Lina Kahn, Dina Srinivasa, Shoshana Zuboff, Carole Cadwalla
THE FOUR WOMEN WHO ARE SAVING DEMOCRACY
#Antitrust #Law #Fail Kills Our Democracy
Antitrust law is failing to secure our freedom, our markets, our right to self-determination, our competition, and our fundamental rights.
Lina Kahn Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, which showed how Ronald Reagan’s antitrust policies, inspired by ideological extremists at the University of Chicago’s economics department, had created a space for abusive monopolists who could crush innovation, workers’ rights, and competition without ever falling afoul of orthodox antitrust law.
Shoshana Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism machine learning creates devastating behavior modification tools that allow tech companies to manipulate us so thoroughly that we’re in danger of losing our free will.
Srinivasan shows how Facebook came to dominate our online discourse through activities that would have been prohibited under pre-Reagan theories of antitrust, and how, prior to these monopolistic tactics, Facebook was not able to conduct surveillance on its users, having to contend with multiple, bruising PR disasters and user revolts when it tried to do so.
Moreover, Facebook’s monopoly has enabled a series of moves that worsened its impact on our democracy and our markets: once Facebook became the dominant means by which people learned about the news, media companies were forced to use Facebook to promote their work, and to put Facebook tracking beacons (AKA “Like buttons”) on every article, giving Facebook the power to build ever widening dossiers on 2.3 billion users.
And since Facebook also became the dominant means by which users discovered many kinds of products, merchants also put Like buttons and engaged in other surveillant integrations with Facebook, allowing Facebook to monopolize intelligence about ad performance — that is, when an click on a Facebook ad yielded up a sale, Facebook often knew about it — and this allowed the company to charge more for ads, and to tighten its grip over the ad marketplace.
Handmaidens to Authoritarism, #Mercer, #Zuckerberg, #Sandberg, #Page, #Brinn, #Dorsey
In an unmissable talk, journalist Carole Cadwalla digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK’s super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union.
What do they mean when People say he/she is a Capitalist or he/she is a Socialist?
Capitalism is about being able to make as much money as you can legally. Billionaires, the .01% got there because of generational untaxed wealth, they also hid their money in offshore tax havens.
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got there through paying off the politicians who allowed antitrust law to atrophy. Antitrust Law has not kept up with technology in 2020.
The politicians who equate Freedom with capitalism that supports monopolies are not taking care of the needs of America and democracy. They are voting their own business interests before that of welfare of 99% of the country.
United States Falls Deeper Into Corrupt Nation Status By Pam Martens: January 29, 2019
The U.S. is no longer in the top 10, or even the top 20, of least corrupt nations. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2018 was released today and the United States has fallen four points deeper into corruption than last year. The U.S. now ranks below Luxembourg, Estonia and France, coming in at number 22 on the chart. In the Americas region, only Canada came in among the top 10 least corrupt nations, earning a number 9 ranking. (View the full list here.) Zoe Reiter, Acting Representative to the U.S. at Transparency International said this about the report: “A four point drop in the CPI score is a red flag and comes at a time when the US is experiencing threats to its system of checks and balances, as well as an erosion of ethical norms at the highest levels of power. If this trend continues, it would indicate a serious corruption problem in a country that has taken a lead on the issue globally. This is a bipartisan issue that requires a bipartisan solution.”
On Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont declared his candidacy to seek the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
Wall Street On Paradeendorsed Senator Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016because Clinton was effectively running as Wall Street’s candidate and as Obama’s third term. Unfortunately, eight years of Obama had produced zero criminal prosecutions of the executives of the largest Wall Street banks who had brought the country to its knees as they grew obscenely rich from corrupt, cartel behavior at their banks. Obama also seriously misinformed the American people about how little had changed in terms of reining in the risks on Wall Street. Obama also refused to provide a bully pulpit for breaking up the dangerous Wall Street banks by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act.
Bernie Sanders explains Democratic Socialism
GOP Pence attacks ‘socialism’
Mike Pence Secures the No Law Zone Around Wall Street By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 25, 2017 Millions of Americans have quietly been pondering for months what a President Mike Pence would be like should Donald Trump be impeached or resign. Yesterday they found out and it’s not a pretty picture. After the U.S. Senate tied 50-50 on a vote yesterday, Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote to keep the nation’s courthouse doors closed to the customers of the Too-Big-to-Fail banks on Wall Street – effectively strengthening the no law zone that already exists for these banks. The vote came about as a result of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issuing its final rule in July which would allow consumers who have been defrauded in financial transactions involving credit cards and bank accounts to have access to file a group action (known legally as a “class action”) using the nation’s courts.
Last week when Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a new banking bill to break up the mega banks on Wall Street, he had this to say: “In our nation today, we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society where a small number of very wealthy individuals and large corporations have enormous control over our economic and political life. Today, we are in a country where three people, three of the wealthiest people, own more wealth than the bottom half of American society and 52 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.” Sanders made this statement on October 3.
Just three days later, on October 6, a thoroughly discredited nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, who had the financial backing of a front group funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, Americans for Prosperity, was installed on the U.S. Supreme Court. This marked a new milestone for the oligarchs. There was no longer any need to mount even a pretense of representative government. Kavanaugh’s confirmation was opposed by 2400 law professors from a wide array of universities; the National Council of Churches, which represents 100,000 congregations and over 40 million individuals; former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; and tens of thousands of Americans who protested in cities across the U.S.
In short, Americans have gotten both the stock market and the government they deserve for failing to meaningfully reform both following the epic 2008 financial crash which pointed so clearly to unprecedented corruption on Wall Street and within the corridors of power in Washington.
Americans’ failure to demand real reform of what Senator Bernie Sanders has correctly called a business model of fraud on Wall Street means that those same behemoth Wall Street banks that crashed the financial system in 2008 are even more dangerous today. For its part, the Trump administration has become a willing enabler to Wall Street’s financial hubris by putting its former lawyer, Jay Clayton, in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a former foreclosure king, Steven Mnuchin, in charge of the U.S. Treasury and the Financial Stability Oversight Council.
Wall Street banks have now grown so massive and interconnected that they are in a position to determine the very future of this nation. The big banks’ share prices are signaling that the day of reckoning is coming in 2019.
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