socialism – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Dumb GOP Propaganda Long Ago Conflated Essential Infrastructure With ‘Socialism’

from the absolutely-everything-I-don't-like-is-radical-socialism dept

There’s a routine assumption that U.S. partisan division is something that’s just inherent in the American DNA. In reality, the nation’s divisions are routinely and intentionally cultivated and encouraged by powerful and wealthy individuals and corporations to stall consensus and reform. Both parties are culpable, though it’s the GOP that has perfected the tactic as an art form.

Take broadband for example. A bipartisan majority of Americans hate Comcast or their local cable company and support any efforts to challenge that monopoly power. But any time anybody attempts to do absolutely anything to challenge that power you’ll notice a lot of rhetoric about how those efforts are “socialism,” “government run amok,” or “radically partisan.”

It doesn’t matter what we’re doing to hold telecom monopolies accountable. It could be encouraging net neutrality, blocking problematic mergers, holding AT&T accountable for fraud… it’s all very quickly framed through a partisan lens despite the fact it’s not at all actually partisan, and a significant bipartisan majority of Americans support the efforts to try something smarter and better.

The same dumb gamesmanship infects our national conversations about improving our failing infrastructure. Everybody wants their roads, bridges, airports, and utilities to function well, but key corporations often aren’t as keen. Comcast doesn’t want increased broadband competition. Oil giants don’t much care for solar power. The auto industry doesn’t much care for mass transit.

So again, they infect the discourse with claims that absolutely any effort to try and improve anything is somehow radically political. Corporate giants (see again AT&T and Comcast) prey on partisan disdain for taxation (despite they themselves being a massive beneficiary of wasteful taxpayer subsidization). They suggest that policies common across the world are themselves somehow partisan and radical.

And it almost always works, and has worked for the better part of fifty years. The GOP in particular has long been a useful marionette in this little game we play, and did so once again in the wake of the infrastructure bill — using partisan division to sow disdain among their base, while simultaneously taking credit for the very real improvements the bill will bring to the everyday lives of their constituents.

From Ted Cruz to Ron DeSantis, a vast majority of the GOP opposed and maligned the bill, then turned right around and took direct credit with their constituents for the benefits the bills created. In this way, they get to have their cake and eat it too; they get to rile up their base with sordid tales of radical “left wing” government policy (like, gasp, essential bridge repair), yet simultaneously benefit from the very obvious benefits the legislation transferred to real Americans.

It’s idiotic but effective artifice. The GOP didn’t just vote against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, they used its passage to malign their political opponents, rile up the base, agitate and distract the public, and generally urinate in the discourse pool. Then they turned right around and wrote letters begging the Biden administration for their share of the essential funding for key projects:

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, a leading Biden critic who explained his vote against what he called a “phony” infrastructure bill by issuing a statement that “this bill only serves to advance the America Last’s socialist agenda, while completely lacking fiscal responsibility,” wrote three separate letters between March and July advocating for projects in his district. They’d enhance quality of life, Gosar wrote. They’d ease congestion and boost the economy. They’d alleviate bottlenecks and improve rural living conditions.

On one hand, their covert approval of the infrastructure bills still result in better outcomes for the constituents (the broadband bill alone is going to deliver more than $50 billion in improved service across the country). But the bad faith bullshit employed with the other hand creates untold damage in terms of trust in government, belief in policy, and any effort to actually get anything done.

It’s all an extension of the propaganda and culture war gibberish that has become a cornerstone of GOP power. All promoted by a AM radio/Fox News/Sinclair/YouTube propaganda apparatus it took the GOP and major corporations the better part of the last forty years to build. That, in turn, is an extension of corporate power, and its entire function is to agitate the public, sow distrust, and erode meaningful consensus and reform on the most foundational of issues that actually have widespread support.

And you see its “success” absolutely everywhere you look in policy. To the point where words like “socialism” have lost all coherent meaning. What you won’t see as much of are intelligent solutions to any of it. In large part because the dysfunction remains immensely profitable.

Filed Under: airports, broadband, disinformation, hypcorisy, infrastructure, mass transit, propaganda, socialism

Rupert Murdoch Admits, Once Again, He Can't Make Money Online — Begs Facebook To Just Give Him Money

from the that's-not-a-business-model dept

There’s no denying that Rupert Murdoch built up quite a media empire over the decades — but that was almost all entirely focused on newspaper and pay TV. While he’s spent the past few decades trying to do stuff on the internet, he has an impressively long list of failures over the years. There are many stories of him buying internet properties (Delphi, MySpace, Photobucket) or starting them himself (iGuide, Fox Interactive, The Daily) and driving them into the ground (or just flopping right out of the gate). While his willingness to embrace the internet early and to try things is to be commended, his regular failures to make his internet ventures successful has pretty clearly soured him on the internet entirely over the years.

Indeed, over the past few years, Murdoch or Murdoch surrogates (frequently News Corp’s CEO Robert Thomson) have bashed the internet at every opportunity, no matter how ridiculous. Almost all of these complaints can be summed up simply: big internet companies are making money and News Corp. isn’t — and therefore the problem is with those other companies which should be forced to give News Corp. money.

A few years back, I ended up at a small media conference where Rupert’s son James Murdoch spoke at great length about his plans for News Corps’ internet business — and what struck me was that he was almost 100% focused on copying the pay TV model. This wasn’t a huge surprise — I think at the time he was running Sky TV — but it shocked me that he appeared to think through force of will he could turn the internet into a walled garden a la cable and satellite TV systems. Not surprisingly, Rupert is thinking along similar lines, and earlier this week released a bizarre and silly statement saying Facebook should start paying news sites “carriage fees” a la cable companies:

The time has come to consider a different route. If Facebook wants to recognize ?trusted? publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies. The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services. Carriage payments would have a minor impact on Facebook?s profits but a major impact on the prospects for publishers and journalists.

We’ve seen this kind of thinking many times before. First the argument was used against Craigslist. Then Google. And now, apparently, Facebook. The short version is “these internet companies are making money, we news companies aren’t — ergo, the successful internet companies should be paying the failing news companies.” For someone who claims to be a died-in-the-wool free market capitalism supporter and who insists that socialism is “immoral,” I can’t help but note that this appears to be Rupert Murdoch asking for successful companies to subsidize his failing companies in the interest of “social value.”

Indeed, contrast his begging Facebook for handouts with his pro-capitalism speech from a few years ago. In it, he notes that “to succeed, you have to produce something that other people are willing to pay for.” And that’s just the thing, Rupert, the market dynamics here say that no one is willing to pay to “carry” your news. Tony Haile, the former CEO of Chartbeat and the founder of a new company Skroll that is working on media business models (and, randomly, who I met at that very same conference where James Murdoch spouted his nonsense) has laid out a pretty clear explanation for why the carriage fee model doesn’t make any sense at all on the internet. The market dynamics are totally different — the leverage and value positions of the players are different, the value to the end users is different and the market barriers to entry are totally different, meaning a totally different competitive market.

Indeed, the internet and Murdoch’s reaction to it are truly fascinating, as they strip away The Emperor’s New Clothes concerning Murdoch’s supposed support of free market capitalism. He claims to be in favor of it when it helps him to accumulate hoards of cash, but as soon as he can’t build a successful competitive business, he suddenly resorts to the “immoral” position he supposedly loathes — demanding that the other successful operations just fork over money to him because he (claims he) provides tremendous social value.

There are, of course, plenty of discussions to be had about media business models — and the power that companies like Google and Facebook hold. But to merely demand they hand over “carriage fees” just because makes no sense. It’s a weak demand from someone who failed in the market and has no desire to truly innovate or compete. It ignores, too, that such a setup would only entrench existing players and harm upstarts and competitors. The whole thing is quite silly — but also quite incredible for what it truly reveals about Murdoch’s actual feelings for a free market when he’s on the losing end of one.

Filed Under: business models, cable tv, capitalism, carriage fees, competition, free market, james murdoch, journalism, news, rupert murdoch, socialism, tony haile
Companies: facebook, news corp

Techdirt Podcast Episode 90: Is Capitalism Over?

from the not-exactly... dept

As technology ushers more and more things towards the realm of “post-scarcity”, an inevitable conversation has arisen around the very roots of capitalism and what this rapid change means for our economic systems at the most fundamental levels. But the answer is far from simple — is capitalism dying? Can it evolve? Is the whole question being framed incorrectly? This week, we discuss the notion of a post-capitalist world, what it might look like, and how close it actually is.

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Filed Under: capitalism, communism, economics, podcast, scarcity, socialism

Free Is Not Socialism

from the this-again dept

I’ve had a browser open with a two part series from the site “e-consultancy” for the better part of a month, debating whether or not it’s even worth going through this battle again — but it seems worth it to clear up some serious misconceptions. The first article decries “digital socialism” and the second part goes after the “tyranny of the consumer.” This, by itself, seems contradictory. The capitalist free market works thanks to the tyranny of the consumer. That is, the entire reason why the free market works is because consumers have power to move to a competitor — and that keeps producers in-line. Complaining about consumers getting their way is a rejection of capitalism and the free market, not support for it.

The complaint about “socialism” is even more confusing. The writer confuses the fact that anyone can own a copy of a non-rivalrous, non-excludable good with “collective ownership.” That’s quite wrong. Socialism is, indeed, about collective ownership of a single good — with multiple folks sharing ownership of a single scarce good. What people are talking about when they discuss digital content going free is not collective ownership, but how supply is infinite such that everyone can own their own copy. It’s the opposite of socialism or collective ownership. It’s very much about allowing personal property to thrive. The article also makes the odd (and incorrect) claim that those supporting such freeing up of digital content are, like “socialists” asking for government interference in the market. Amusingly, just a few paragraphs after making this claim, the writer goes through the history of intellectual property in the US, detailing exactly how intellectual property is government interference in the market.

It never ceases to amaze me that people claim that the free market economics we describe is somehow “socialist,” when the system they support is a system of government-granted monopolies managed through a centralized government body. How is that possibly more capitalist than actually letting the free market come up with reasonable business models that don’t rely on governments defining the winning business model?

Filed Under: capitalism, digital content, economics, free markets, socialism