Market remains open for other market participants to make other choices.
Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprisonment or violence against a handful of executives.
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/09/05/most-expensive-cr...
Also, things like I mentioned definitely still work.
That has always happened, Visa/Mastercard have been used that way since forever. The Swift system is designed to exercise financial control. Paypal bans anyone for merely looking suspicious to them.
How is this a good faith argument. You’ve jumped a situation where somewhere is being deplatformed and banned from various services for encouraging violence. To someone will use violence to kick someone off platforms. Coercing payment processors in that manor would be illegal. So, how exactly are we on the path to fascism? This is absolutely wild to me, that a textbook fascist being banned from things is being spun as... fascism.
If your definition of fascism is specifically centered around nationalism or racism then this doesn't really work, but I don't think the word fascism implies this, only that fascism is usually associated with regimes using fascist authoritarianism to enforce racist and nationalist ideologies.
Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation
There has been considerable disagreement among historians and political scientists about the nature of fascism. [...] For these and other reasons, there is no universally accepted definition of fascism.
By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
[0] https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e...
I think US might look exactly same in a few years. The mighty benevolent Party will care for thankful citizens, with the exception of a few outcasts who can't even create a simple website and are laughed at all over the media and social networks. And of course the Party will win all the subsequent elections for the next 70 years.
All big tech has to do now is tighten the screws further, and they can use their new standard to wipe out any challenger from the right half of the political spectrum before they ever gain traction (whether in media, with payment processing, social media, news, tech platforms & hosting; it's all controlled by the same political group now).
This approach by big tech would have prevented Trump from ever having a shot at getting elected in the first place, they would have turned down the volume so nobody could hear what he had to say. Which tells you all you need to know about what's coming next.
The US is a unified structural dictatorship of the left now. Tech. Academia. Hollywood & media. Social media. News. Payment processing. Thought police. Speech censorship. Tyranny will obviously follow. I'm non-partisan, I've never voted for a Republican, but it's obvious the left has acquired a dangerous amount of system power over the country.
Here's a prediction for you: in the next few years big tech will use this same conspired approach to begin behavior 'encouragement' for the wider population. Fat shame someone? No more Gmail account for you. Say something hateful? No more PayPal account for you. Already you'd have 1/4+ of the left wing nodding their heads in agreement that this is exactly the kind of social engineering that should happen (a US form of what China does to its population). It's inevitably what big tech is going to do, because it's very hard to legislate behavior control to pursue the politically correct dream they have in mind (safe spaces for all, so long as it's their type of safe space, by their rules, and their ideas), but it can be achieved through aggressive coercive action using the platforms, and now with these moves they're officially on the political playing field. It'll arrive in the guise of wrapping society in bubble wrap meant to keep everyone safe, and it ends in societal death by suffocation, narrowing and revocation of practicable rights as ever increasing numbers of things become wrong-think (and come with punishment).
I'll go with Noam's take on this. There is no liberal media in the US.
Every single thing you've listed is controlled by capital, not by the left. Tech, Hollywood/Media, Social Media, News, and payment processing. Academia is a very partial exception (google "Koch brothers university funding").
Do you think that any of the organizations that constitute these groups are run by social activists? These are overwhelmingly multinational corporations. They care about nothing but profit and the preservation of the status quo. They will appropriate rhetoric about identity politics insofar as it is a good marketing strategy, but they never make a move which is not motivated by their bottom line, which is why none of the tech giants acted against Trump until he threatened the orderly continuation of the system in which they're all invested.
"Left" media is a tiny, powerless fraction of the media. MSNBC and CNN toe the line of the DNC, a right-wing clique that represents only the interests of finance capital, and which, because it has comprehensively rejected any project of improving people's lives in any material way, has been forced into a politics of performative culture war posturing. Any leftist challenge to the status quo can be quelled by capital's complete capture of the media apparatus and government.
When you say "the left", it's very clear you mean social progressives, and nothing else. You're conflating co-opted woke capitalism with leftism, the same way countless liberals do.
You are however, absolutely correct about the coming repression that will be directed against the populace. It will be mostly directed against the left, as has always been the case, but we will definitely begin to see greater brutality in general as the overall immiseration and precarity of the average person continue to ratchet upwards.
In tandem with this, we'll see ever-increasing social policing of culture-war nonsense, as the social unrest continues to play out in a make-believe symbolic realm completely detached from material reality. People will of course continue to believe that it's "the authoritarian left" or "the bigoted right" that is ultimately to blame, depending of which flavour of news media they consume, missing the symbiotic relationship between two parties that both represent nothing but the short-term financial interests of capital.
it is clear that they are, while they may not be owned by social activists the day to day operations are certainly controlled by social activists
Take the recent effort of google employees to form a union, one not to negotiate pay or working conditions but rather to demand a litany of things around social activism including the power to control the policys and projects of the company
Then there are publishers, tech companies, and universities that continually have their employees protest if their employer engages with anyone that they deem to have "wrong think" see the Reaction at spotify when they brought on Joe Rogan, or reactions to Ben Shapiro speaking at any Campus, or the reaction at Penguin to the publishing of certian books...
To deny these companies are run by social activists is to deny reality itself
>"Left" media is a tiny, powerless fraction of the media.
100% incorrect, the Left enjoys a majorty position in Fiction Media (movies, TV Shows etc), and you can see a clear political shift in narrative of TV Shows.
i like to binge watch shows, even long running shows. So over the course of a month or more I may a long running series back to back, several of them that ran in the early 00's till after Trumps election you can see a clear political messaging shift in them, from an attempt to being "neutral" in their politics to a clear hard left turn.
Further Print News media is clearly Left bias as well probably 70% / 30% left to right positioning
Your lone example of Cable TV news is a weak argument, and if you talk to many conservatives you will find there is a large contingent of people that believe that since Roger Ailes passed Fox News has also taken a left turn...
I think alot of your position is based on the fact that many of these places are "not as far left" as you, or other organizations, but this does not make them "right" either.
CNN is not as far left as MSNBC, but CNN is not right either.
Barrack Obama is not as far left as AOC but that does not make Obama a Republican
Complete fantasy. You're not citing any evidence whatsoever here so I really shouldn't be bothering, but just think this through. When you witness for example Kuerig pull their advertising from Fox News, that is not evidence of some leftist agenda in their management. It is some combination of (a) a response to customer complaints/bad press, (b) an absolute storm of free publicity resulting from the controversy and (c) customer goodwill from the majority of the population. It's exactly the kind of action of the free market conservatives are supposed to be so enamored of. If you honestly think that companies are running socially progressive ads etc. because they are run by social activists, you are (a) just as gullible as all the liberals who eat up that style of marketing and (b) not living anywhere in the vicinity of reality.
You've also cited the example of a union, an organization explicitly in conflict with management, to bolster your argument about the management of organizations being captured by social activists. Absurd.
> if you talk to many conservatives you will find there is a large contingent of people that believe that since Roger Ailes passed Fox News has also taken a left turn...
Someone who would complain about some "left turn" by Fox News is not someone with whom it's worth discussing politics.
> Further Print News media is clearly Left bias as well probably 70% / 30% left to right positioning
Nope. Almost all media is either liberal (read: neoliberal) or conservative. Left wing print media is negligible.
> I think alot of your position is based on the fact that many of these places are "not as far left" as you
My position is not based on the fact that these places are "not as far left" as me. I am not further along on some sliding scale. Yeah, I probably agree with liberals on most social issues. However, I have a qualitatively different outlook to liberals, one rooted in a fundamentally incompatible worldview.
At the end of the day, you've made it clear that the left-right divide is about culture-war issues for you. Some of the repressive apparatus of the state is going to start being directed against the fraction of reactionaries who can no longer be assimilated by the system, but it's not going to approach the level of brutality reserved for e.g. BLM in the foreseeable future. You can continue to enjoy media catering to people totally fixated on the lost cause of relegitimating retrograde social attitudes, because it doesn't pose a threat to people in power.
The most liked and tweeted content on Twitter and Facebook skews heavily towards the right.
Fox news is the most watched news show in this country.
Your spin on the whole situation is a gross distortion of what is happening.
As a single source yes. But if you consider the total share of voice of the other side across all media Fox News is a distinct minority.
I could argue that with all the defects in the Russian political climate, I would prefer to live that kind of regime than something equivalent to an ISIS caliphate, but I consider both arguments fallacious and more akin to scare tactics.
And if course given that bitcoin has to be sent and received, if we ever arrived at your dystopia, bitcoin would not help: the political rival would simply jail the executive for receiving bitcoin payments instead of USD currency. Bitcoin isn't preventing your dystopia.
I think you read this slightly wrong -- drop the government (political adversary != government adversary) and relax imprisonment for threats of violence:
"coercion of executives through threats of violence"
...and we've got something a lot closer to what we already see today.
Governments can choose to make anything they want illegal, and they have the guns to back up that decision. Sure, it may be easy to make crypto transactions more surreptitiously, but at the end of the day someone is going to want to spend that crypto on something that has real value, and governments can, and do, control what method of payments are acceptable.
Right now, we haven't heard from ISPs. The entire suite of services that are controlled by the monopoly FANGs can be recreated, including clouds and cloud-fronts.
If that line is crossed as well then we'll have a modern society entirely dependent on information infrastructure that is controlled by a handful of companies with pedigree rooted firmly in the defense and intelligence sectors. You can call that whatever you please, but it will not be pleasant.
[p.s. I vote Green.]
"Objectionable views" is an objectionable notion for many. And "unified messaging" from monopoly information and communication corporations (owned by an astonishingly small subset of humanity) is not a legitimate source of authority for determining what is or is not "objectionable".
This is the entire point of political systems: resolving conflicts of views and providing a mechanism for harmonious, fair, and productive societies. Unless the plan is to medicate people, in which case sure, a perfectly homogenous body politic may be in your future.
If you have a colluding oligopoly in something crucial to do business such as payments or communication, where it's difficult to switch due to network effects, being banned by them is like being banned by government.
Payment providers are just a front end for their networks, so it's easy to switch providers like Stripe, but you can still be banned by underlying network like Mastercard and your business will suffer.
So they did, but the totalitarians were not satisfied, so then they banned them from app stores users used to connect and find the new service... crying Build your own service it is a private company
So they did, but the totalitarian were not satisfied so they banned them from the network infrastructure used to connect them to the service... crying build your own network infrastructure it is private company
So they did, but the totalitarians were not satisfied so they banned from the payment services used to generate revenue for the service... crying build your own payment service it is private company
So they did, but totalitarians were still not satisfied, still hiding behind the "but its a private company" the totalitarians continue to demand anyone that disagrees with them be banned from all services everywhere all the while screaming that they are not in fact totalitarian, no they are upholding freedom for all...
see in 1984 war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
Is it really totalitarianism in this case? Or, just some private companies inconveniencing people by choosing not to do business with them?
Chances are that Trump is going to own a big part of it. That is why Trump is not on Gab or Parler, because he will compete with them.
So people end up conflating the ostracism of Trump and those in his periphery with an attack on the Republican party.
It will be interesting to see what happens, more so because I expect widespread disillusionment from Trump republicans.
Trump isn't really a Republican, it's just that on some key issues, his position aligns better with the Republican party. The majority of the Republican party was openly anti-Trump in the beginning, then later turned around due to his massive public support.
That hasn't really changed, his approval is as stable as ever. The only people buying into the "failed coup" narrative are the ones that never supported him to begin with. Dropping Trump, as much as the party might want to, is not a recipe for success. Strategically, dividing the Republican party will be the prime objective of Democrats.
It will really come down to what the Democrats do with their current turn in power, The republican party is clearly fractured, if the Democrats attempt to ram through sweeping social and economic changes that appeal to their most authoritarian left base then it will fracture the Democrat party as well
This could be, for the first time since the Wig Party collapsed, that we see an opening for an actual 3rd party to emerge
The problem with Parker and Gab is that they are only for the problem users. In fact, in an interview with Kara Swisher the CEO said that they have panels of volunteers that judge whether a post should be removed. The blind leading the blind.
Bill Kristol is an Authoritarian, Pro-War, corporatist Republican that does not share much in way of ideology with many social conservatives in the Political party.
Bill Kristol is the type of Republican that turned me away from the Republican party
Bill Kristol is closer in political alignment with the Authoritarian Left, than he is with the Libertarian right which is why he is allowed to stay on Twitter.
Twitter is for Authoritarians / Totalitarians
The Pirate Bay is more or less a link register today after having been pushed to the point where they can not even sustain hosting torrent files, they can only host mag links.
This is far cry from running an actual platform or business on the internet.
Also, the introduction of magnet links (or more generally, the DHT which those rely on) was a broadly positive move for the BitTorrent community, reducing reliance on centralized tracker servers.
Heck, AWS hosts the National Enquirer, the publication that tried to blackmail AWS's owner with genital pics. It's difficult to claim anti-conservative bias when so much borderline and over the line extreme right content is allowed to remain.
If there's an appearance of conservative bias then I believe it is because between President Trump peddling conspiracy theories and general hatred of those who oppose him, it simply caused more extremist content to be posted, and therefore more to be banned. It's not bias is there really is a lot more extreme right content.
does this make you reconsider at all?
I'm sure anybody that's been censored, dehumanized, and removed from society by an evil regime has been comforted by the fact that the people doing it think it's fine to do it, or because the people doing it are doing it legally. Those facts don't make it right ...
Of course Stripe does not have a monopoly, but the broader discussion involves major players that can function as a cartel.
Regarding collecting money there should definitely be some government sponsored alternative solution for quick inter-bank transfers. In my country political parties collect donations by bank transfers. They provide an IBAN account number and anyone can send money to that account from any other bank in the EU. Same with private initiatives. Recently there was an earthquake in my home country which did some damage to a smaller city and most donation initiatives were collecting through bank accounts. The central bank runs the infrastructure for inter-bank communication (basically a clearing house). Right now they are working on a system where you will be able to associate your phone number and/or an email address to an IBAN (basically a DNS-like service) so you won't even need to know someone's IBAN to send them money.