Category Archives: Business

UPDATE III (11/10): What About Deep Tech’s Infractions Will Change If We Vote Republican?

Business, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Law, Media, Outsourcing, Republicans, Technology

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UPDATED (11/1): In their weak case against Deep Tech, conservatives are still defending only some speech on the “merits,” rather than all speech, no matter how meritless. Libertarians: Deep Tech is not private property. It really isn’t, okay?

Richard Spencer makes a good case for a “free-speech zone”: “Instead, by focusing on S230 of the Decency Act—by threatening Twitter that it will be treated like a publisher—Republicans are encouraging Twitter to act more like a publisher: fact checking relevant information, censoring bad opinions, etc.” AND: “Republicans care deeply about free speech when it comes to posting Hunter Biden dick pics—not so much when it involves speech that is anti-Zionist or ‘racist.'”

Or, when Candace Owens’ boilerplate speech is compromised.

UPDATED: OCTOBER 12, 2020: When President Trump talks, one can’t help but be impressed by his unbounded force, energy and excellent command of details, down to a Bill’s public law number. In this case, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act:

Bartiromo … asked Trump about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects social media companies from being legally liable for content on their networks published by users. Trump called it “a disgrace.”

Still, questioned he must be. Voters handed POTUS both legislative Chambers and the presidency for two years. Yet he and the GOP failed to strip Deep Tech of Section 230, …  which, to repeat, “protects social media companies from being legally liable for content on their networks published by users.”

(I use the Deep Tech coinage to better capture the power and reach of the high-tech monopolists in politics.)

What’ll change this time around, if we elect Republicans?

Moreover, small, independent entitles who suffer banning by social media (“MERCER DOMAINS BANNED BY DEEP TECH FACEBOOK“) cannot afford to sue conglomerates whose revenues are greater than “the GDP of four of the G20 nations.”

So what is the remedy for the powerless (check) who’ve been thrown off social media, for no good reason?

Speaking of one of the Five Big crooked Tech companies; Microsoft’s Bill Gates recently told Chris Wallace “that Trump’s travel ban may have worsened the coronavirus pandemic.”

Those who live a lie usually spout, at best, only half-truths. Trump’s travel ban after the unleashing of COVID was indeed worse than useless. Chinese were merely rerouted and their temperatures taken. But that’s because Mr. Gates “seeded the disease here,” by replacing American with Chinese workers and making these Chinese citizens who travel to-and-from Wuhan.

UPDATE II (11/9): Tucker Carlson Calling Out Deep Tech For Protecting Joe Biden

UPDATE III (11/10):

On Tucker Carlson, Allum Bokhari was very clear about the massive failure of the people we had sent to D.C. to prevent the Orwellian nightmare developing. On the line is dissidents’ ability to speak, publish, sell books, transact financially.

Strip Social Media’s Social Engineers Of Their State Grants-Of-Privilege

Argument, Business, Conservatism, Free Speech, Law, libertarianism, Republicans, Technology, The State

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As ever, the political caste, in general, and “the party of industry and commerce,” in particular, has shown itself to be arrayed against Middle America.

How so?

An army of Covington Kids ought to have advanced on social media’s loathsome moral crusaders and censors. It can’t, because stripping the tech trolls of their state-grants of privilege has slipped down the order of business.

Depriving social media’s social engineers of their state grants-of-privilege seems more than reasonable.

Nobody conservative is arguing that “government should regulate content moderation of social media,” CATO Institute.

What is being advocated is that social-media censors be deprived of their state-grants of privilege and protections against liability. For social media are collective frauds. While acting as editors and social engineers, they are legally safeguarded as mere platform providers.

Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, tech companies currently enjoy broad immunity from civil lawsuits stemming from what users post because they are treated as “platforms” rather than “publishers”.

Trump’s executive order is designed to pressure regulators, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, to come up with new rules that would curtail that immunity. It is likely to face legal challenges. (The Guardian)

Look, laws exist. Too many of them. It would be great were there fewer of these laws. However, whether intended or not,  the upshot of corporate libertarianism is that laws only ever hamper the little guy and gal, never the multinational shyster and fraudster.

Naturally, conservatives must agree that unfettered speech is just that.  They can’t start carving out pet exceptions.

UPDATE (4/13/021):  The Civil Rights Act route is way better than Section 230 repeal—although that, too, must be tackled.

COVID-19 UPDATES

America, Business, COVID-19, Critique, Healthcare

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Assistant Secretary for Health admiral Brett Giroir said, July 30:  “We can’t test our way out of this.”

Testing: This column put the testing-testing tic in perspective months before the bozo Fauci deduced the same. From “Kung Flu Is A Killer, All Right, But So Are The Bureaucrats“:

The hype over testing will be the next contagion of illogic on matters related to coronavirus.

The testy twits are treating COVID testing as though it were an amulet against the dreaded disease. It isn’t. All testing does is give an individual a snapshot in time of his COVID status. As soon as he drives out of the testing facility, a COVID-free person could become infected.

Unless they engage in prevention, a single testing in time doesn’t in any way give individuals a clean bill of health.

Prevention protects people.

Testing is, however—at this stage of spread—helpful in giving medical researchers a grip on the symptomless-sick phenomenon, as well as an idea of how the disease is disseminated and distributed in the population.

Test and keep testing large enough representative samples, and you’ll get good prevalence data.

Kids: No point denying COVID. It’s a virulent, effective RNA strand. Treat it with respect or, it will show you a thing or two.

Other COVID news:

“The pandemic led to ‘one of the greatest wealth transfers in history’: The stock market is rising as big business rebounds from state-ordered stoppage of nonessential activity, while small businesses drop like flies …”

Still, “Trump says he’s in favor of plan to give $25 billion more to struggling airline industry.”

Small business has been stuck in the back by this admin. BUT anyone with shareholders is getting a bailout, living high on the hog. ALL GOOD BROKERS WILL TELL YOU airlines are a BAD investment. Why must taxpayers prop ’em up, throw good money after bad?

Hydroxychloroquine: If Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD, Writing in Newsweek, is correct, heads should roll. But they won’t. Nobody pays in America and nobody outside The Establishment is ever praised for getting there first. About hydroxychloroquine he writes:

When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc.

On the other hand, via a friend who is a doctor comes this information from the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. The study’s samples were reasonably large:

Among patients hospitalized with mild-to-moderate Covid-19, the use of hydroxychloroquine, alone or with azithromycin, did not improve clinical status at 15 days as compared with standard care.

On Wednesday, July 29: “One person in the United States died about every minute from COVID-19 as the national death toll surpassed 150,000, the highest in the world”

COVID-19 Has Left Some Corporations With Lots Of … CASH

Business, COVID-19, Economy, Labor

Short term mañana thinking is endemic in business, too.

Were companies prepared for these “black swans,” these “highly improbable events” like corona virus? It turns out, as The Economist observes, that,

It might be possible, in principle, to self-insure against a disastrous drop in overall demand by sacrificing margins in order to build up buffers and to keep open strategic options the company will probably never willingly choose to use. But good luck convincing investors of that approach. Strategies which pay off handsomely in the event of even the worst case are terribly expensive.

Given the wealth transfer initiated from small to big business, due to the structure of the state’s stimulus, it is no surprise to learn that gargantuan business has endured quite well:

… many companies are already sitting on stacks of cash. Few boast sofas as plumply padded as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook, which have $270bn in net cash between them, enough to finance many countries’ covid-related fiscal stimulus. But the total cash holdings of the world’s 2,000 biggest listed non-financial corporations increased from $6.6trn in 2010 to $14.2trn today.

UPDATED (8/5/020): “The pandemic led to ‘one of the greatest wealth transfers in history’: The stock market is rising as big business rebounds from state-ordered stoppage of nonessential activity, while small businesses drop like flies.”