SPECIAL REPORT: In Praise of Interconnectivity
Baby Bells and “Baby Books”
It’s time to break up Facebook. If you support real free markets, please listen for a minute. We all love the innovation that comes from free competition. We all love the very real choices that we have in a market economy. In my youth, we never liked the phone company all that much. The phone company in its first three decades was a monopoly. There was little choice and less than radical innovation. Ruth Buzzy did a very funny routine where she pretended to be a switchboard operator dealing with a very frustrated “Mr. Millhouse.” At one point, she offers the retort “The Phone Company is Omnipotent!” We laughed, but it was true. One overruling corporation operated the national network. Only Western Electric could supply the equipment. Then in the 1980s that all changed.
The big monopoly was broken up into smaller regional companies. While the results of the breakup are arguable, one thing is clear. The path was opened for innovation and choice. A ‘Corporate Monarchy’ had fallen. Essential to the success of this breakup was interchangeability. The ‘Baby Bells’ still had to be interconnected. Otherwise you would be left essentially without a national phone system. Like the railroads in the Nineteenth Century, a 4’ 8” standard gauge track was necessary. Likewise couplers, switches and signaling had to be standardized. Westinghouse’s airbrake had to be adopted by all the major lines or you couldn’t send a rail car across the country. Standardization is often cited as a reason for monopoly. It isn’t. Standardization across company lines allowed for private rail companies to operate in their own regions and often compete into other regions.
The problem of market-limiting fiefdoms is not new. Initially state governments (and later the Federal government) invested in railway infrastructure. They later became large private entities. While I might have had a choice of rail lines for a cross-country shipment, I had only one choice if I was shipping to a town in South Dakota. The pricing reflected this. Automobiles and trucks afforded consumers new choices. The railroads were forced to do what they do best – big unit trains. The railway freight office is no more. Universally available access to the highways enabled this.
Ostensibly the internet is an open highway, but large operators such as Google and Facebook have grown to essentially “own the road.” The “New Media” can regulate content with a ferocity government regulators could only dream of. Yes, you can create alternative platforms such a Parler but the recent shutdown of that very platform should send a chilling message. Parler, MeWe and a host of other platforms are supposedly free to exist, but they face a couple of problems. As a few major players control the platforms, they are always subject to being “turned off” by those big players. Secondly, while the phone companies and the railroads were required to provide interconnectivity, the internet giants are not. Regulation and oversight are proposed as a way to deal with this. Another way might just be ‘Breakup with interconnectivity.’ What might this look like.
If we define a ‘major platform’ as one that essentially shuts out any serious competition, we might insist on a voluntary decentralization of such platforms. Facebook, for example, could voluntarily spin off parts of its company large enough to avoid regulatory oversight. In such a scenario, entities not under Zuckerberg’s control would have full access to the platform, now viewed as a sort of national infrastructure. For example, I might choose to have my Facebook account hosted by a ‘Baby Book,’ FAITHBOOK. It allows be to have friends on the Facebook platform and enjoy all the benefits of interconnectivity – just like being on T-Mobile and talking with a friend on Verizon. Because my page and my posts are no longer hosted by Facebook, it is FAITHBOOK that sets standards other than those necessary for seamless interconnectivity.
FAITHBOOK does not limit speech or provide ‘Fact Checking.’ It publishes a disclaimer that essentially says so. There is an appeal process for illegal activity and issues such as copyright and libel, but there is no ‘master switch’ in their office apart from them. On the other hand, I am quite able to filter out what I consider offensive content. I can create a filter based on my preferences excluding pornographic content, political posts, advertisements for dating sites and gambling. I can select a pre-set ‘family’ setting or customize. I own all rights to my own pictures. I can block out advertiser targeting or modulate it.
My content lives on FAITHBOOK, but my friends on Facebook who do not choose to come over can still access it and have it in their feeds by selecting it. Meanwhile, those of us who HAVE migrated pretty much enjoy the old Facebook experience we used to enjoy. Enough activity should cross over the border voluntarily to enrich both platforms. I no longer have to maintain a presence on multiple platforms because of interchangeability.
Creating such a change would require the embracing of the idea behind antitrust legislation and a willingness by courts and lawmakers to act in the interest of consumers. The principle of interchangeability allows for such innovations as smart phones and the cell phones that preceded them. It is time to provide it in the new marketplace.
Big Tech's Flawed Defense
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Lawrence Solomon in the Epoch Times
Google, Facebook, and Twitter aren’t private companies best left alone by governments. They aren’t even private companies if “private” is meant to distinguish corporate activities from governmental functions. The distinction between the public and private sectors has long been blurry at best where major corporations have been concerned, with each sector involved in the other’s business. Governments compete with the private sector in garbage collection, electric utilities, railroads, and banking, while the private sector competes with government in prisons, elementary schools, ports, and the military. The fiction that a bright line separates major corporations from governments can also be seen in Nevada, which is proposing to not only contract out this or that government service but to spin off governments to private owners holus-bolus. Under draft legislation soon to work its way through the state legislature, high-tech corporations with more than $1 billion to invest would be free to build, own, and operate entire cities. Wielding the same authority as a county, the corporations will impose taxes, provide schools, operate courts, and provide police, fire, and other government services. (read more)
Ma Bell Suppressed Innovation for Thirty Years
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Oh, for the days of Ma Bell!” is not a lament we’re likely to hear. And for good reason. Before the breakup of AT&T, America’s telephone system was a government-sanctioned monopoly characterized by stagnant service offerings, high costs, and a glacial pace of consumer-facing innovation. (read more)
“Woke Coke”
According to a leak from an employee who was forced to undergo such training: “Coke is using training videos from “antiracist” speaker and diversity “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo and includes orders to try to “be less white” in order to be a good person. Corporate training incorporating critical race theory of the kind taught by people like DiAngelo and Professor Ibram X. Kendi is increasingly popular, as woke capitalism tries to get social justice points for basically picking on white people, Christians and conservatives of any color. “Nothing exempts any white person from the forces of racism” according to DiAngelo, who adds that “In the U.S. and other Western nations, white people are socialized to feel that they are inherently superior because they are white.” What she means is that all white people are racist because they’re white.”
While a corporate spokesperson quickly backpedaled the notion, saying the video was “simply included” in the materials, it is obvious that the corporation is simply going along with the cultural mindset of the day. We’re interested in seeing if Coca Cola’s Christmas (excuse me, HOLIDAY) marketing becomes more inclusive – featuring more brown bears and black bears. Stay tuned as Ted files a wrongful termination suit.
