Google, in Post-Obama Era, Aggressively Woos Republicans
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I hope so too. Even if corporations really were sincerely pursuing social progress, that would be bad. In a democratic society, social progress should not be determined by a small group of unaccountable organizations.
Say what you will about governments pursuing social progress -- at least they are somewhat accountable and need to be elected. (Another potential upside of Trump's election: hopefully fewer people who believe that voting never changes anything because the establishment always wins.) Nobody outside of a corporation's board has control over who ends up in charge.
I disagree. Progress shouldn't be dependent on a small group of unaccountable organisations - but if such want to get out there and run their businesses in an, progressive manner that benefits society as a whole, I'm going to cheer them on.
What would you think if big companies like Google and Apple pursued a conservative agenda? What if they were against same-sex marriage or legal abortion?
The sword cuts both ways. There is no guarantee that corporations will always be on the right side of the culture wars, but they have enormous power. It's not a good idea to support corporate power because it happens to be on your side this time.
I would think it was bad and would think less of them.
That's why I said 'Progress shouldn't be dependent on a small group of unaccountable organisations'
We shuldn't depend on good things happening because corporations do them. But by gum, if corporations do good things I will applaud them - and if they do bad things I will criticise them.
It's like blaming Apple or Spotify that your favorite artists aren't as good as they used to be.
Fine, be happy the veil is off (tech giants are corporations and when push comes to shove are about money), but honestly you need to look at the petroleum industry, security & prison industrial complexes and their bought politicians to see the worst.
Of course the stranglehold the companies you mention have on American society is far more extensive and corrosive. But I grew up in an era where we were constantly proselytized that "these corporations are different." I was always skeptical, but that wasn't the zeitgeist. Now, I hope that my generation (millennials) will see the error in this judgement, but again, not terribly optimistic. In the pursuit of self-indulgence, we saw the Baby Boomers turn into Wall St Reaganites and still seemed not to learn. We just invented a "cooler" version of this story.
I must admit, the difference is hard for me to see. Though the tech companies may not be getting rich directly off the backs of the poor, they are just as destructive in funneling large sums of money to a subset of society.
Guess who actually clicks on ads? Guess who allows for advertising loans up to 35% APR? That definitely falls within usury/payday/predatory loan range. The 36% restriction would only exist because people actively fall for those scams, and it also indicates Google is ok with people falling for the 35% rate.
I also remember them recommending a payday loan company, but I can't find the link.
TL;DR Google is rich off people who can't tell they're being scammed.
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/...
And the parent post is talking about loans with 35% APR still being quite predatory.
[1]Non-AMP link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/11...
It appears the parent poster is arguing Google did ban [all payday loans] while you are arguing that the article says Google did not ban [all payday loans], but instead only banned [loans with interest rates >=36%].
My viewpoint: The article says both points, i.e. Google banned [all payday loans] and Google also banned [all loans (i.e. of the non-payday variety) with interest rates >=36%]
Evidence / Recitation from article:
"...In addition to the broad payday loan ad ban, Google will not display ads from lenders who charge annual interest rates of 36 percent or more in the United States. The same standards will apply to sites that serve as middlemen who connect distressed borrowers to those lenders..."
"...Google announced Wednesday that it will ban all payday loan ads from its site..."
As seen from the first above recitation, the words "in addition to" appears to mean that two separate bans have been enacted: The first ban is for any loan classified as a payday loan. That means a payday loan of any interest rate (i.e. 35%, 25%, even 3%) will be banned. The second ban is for a loan of any type where the interest rate is >= 36%.
Hope that helps, thanks for your time : )
How is that? 35% APR for short term unsecured credit seems predatory, but it is well in line with what most major credit card companies offer.
Profit motive has nothing to do with it. You could just as easily be blaming a shelter for "harboring" an adulterer. It isn't their job to be the morality police.
And you don't want them to be, because they have no accountability and little incentive to get it right. Better that corporations provide service to everyone than that they be the ones deciding who gets denied service.
> Should we not hold it against Trump that he ran casinos which preyed on the intellectually and financially disadvantaged?
Trump didn't force them to bet their money in the casino. They chose to do that, and we chose not to pass a law against it.
Said every despot in the history of the world. Once you start trying to save people from their baser instincts by restricting what you can and cannot do by force, you are infantilizing them.
"Once you start" implies drawing a line that any kind of regulation is infantilizing them. There are some people who think that this is wrong. However, many more understand that there are some forms of regulation that help not only society as a whole but individuals themselves. Yes, there are questions as to the degree and kind of regulation. And reasonable people can discuss this. And these people are not asking for despots.
I never said infantilizing was a bad thing. Most people aren't really able to make the optimum decision in their lives about most areas.
For instance, some of the most proficient programmers I know who make otherwise good decisions neglect their diet and exercise.
Should we enforce mandatory vegetable and exercise regimens for them? On a more prosaic level, should we limit the size and shape of knives that private citizens should be allowed to own because of violence concerns?
Realizing that there is nothing qualitatively different about these measures from the measures being described is a first step on evaluating all measures of this sort.
You can call it a sin tax, but another term is "disincentive tax".
"If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs."
The responses raise legitimate concerns about the article's analysis, and they also support my assertion (which continues to be the mainstream view of the costs of smoking-related health-care). For example, the analysis you cited ignores secondhand smoke health costs entirely and ignores a number of conditions associated with smoking. In the author's reply to the criticism, they paper over these concerns in an inadequate way.
Why would the tech industry be any better? The industries you name are somewhat more dependent on government, but Google and 'big tech' are still heavily dependent.
Name one such for the tech industry.
Ux that deliberately encourages addiction and compulsive behavior is also pretty bad, and is highly pervasive.
Could the IT industry ever cause this much harm? I suppose if an IT failure caused major infrastructure to fail, or propaganda caused a war ... or if propaganda enabled a Russian mole and fascist to become President of the U.S. (if that's what he is).
Do you have any evidence to support the same? It seems a bit like fear mongering.
They didn't "ride" anything.
Maybe all those people that are fawning over "B-corporations"
Im not saying they're a silver bullet, but they do seem to provide shareholders and boards tools to resist being sued for putting concerns besides short term profits at the forefront.
They designed, built, and maintain top shelf software products that are powering the world. They're giving them away for free. And unlike their competitors, they're not limited to running on Google platforms.
Tensorflow, Go, Android, Angular, Dart, Kuberbetes, Chromium are some of the most well known.
https://developers.google.com/open-source/projects
A decade ago this would have been an expensive suite of tools out of reach of the majority. You'd need staff dedicated to dealing with licensing from Oracle, MS, Adobe and the rest.
So they have to play the politics game. In particular with this administration, they either do it or run the risk of being labeled an enemy of Trump. We've seen how he plays favorites and makes decisions based on the last person he talked to.
If Google doesn't, the last people he talks to about tech would be Oracle and MS reps.
In conclusion, this simple black and white view is naive and harmful. It lacks reflection on the reality of how the world works. It omits complexity and opines for a fantasy.
Not to mention all the contacts they have built up in the permanent staff might not be there as long as normal[1]. The typical hire former government workers to lobby current government might also be in danger if the President goes through with his anti-lobbyist rule changes. This is actually a big deal for a lot of people, because these permanent employees are a lot of organization's touchstones that cross administrations and party lines.
I would advice Google to have a small talk with their doodle team to not rock the boat this year. That might be a signal on how aggressive they really are.
1) http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/top-state-department-...
[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pac2pac.php?cycle=2016&cmte...
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000067823&c...
[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pac2pac.php?cycle=2016&cmte...
I'm pretty sure they can do the sums and figure it out. Plus, they already have had a lot of news about claims of unfairness of searches. That employee number is going to influence things.
I would be a bit more worried if I was Apple though http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/apple-wont-aid-gop-con...
It shouldn't be "Google" that gives money to politicians. It should be individuals. And the sums should be capped at $200 (local/Congress elections) to $500 (presidential elections).
Even "lobbying" shouldn't exist. There should only be public hearings. I don't want some other party to whisper secret stuff to my politician. I want it all on the record.
So, I guess, you could clarify that it's still somehow routed through an individual at some stage in the process. But that's the sort of technical trickery that is used for this corrupt behavior in the first place... which is why individual donors are required to disclose their employer. As I said, thin level of obfuscation.
This is one thing that I'm really looking forward to.
It's also hard to believe that the Trump administration would do much to rein in backroom deals, considering the President himself hasn't released his tax returns nor taken any credible steps to solve the massive conflicts of interest posed by his holdings.
And then they'll be breaking the law.
Pushing the practice underground will make it less effective and less common. The appearance of propriety goes a long way toward convincing people that there isn't enough profit in being improper.
> It's also hard to believe that the Trump administration would do much to rein in backroom deals, considering the President himself hasn't released his tax returns nor taken any credible steps to solve the massive conflicts of interest posed by his holdings.
I don't understand why people continue to revisit things like this when there are so many legitimate problems with Trump.
His tax returns are going to tell you how much money he made and how much tax he paid. How does that help you? It's bike shedding.
And the conflicts of interest are inherently unavoidable. Even if he put every cent of his money in a blind trust (which is obviously expensive if the assets are illiquid real estate holdings), what about his family's assets? What about his business partners? The only reason anyone cares about this is the appearance of impropriety. If that matters in this case then why not in the other?
That's also the logic of the "war on drugs". It may or may not work in this case -- I don't know -- but it will definitely make lobbying less documented and regulated.
What are the sanctions for undocumented lobbyists going to be? How will they be enforced, when the Trump administration is so strongly biased against transparency everywhere else?
Trump brags about exploiting loopholes: he said he would be smart to not pay any taxes (while not actually answering the question of whether he does). Applying that mindset to lobbying will lead to a situation where corporations pretend not to be doing it, the administration pretends not to see it -- and one campaign promise is delivered.
His tax returns matter as the very minimum expected gesture in transparency. At present Americans have no idea what the President owns and how he makes money (or maybe he doesn't -- in which case he would have a strong incentive to use his office to prop up the failing parts of his business empire). It's hard to believe this situation exists in a Western democracy in 2017.
The war on drugs isn't a failure because it failed to reduce drug use. It probably has a bit. The failure is that it did so only at the cost of massively increased violence, the erosion of civil liberties, mass incarceration and the debasement of the criminal justice system.
Do you predict lobbying cartels turning to violence to protect their business and so many citizens charged with breaking the law that it debases the justice system?
> It may or may not work in this case -- I don't know -- but it will definitely make lobbying less documented and regulated.
It's not as though there are currently such rigorous and effective regulations that everyone follows.
> What are the sanctions for undocumented lobbyists going to be? How will they be enforced, when the Trump administration is so strongly biased against transparency everywhere else?
The change is to who can be a lobbyist, not in the answer to any of those questions.
> His tax returns matter as the very minimum expected gesture in transparency.
Transparency is for what government officials do in office, not what they do in their private lives.
> At present Americans have no idea what the President owns and how he makes money (or maybe he doesn't -- in which case he would have a strong incentive to use his office to prop up the failing parts of his business empire).
If what he does is good policy that happens to coincide with his business interests, that is not actually a problem. If what he does is bad policy then it's a problem independent of whether it aligns with his business interests. Because what matters is what he does in office, not what he does as a private citizen.
I want his tax returns to find out just how badly he's been lying about his net worth.
I want his tax returns because I honestly believe he'll be humiliated by us seeing them.
Which tax returns probably wouldn't tell you because even if there was it would only show up as revenue from some nondescript corporation in Delaware.
> I want his tax returns to find out just how badly he's been lying about his net worth.
Which tax returns probably wouldn't tell you because they deal with income rather than assets.
> I want his tax returns because I honestly believe he'll be humiliated by us seeing them.
At least you admit it.
And let's face it, he's so thin-skinned that practically anything angers him.
Will they? You don't have to be a registered lobbyist to have access to your congressman. That would be thoroughly undemocratic.
Say you're one of the world's foremost experts on the economics of asteroid mining, and are employed by an asteroid mining company for a tremendous salary.
Suppose you decide that your industry as a whole will be both more productive and fairer to the world at large if you are able to spend a bunch of time educating senators about the intricacies of your field and the effects of different policies that they might introduce.
If you convince your employer to keep paying you while you do that, are you now a lobbyist? Are you being corrupt? Must you forego any income in order to make Congress more informed or to argue for universally beneficial policies?
The conclusion to draw from this is not "oh well, guess we might as well legalize bribery."
Even if it's not 100% effective, won't this significantly reduce this behavior? Certainly adds risk to the equation.
Many of his policies are questionable, but this one always sounded pretty good to me.
One option would be to limit how long someone can work for a lobbying organization (instead of how long must wait before lobbying after government service).
What if we restored the importance of civic duty in our society? Top talent could be incentivized to work for the government for non financial reasons.
I don't think anyone knows the answer to this problem (yet), but it is a large problem worth solving.
Personally, I do feel strongly about civic duty. But after having (briefly) worked on government contracts I found an incredible amount of waste, cronyism and general ineptitude to turn me off. So I joined the software startup world instead ;).
Could you clue me in on where I said that? If you mean my doodle comment, then that's really not about Trump per se, its more about lack of attention to things his base cares about and might lead to problem.
what would be intended result? to go against orders from the upper management?
A Googler I follow recently posted an angry social post about the recent Congressional proposal to gimp the Office of Congressional Ethics, and how that was "not normal" and such. I pointed out that Bob Goodlatte, the congressman who introduced it, was bought and paid for by Google, and has acted as a lobbyist for Google while supposedly serving the public. He largely dismissed the point, but I suggested that rather than blame Trump, who hadn't even been inaugurated yet, that he should maybe ask his employer to stop bankrolling this guy.
He largely just dismissed my point and then closed the comments. I have no doubt Google's executives have drastically different social and moral views than their rank and file engineers, but they don't seem too inclined to do anything about it.
Where is evidence for that? As a matter of fact, during the post election period Trump extended olive branches to his opponents and critics, such as Romney, Cruz, Bushes, etc.
I'm more than willing to give him a chance, and I really want him to do well, but I don't think he suffers opponents gladly.
Political parties sell themselves to voters as "be on our team". The other team wants to rape women or murder babies, don't vote for them.
Corporations vote with money instead of with votes. When you vote with votes and the other guy wins, you lose. When you vote with money and you pay both sides, you always win.
Google doesn't pay Republicans because they hate women or want to Build A Wall, they pay Republicans because Republicans are now in a position to destroy network neutrality, they don't want that to happen, and politicians don't listen to corporations who don't pay them.
Parties constrained by a system do what you would expect them to. If you don't like it you have to change the system.
quite literally in the election of 1800 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI
As a result, we have a very skewed idea of what the internet is or should be. It is no coincidence that the domain for 99% of sites we use is ".com."
The truth is, corporations for decades have become more powerful and detached from their geopolitical circumstances. The subtleties of how the world works is of little relevance to McDonald's as long as they can sell more hamburgers. Corporations want to protect themselves from risk so they can continue to amass profits.
Therefore, the newfound genuflecting to the GOP should be of no surprise. Google ultimately has a mission to itself and its shareholders first. For a company whose product is its ability to amass information, there is little to be gained in promoting social or economic causes that do not benefit the corporation.
Yes, it does suck that the utopian dreams of Silicon Valley have divorced themselves from the liberal idealism of Northern California's Vietnam-era glory days, but that is why I left.
If you consider yourself liberal and you work for any of these companies that are aggressively courting Republicans, I would be very interested in hearing your perspective.
I sort of agree. Actually getting a .gov, .mil, .edu was pretty tough. I vaguely remember people being quite prickly about .net, and a little fussy about.org
Russia and China already had the idea of local alternatives and the EU was pushing for data protection for a while.
Governments might decide that it is not good idea give that much information about their population to the USA and maybe we will see the end of truly global companies.
It might be good for Apple though, as with it's strict data collection limitations.
Personally, I think the distribution is a good thing. It's not as if Facebook is creating better people. It's more likely that social networks are exacerbating biases, and so a global social network only creates an easier subset of people to manipulate.
Global capitalism hasn't exactly been a boon to humanity. Cheaper stuff comes at human costs, whether it's sugar or cotton or diamonds or iPhones. If a global institution is to better humanity, I wouldn't bet on it taking the form of a for-profit corporation.
(Full disclosure: my name is also on the list linked above.)
https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...
Registry used to track Arabs and Muslims dismantled by Obama administration:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/22/nseers-arab-...
Trump's previously proposed Muslim registry covers Muslims already authorized to live in the US.
Edit: A reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/the-secret-agenda...
'Dogs bark' is proven a rule by cats meowing, not by a dog that doesn't bark
The original sense is "No parking on sundays" proves that parking is allowed on other days.
The colloquial sense is that if something is a surprising, it shows that its opposite was a useful rule of thumb, or at least one you'd established in your head. (E.g. if you are surprised by a dog that doesn't bark, this surprise is meaningful and says something about what you think about dogs and barking.)
If palantir is shocking as a SV company, this says something interesting about what you think about SV companies.
but okay....
Guardian: Registry used to track Arabs and Muslims dismantled by Obama administration https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/22/nseers-arab-...
How will he pass laws without the support of at least 50% of Congress?
Google has a very small business, search & ads, that basically prints money. They then spend almost all of that money on unprofitable operations that crush competition by 1) setting the price-point for many services at free, 2) intercepting customers (e.g. Google Flight and Hotel bookings at the top of search results), and 3) poaching all of the best talent and wasting it away on these terrible side businesses.