Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Hey Trump, Please Stay Out Of This, You Will Only Make Things Worse



President Trump has tweeted today (my highlight):


And Larry "I'll take a heart attack for the president" Kudlow, who embarrasses himself more and more with each passing day in the presence of Trump said this morning outside the White House,
“We’ll let you know. We’re taking a look at it,” in response to questions about Trump administration plans to regulate search engine  results

Aside from the horror of Trump regulating search engines, there is a problem for Trump also. He won't be in office forever and once the central planning tools are in place, they can be used by his enemies. Imagine Pochantas in charge of those tools sometime in the future, Donnie.


Shrinking government is the best thing, not expanding it. Including shrinking/eliminating the rules so that it becomes easier for others to compete against Silicon Valley giants--especially the burdensome money raising regulations that protect the Silicon Valley venture capital oligarchs.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of
EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. 

More about Wenzel here. 





UPDATE

Trump threatens Google, Twitter and Facebook. What a clown.


18 comments:

  1. They are already regulated. It's what regulation regime they claim applies that is fair game for discussion. Social media companies can't have their cake and eat it too. They should be forced to choose. Are they:

    1. Common carriers, and thus receive immunity from liability for the material conveyed by their platform. Let a thousand Holocaust Deniers bloom!

    or

    2. Publishers, in which they can be the censorious gatekeepers they dream of being, but are liable for the content they carry (eg libel) or violating the pretense that they are free speech common carriers. Ban everyone to the right of Marx!

    ReplyDelete
  2. "They should be forced to choose"

    This doesn't sound much like a pro-liberty position.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Plus libel isn’t aggression

      Delete
    2. Oh please. Only in your dimwitted ethics-free NAP zone.

      A reputation has value. Losing one's reputation due to someone's willful writing or publishing of slander results in a loss a value. That's an aggressive act against another individual. Death threats are another.

      "This doesn't sound much like a pro-liberty position."

      Oh please. Corporations are chartered by the state. Isn't taking away a liability exception, not available to you or me, pro-liberty for, you know, actual humans, who have suffered due to the depredations done taking advantage of their immunity?

      Delete
    3. You don’t have a right to future “value” because that would mean that you have a right to the money still in your hypothetical customers’ wallets. If a competing business opens across the street, it very well may “result in a loss of value” to you but that’s (also) not aggression. Death threats and extortion are a poor analogy because they justify self-defense, while slander does not.

      Delete
    4. Libertardians always dissemble.

      If Facebook (or Twitter or Google etc.) promotes itself as an open platform (ie a common carrier) to build an audience and conduct your business, and you do that, over a period of years, with no trouble at all, then they unilaterally pull the rug out from under you, because wrongthink, you're okay with that?

      Evan Smiley, you wouldn't think that way about slander if someone decided to start a campaign calling you a pedophile everywhere. Eventually that kind of accusation takes root and is very hard to dislodge, even if it doesn't result in criminal prosecution. I doubt you'd be okay with that. Idiot.

      Delete
  3. I think it's great Trump is threatening and bullying them. Libertardians need to take a lesson from DJ here.

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  4. Nah, I am glad he is actually leading rather than rolling over like a libertarian coward.

    With these tweets, Trump did more to protect freedom of speech than all the libertarians of the world combined.

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    Replies
    1. Alex Jones is free to speak, just not on FB and Twitter. Maybe we should force you to host Marxist talks at your home or business to “protect free speech” as you say. Leading would be to acknowledge that government shouldn’t do anything about this, even if you personally disagree with the decision.

      Delete
    2. How libertardian. If his business is an ISP, he is almost actually legally required to be a free speech zone common carrier.

      Any business who purports to offer a free speech zone does have to open their business to all comers.

      Facebook is not an ISP. They are falsely claiming to be a free speech zone and should therefore be immune from others' verbal violence. They are wrong.

      Inside every libertardian is a closet SJW tyrant. Everything you say is projection.

      Delete
  5. R.W. - with your stance on IP, you should really be cheering Trump. The whole Google and Facebook business model is a wholesale violation of IP rights of their users (and quite a few other "content" creators which aren't even their users... a major portion of Youtube content is pirated music and videos - and is the only reason for most users to ever go there); and, no, the "terms of service" cannot create right to every single piece of IP users will generate. In other words: whatever you post or search is YOUR "intellectual property" and likes of FB and Google cannot appropriate it without your express permission for each individual piece of IP. They cannot aggregate it and sell to advertisers, for example: this is production of derivative works.

    Now, if you hold principled an-cap view of IP as purely government-generated privilege which has no right to exist in the first place, then again both GOOG and FB can exist only because they fundamentally rely on IP "rights" to their code, algorithms, databases, and such. Without IP rights there won't be any huge tech oligopolies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly.

      Is the negation of non-compete clauses by black-letter law in various states anti-liberty simply because an actual enforceable law exists on the books? Of course not! Even by libertardian standards, personal autonomy is paramount. How is it right to allow one party to restrict FUTURE activities AFTER the contract is terminated, just because it's "agreed upon" by two "consenting" parties?! Is it really flawed to have such a law?

      It's the same with IP.

      Delete
  6. It’s amazing to me how many people think more government is the answer and blame government being in bed with FB, and twitter in the first place.
    Btw, how is Trump protecting free speech? If I read correctly, the free speech clause in the Bill of Rights says “congress shall not”. So Trump is protecting us from Congress?
    Sounds a lot like another Republican President... “we have to violate free speech in order to protect free speech.”
    That works.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Opening up these organizations to being sued for bad behavior is more government than the government shielding them from liability for that bad behavior? I'm missing something here. Do we want MORE legal protections for these organizations or LESS?

      Delete
  7. What's really amazing is how every single libertardian, every last one of you, imputes personhood to corporations, just like government does (and is widely derided for doing so). They are not people. They have no inherent rights. Corporations exist because it is useful for individuals to band together in ways that sole proprietorships and simple partnerships don't enable or allow. Even in a PPS. How those synthetic entities come about is irrelevant. But either way, their rights and obligations come about for the same reason. That it is useful to the individuals who comprise them, as well as interact with them in some way.

    Concepts like "common carrier" and "publisher" also exist as human-derived constructs to further similar desires of people interacting together.

    Another thing libertardians think is that speech is, or should be, totally free. While, in some cases, harboring the completely conflicting perspective that IP exists and is an enforceable right. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

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    Replies
    1. It seems like whenever someone emphasizes the notion that “corporations aren’t people”, it’s as a pretext for the state to interfere with a private business. That seems to be occurring again here. It’s just part of your word salad justification for the state to dictate the content hosted on private servers.

      And libertarians don’t think that “speech is, or should be, totally free” as should be obvious from this case. Free speech supposes the ground to stand on when speaking. You have free speech on your property. You don’t necessarily have free speech on others’ (eg Twitter’s, Facebook’s, Youtube’s) property.

      Delete
  8. The FEC should fine these social media corporations that ban right wing candidates yet let the left wingers continue to spout their communist propaganda. These actions are in kind political contributions, plain and simple.

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  9. "These actions are in kind political contributions, plain and simple."

    This to me would be the only logical route to pursue this issue. This is definitely being done to restrict the voices of conservatives/libertarians and enhance those of the left for the purposes of swaying the coming mid-term election. Instead of trying to 'force' them to change their ways, punish them instead. I personally love when government fights itself and its crony corporate partners.

    ReplyDelete