{"id":16277,"date":"2024-10-20T08:37:20","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T06:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/20\/as-silicon-valley-eyes-us-election-beware-elon-musk-and-the-tech-bros-with-political-nous-john-naughton\/"},"modified":"2024-10-20T08:37:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-20T06:37:20","slug":"as-silicon-valley-eyes-us-election-beware-elon-musk-and-the-tech-bros-with-political-nous-john-naughton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/20\/as-silicon-valley-eyes-us-election-beware-elon-musk-and-the-tech-bros-with-political-nous-john-naughton\/","title":{"rendered":"As Silicon Valley eyes US election, beware Elon Musk and the tech bros with political nous | John Naughton"},"content":{"rendered":"

The owner of X is just one of many who may prefer Donald Trump to greater regulation under the Democrats<\/p>\n

Way back in the 1960s \u201cthe personal is political\u201d was a powerful slogan capturing the reality of power dynamics within marriages. Today, an equally meaningful slogan might be that \u201cthe technological is political\u201d, to reflect the way that a small number of global corporations have acquired political clout within liberal democracies. If anyone doubted that, then the recent appearance<\/a> of Elon Musk alongside Donald Trump\u00a0at a rally in Pennsylvania provided useful confirmation of how technology has moved centre-stage in American politics. Musk may be a manchild with a bad tweeting habit, but he also owns the company that is providing internet connectivity to Ukrainian troops on the battlefield; and his rocket has been chosen by N<\/a><\/em>asa<\/a><\/em> to be the vehicle to land the next Americans on the moon.<\/p>\n

There was a time when the tech industry wasn\u2019t much interested in politics. It didn\u2019t need to be because politics at the time wasn\u2019t interested in it. Accordingly, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple grew to their gargantuan proportions in a remarkably permissive political environment. When democratic governments were not being dazzled by the technology, they were asleep at the wheel; and antitrust regulators had been captured by the legalistic doctrine peddled by Robert Bork<\/a> and his enablers in the University of Chicago Law School \u2013 the doctrine that there was little wrong with corporate dominance unless it was harming consumers. The test for harm was price-gouging, and since Google\u2019s and Facebook\u2019s services were \u201cfree\u201d, where was the harm, exactly? And though Amazon\u2019s products weren\u2019t free, the company was ruthlessly undercutting competitors\u2019 prices and pandering to customers\u2019 need for next-day delivery. Again: where was the harm in that?<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nThe owner of X is just one of many who may prefer Donald Trump to greater regulation under the Democrats
\nWay back in the 1960s \u201cthe personal is political\u201d was a powerful slogan capturing the reality of power dynamics within marriages. Today, an equally meaningful slogan might be that \u201cthe technological is political\u201d, to reflect the way that a small number of global corporations have acquired political clout within liberal democracies. If anyone doubted that, then the recent appearance of Elon Musk alongside Donald Trump\u00a0at a rally in Pennsylvania provided useful confirmation of how technology has moved centre-stage in American politics. Musk may be a manchild with a bad tweeting habit, but he also owns the company that is providing internet connectivity to Ukrainian troops on the battlefield; and his rocket has been chosen by Nasa to be the vehicle to land the next Americans on the moon.
\nThere was a time when the tech industry wasn\u2019t much interested in politics. It didn\u2019t need to be because politics at the time wasn\u2019t interested in it. Accordingly, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple grew to their gargantuan proportions in a remarkably permissive political environment. When democratic governments were not being dazzled by the technology, they were asleep at the wheel; and antitrust regulators had been captured by the legalistic doctrine peddled by Robert Bork and his enablers in the University of Chicago Law School \u2013 the doctrine that there was little wrong with corporate dominance unless it was harming consumers. The test for harm was price-gouging, and since Google\u2019s and Facebook\u2019s services were \u201cfree\u201d, where was the harm, exactly? And though Amazon\u2019s products weren\u2019t free, the company was ruthlessly undercutting competitors\u2019 prices and pandering to customers\u2019 need for next-day delivery. Again: where was the harm in that? Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The owner of X is just one of many who may prefer Donald Trump to greater regulation under the Democrats Way back in the 1960s \u201cthe personal is political\u201d was a powerful slogan capturing the reality of power dynamics within marriages. Today, an equally meaningful slogan might be that \u201cthe technological is political\u201d, to reflect …<\/p>\n

As Silicon Valley eyes US election, beware Elon Musk and the tech bros with political nous | John Naughton<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16277"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}