LinkedIn Co-Founder Apologizes for Deception in Alabama Senate Race
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
also from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/22/faceboo...
> Morgan’s efforts have stirred controversy because of his role at New Knowledge, which has helped Senate lawmakers uncover the means in which Russian agents weaponized Facebook, Twitter a
So person in charge of detecting "the Russians" couldn't find enough Russians and so he made his own Russians and possibly altered the results of US elections.
And so the deception arms race has begun. Social media messaging is a toxic influence when centrally managed, inherently anonymous, or publicly accessible.
Why choose white hat or black hat when you can profit from both sides. Ingenious!
—-
“The money went to a small group of social media experts that included Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a cybersecurity firm.
They created a Facebook page intended to look like the work of conservative Alabamians, and used it to try to split Republicans and promote a conservative write-in candidate to take votes from Mr. Moore.
They also used thousands of Twitter accounts to make it appear as if automated Russian bot accounts were following and supporting Mr. Moore, according to an internal report on the project. The apparent Russian support for Mr. Moore drew broad news media coverage.”
A good problem to have, but clearly he recognized this was a big screwup and he fessed up. Not more one can ask for.
If you have that problem, you have too much money.
I've periodically considered a limit on the money people can have. I think if we limited people to a maximum wealth, after which taxes were 90+%, it'd go a fair way to fixing a lot of the issues with the world. Something like 10 million dollars seems reasonable.
(Note: this ignores all the ways people would weasel around any real-world legislation. Please don't argue about that, it's a thought experiment.)
And a thought experiment isn't not subject to discussion... otherwise why post it?
Anyways, a limit on personal wealth would need to be accompanied by a limit on corporate wealth (or corporate size, or some other lever).
Really, the thing that it all would require to make work would be the ability to make things illegal on the basis of intent (e.g. intent to circumvent), which gets sufficiently close to thought-crime that makes me uncomfortable (and realistically makes the idea nothing but a pipe-dream). However, without some mechanism for preemptively dealing with rule-lawyering and such, I can't see any way to actively improve society with such a measure.
It'd be nice if there was a sort of duck-typing for laws. If it quacks like a tax haven, and walks like a tax haven, the technical definition of it is irrelevant, and it should be treated as a tax haven/whatever mechanism for tax avoidance. Unfortunately, that sort of rule-of-law requires a significant value-judgement by the judiciary that is untenable given the current legal structure, at least in the US.
Really, I've never met anyone who is actively "hustling" (or whatever the bullshit flavor term-of-the-week is) to try to make mega-millions who's someone I actually think would make decent decisions with those mega-millions. Everyone I've met who I think would actually make decent choices just wants a comfortable life, maybe a bigger house and a few more vacations a year, and to do something interesting for the sake of it being interesting.
This is... not a very good comparison for a multitude of reasons. Not the least of which being that not everyone has the same chance of being hit and killed by a car, of course...
> Really, I've never met anyone who is actively "hustling"
Have you considered that maybe some of the very rich ended up being worth quite a bit of money without that being their explicit goal? I ended up being very successful in my niche without ever dreaming of my company turning into what it is today, or what it may become tomorrow, and I live extremely modestly in a cheap townhome and drive old used cars.
That's also true for the chances of becoming mega-rich. Can you name any actually successful person who got into the business they're in because they wanted to be come rich, rather then because they were doing something that interested them, and were in the right place a the right time?
------
The point is not that seeking to work in a niche where you are successful isn't valid, it's that there is a point at which point people accruing more money is basically ridiculous. 10 million dollars is a 100 thousand dollars a year for more then my entire lifetime. I live in a ridiculously expensive west-coast town and I'd be more then comfortable on that income. Having more money then that basically serves no purpose for the economy, or civilization at large.
Scaling the limit up just becomes more transparently ludicrous. What reasonable lifestyle can consume more then 10 thousand dollars a month!
The numbers here are mostly spitballing, and not based on much, but the idea I think is worth considering, if for no reason other then the contrast it provides with the way things currently are.
The idea that someone who would strive to do something great would lose interest at being limited to 10 million is laughable.
For example Bezos might have had enough from just being the bookstore of the internet. Everything else Amazon does would be open to small business fighting it out.
There are still shareholders for public companies to please so just hitting the mark might not mean just stop innovating.
Same here, in a similar way, too, much like air friction works -- the faster you're already going, the more energy you need to expend to go even faster (i.e. going from 200 mph to 300 mph requires MUCH less additional than going from 9900 to 10000). But there needn't (and IMO shouldn't) be a hard cutoff.
How many businesses do you shop at / organizations do you support that potentially do underhanded things that you aren't tracking because you are busy living your life? I'd guarantee there's at least one doing something ridiculous you are supporting with no knowledge, but because you (or I, or anyone common) aren't among the top 100 richest people in the United States, no one cares what we're up to.
But I suppose that's not surprising considering the top 10 richest districts and 73 of the top 100 voted democrat
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/midterms-one-party-controls-w...
Citizens United needs to be overturned ASAP
The entire GOP continues to vilify Soros though and seem perfectly content with Citizens United.