the right to fire someone for CONSERVATIVE opinion” – it does not work the other way.
Turkeys should not vote for Thanksgiving – and conservatives should not support a power which is normally used against us.
Some people may be able to survive out in the hills, but on whose land? But most people have to live in society.
Do you use bank Sir? How about a payment clearer?
There are two main payment processors – Mastercard and Visa.
First the left took over Mastercard and then the left started to get their hooks into Visa.
So if private companies can discriminate on the basis of OPINIONS – you may find yourself without a payment processor and without a bank account (as we both knows what sort of political line the big banks take).
I think you might find running a business difficult – without a payment clearance and a bank account.
The Chinese “Social Credit” system is close – and Big Business is cheering all the way.
Why not? They were taught “Social Responsibility” and their elite business schools – and that is disguised Frankfurt School of Maxism.
It started long ago – the first leftists to start taking a look at the Schools of Business were looking at SOME of them way back in the 1970s.
Where do you think all that stuff about “Mission Statements” and statements of “Our Values” came from?
You are not dumb – you knew all of the above before I typed a word.
Sorry for all the typos above – I am tired, soul tired.
I have promised to put off death till after the election – but it is going to be tough to keep my promise.
You really need to put it off even longer than that, so that you can see all of the winning that we’ll be doing in Trump’s second term.
I don’t really know what to say to that.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I really, and sincerely, and genuinely am. It’s a shitty situation right now, and a number of people are feeling hopeless. For what it’s worth, I’m trying to avoid thinking about it too much, whilst occasionally having some pretty fucking bad days. I’ve no confidence that I can find another job in enough time for it to make a difference. I guess you feel the same.
I’m no therapist. I have no clever rejoinders to what you’re implying other than “Come on, mate, don’t.”
I know that’s not sufficient, but it’s all I have.
To me the question libertarians should be asking is not “should we give up our principles because there are only two payment processors and they oppose our ideas”, rather we should be asking “why are there only two payment processors?” And perhaps most importantly, why is there only one Google?
The very nature of technology, the promise of it, the reason why, in its cradle it was a crucible of capitalism (to steal Robert Frietas’ phrase) was because these sorts of monopolies could not form because the cost of switching was near zero. Payment processors are one thing — they are really an adjunct of the state since they are so heavily restricted and so heavily in bed with politics — but why does that comptetive disadvantage not kill them? Obviously there are other search engines, other places to watch cat videos, other places to reconnect with old friends, even other places to make payments such as crypto.
So, we as libertarians should surely first ask the question: why are these functions, so easily fungible, so utterly dominant? I have asked this question here many times and really still don’t have a satisfactory answer.
I heard a thing once that I always remembered. When a liberal sees a problem he thinks “government regulation”, when a conservative sees a problem he thinks “tax deduction”, when a libertarian sees a problem he thinks “business opportunity”. What the hell ever happened to that?
This, this, this, a thousand times this.
We got caught out – we left the new tech world to the blue side. Our fault, and now we’re playing catch-up.
That’s a reason to reconsider tactics, not to dump principles.
But dumping the CDA 230 protections for the platforms is entirely within those principles. We’re delivered a monopoly to FB with those protections. Time to remove that artificial barrier.
Agreed, 99%!
(ok, maybe not quite to the “blue side”, but elsewise 😉 )
I don’t believe wholly it’s a blue vs red thing (or the converse, over here in good old blighty).
It’s state vs non-state.
Perhaps I’m reading things wrong, but saying it’s “state vs non-state”, to me, is very similar to “blue vs red.” My Blue/Your Red has a list of Approved Ideas, and wants the state to force me to think and say them. I don’t particularly disagree with some of them – most of them, maybe – but they’re not gonna make me say them or think them. If anything, I’ll go the other way just to make the more important point, which is don’t tread on me. (Want to guarantee you always have racists? Call lots of people racists.)
One of my laptop screensavers (they cycle through) is the classic pic of a line of demonstrators pushing against a police line with a spray of teargas reaching across from cop to protester. Above the protester being sprayed, the caption reads “wants more state power”. Above the police, it reads “the state.”
I repeat – try running a business without a payment processor. The left are gaining control of both Mastercard and Visa.
And try running a business without a bank account – the power of the left over the banks is growing by the day.
If discrimination against people with “reactionary” opinions is allowed then conservatives will have no way to make a living. The “Woke” Corporations with their version of the PRC “Social Credit System” will make sure of that.
I remember a television series (now taken off the air by the Woke) about firearm makers and sellers.
A customer wanted to pay in gold – physical gold (Constitutional Money – for the Dollar is still defined in terms of physical gold).
The reply from even these “right wing” gun makers was – “we would love to accept payment in physical gold, but it is AGAINST THE LAW to do so”.
And it is – the government bureaucracy and the corporate bureaucracy came together long ago to forbid payment for goods and services in physical gold.
The “cashless society” is coming – when even token notes and coins are no more. “I can not take that note – it might have the virus on it”, or simply no more cash printed.
And when everything is electronic – the Woke (Frankfurt School of Marxism) government and corporations will have you by the throat.
“But Bitcoin” – but NOTHING.
When you feel this way, remember: The Media Want You To Feel This Way. And no more than an ape beating its breast do they spend so much time and effort on their threat displays because they feel relaxed and confident. This is being done, at this time, because their can’t-fail plans have failed several times over the last four years.
Churchill endured immense stress at times during WWII. But in the end, it was Hitler who was nearly a nervous wreck by the time he shot himself.
As it is relevant to this post, I link it here for the record this report of a young woman shot after saying “All Lives Matter” when challenged. (There have been no arrests as yet AFAICS; we’ll see what emerges.)
A less grim (so far) example of “Say BLM not ALM or else” cancel culture (but informative of that culture’s reach) is that Miss Swimsuit UK has been “stripped of her title” (as Guido archly puts it) after she said ‘All Lives Matter’ on Facebook.
Some Guido commenters presume that the ‘Miss Swimsuit’ organisation will give the title of Miss Swimsuit UK to Dianne Abbott, to atone for their sin in having ever had a connection to ex-title-holder Jasmine. It would be a penance indeed.
[BTW, the Daily Mail is supposed to be a right-leaning UK tabloid, but even its article on this is eager to tell you that Jasmine’s boyfriend “spent some of his childhood in South Africa” and that
(my bolding), without mentioning that she was merely quoting the autopsy on that, let alone treating the ‘killed’ as even remotely debatable.]