The editors at the New Republic shouldn't have let this headline go to press. The article has almost nothing to do with "big tech"; it seems like the term is used just to invoke some group we're supposed to dislike.
244 karma · joined September 10, 2016
https://mises.org/library/political-economy-antifederalists-...
Things don't seem entirely one-sided with regard to free trade; e.g. you have anti-federalists concerned about the federal government's ability to create monopolies:
"""monopolies in trade, granted to the favorites of government, by which the spirit of adventure will be destroyed, and the citizens subjected to the extortion of those companies who will have an exclusive right, to engross the different branches of commerce."""
(It seems one argument made by Madison and Hamilton who also supported free trade was that by centralizing regulatory authority they would have more leverage internationally to make treaties that would encourage trade.)
When I said "the anti-federalists turned out to be right about a lot of things" I was thinking more about their concerns about how the unlimited tax authority given to the federal government would lead to scope creep. Apparently anti-federalists suggested that this could even lead to a federal income tax and this was considered ridiculous at the time.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed63.asp
(Relatedly, it seems like the anti-federalists turned out to be right about a lot of things they warned about during those debates.)
I realize that this article is talking about laser- or cyber-based attacks, but turning space into a battleground seems like a disaster waiting to happen when anti-satellite missiles exist.
What got me thinking about this was the recent Black Hat talk on satellite security [3], which suggests that maybe it wouldn't take much effort to create a lot of (near permanent and self-reinforcing) damage.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...
[3] https://www.blackhat.com/us-23/briefings/schedule/#houston-w...
It's interesting how eye scanning seems so Orwellian and potentially oppressive even though the intention was to use it to support an extremely leftist goal (universal basic income).
All the ingredients are there in the philosophy put forward by Epicurus in 307 BC, which was widely known by the Romans and rediscovered by renaissance humanists in the 1500s (in De rerum natura).
(Epicurean tenets I have in mind are: The universe behaves according to physical laws; whether or not the Gods exist, they are not concerned with human affairs and do not intervene; there is no afterlife and yet no need to fear death.)
""" In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. (Simon 1971.) """