Had you asked me 20 years ago I’d have said that economic power is a lesser evil than political power, and that bottom unity is a more appropriate strategy than left unity. America’s irrational and irresponsible reaction to “9/11” (Patriot Act, unitary executive doctrine, “total information awareness,” etc.) somewhat solidified that position. Since then, the level of concentration of informational power in the Silicon Valley part of the private sector has shocked me and scared me shitless, enough to flip-flop on that issue. I fear business far more than I do government. Not that political compass measures anything meaningful, but left unity all the way!
Left unity over bottom unity
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2 responses to “Left unity over bottom unity”
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@lori governments did a lot worse things than even Patriot Act shit, especially if they drop all pretenses of liberality. we got pretty recent examples in, say, Ukraine. not that that's the only recent war…and i guess you don't think that the huge tech monopolies are due to government intervention. they are mostly software companies at this point. do you think they would be just as powerful without copyright, patents and government deals?
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Silicon Valley started out as Fairchild Electronics, which started out as a defense contractor. Nevertheless, I’m generally less than enthusiastic about arguments that everything wrong with the private sector has its roots in the public sector. I can get arguments to that effect from “libertarians” and even conservatives, and of course they’re structured the same way as the same arguments from “left” libertarians.If I really believed that enterprise absent government were necessarily benign, why not just be an ancap? But I don’t believe that to be true.
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