I'm Getting Real Down On Elizabeth Warren

[Rev. Rye]

"BIG' anything creates problems globally. 

She isn't out to end the private sector. But just like big tobacco lied about it's products, and just like the fossil fuel industry has lied about it's products for the past century, she doesn't want big "tech" to become so much of a global monopoly that it hurts consumers. Big Pharma created our opiate addiction. 

The problem with mega corporations regardless of industry, is that there is this false utopia that only shareholders and CEOs matter and that a giant corporation can expand forever. The problem in reality is that is literally physically impossible because the planet is not an indefinite flat service where you can get bigger and bigger forever.

And just so we're clear, this isn't just Brian being alarmist about a hypothetical scenario. This is fucking happening. Facebook is complicit in an actual genocide, Amazon is killing the retail market and reserves the right to delete legally-purchased content from its users' devices without consent, Google's censoring a lot of the world (not just China, but it has been working with the PRC), and Apple's including a chip in their devices that can brick them if they're repaired by a third party. And they can accumulate terabytes' worth of data on you even if you don't use their platforms.

I've talked about Mr. Enter's documentary Technocracy and here's a video of the entire series. Warning, this is longer than Return of the King and is paced a hell of a lot better (his talking so fast and going over a LOT of topics certainly helps) and the information contained herein can be fucking terrifying.





There are eight parts:

• YouTube (0:01:30), wherein we see what happens with a company and its users when it contains a stranglehold on its market.
  
• Facebook (0:20:15), wherein we witness how much data a company can collect on its users, and how powerful a private company can be.
  
• Twitter (0:34:06), wherein we discover the consequences of giving anyone and their mums a platform, making the political discourse throughout the world a hell of a lot more toxic. 
  
• Tumblr (1:03:50), wherein the need to police the Internet is discussed, and the sheer futility of any attempt at policing it, whether through human mods, algorithms, or laws.
  
• Digital Distributors (1:32:54), wherein it turns out that just because you purchase something, that doesn't mean you actually own it. 
  
• Payment Processors (1:53:12), wherein we find out that their power over us and our wallets goes to the level of potentially denying people the right to make a living or even SPEND MONEY. And the buck stops well beyond these tech companies.
  
• Google (2:17:22), wherein it turns out a company whose motto used to be "Don't Be Evil" can only live up to that former motto because the bar for tech companies doing evil is actually set by...
  
• Sesame Credit (2:44:36), wherein we see the worst-case scenario of how much damage a company can do, and it's basically the ratings system from Nosedive, except it's actually fucking happening in China. Contains an epilogue containing a potential list of demands and potential means for alternatives starting at 3:08:45.
  

Well, that was horrifying. Let's take a lighter look into what happens when a company decides to build their business model on MOAR PROPERTIES FOR US TO OWN!





Make no mistake, breaking up the big tech companies should, if anything, bolster the free market, because, if nothing else, it actually helps create some healthy level of competition that doesn't really exist anymore.