@Chris
Thank you for your thought provoking comment.
Disruptive tech, Uber and Facebook, Silicone Valley. Disruptive tech means simply a change of platform, an evolution in communication like the telegraph and telephone, not to speak of radio and television! Uber is a taxi company not a ‘ride hailing service’ as the Financial Times ‘reporters’ would have it . And the state, for want of a better descriptor, has the duty of protecting its citizens by regulating them! And Facebook, an electronic medium, supplies news to its members, it is a public site and as such it should be governed as television and radio. The FCC set those regulations long ago, and have since been ignored, or better yet betrayed! Look to its recent decision of the de-regulation Internet! The Neo-Liberal dispensation is about the Free Market Lie, reiterated at this publication without surcease.
Your point on the Silicone Valley and its Prophets is well taken : look to Mr. Zuckerberg’s recent ‘tour’, a reported in the pages of the Financial Times:
Mark Zuckerberg sounded a warning on Friday about the social and political fragmentation caused by America’s opioid crisis, as he ended a nationwide tour to understand the forces that had put Donald Trump in the White House. At one point the Facebook chief executive officer choked up as he talked about the effects of opioid addiction, adding: “This stuff is really upsetting to talk about.” His comments followed a year in which he had promised to visit all corners of the US to get out of his normal “bubble”. The well-publicised visits around the country prompted speculation that Mr Zuckerberg was considering a future presidential bid, and while he has said he is not planning a run, he has not explicitly ruled it out in future. In a discussion at the University of Kansas on Friday, the Facebook boss offered what amounted to a “State of the Union” commentary on what he had discovered about social conditions in the US. Besides the devastating impact of the opioid epidemic — which he described as the single biggest surprise — he also highlighted the lost jobs and uncertainty caused by technology and free trade. Referring to the opioid crisis, he said: “One of the things that struck me, that I don’t think we all fully internalise, is how this epidemic has affected people’s attitudes more broadly on policy issues.” The effects of watching people they know succumb to addiction had made many Americans more fearful about crime and supporters of stronger border defences to stop drugs to come into the country, he suggested. Meanwhile, referring to the impact of technological advances, he said: “We’re also starting to see they’ve left a lot of people behind. There’s a big gap in the country, and it’s getting bigger . . . I think that’s at the heart of a lot of the politically divisive debates that we have.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8936e254-c645-11e7-a1d2-6786f39ef675
Mr. Zuckerberg is, to put it with as much ‘charity’ as I am capable, a political naif or Corporatist knave? Who indeed thinks himself as the Prophet of the enlightened New Electronic Age ! One has a nostalgia for the days of Bernard Baruch and his park bench!
Regards & Merry Christmas
StephenKMackSD
StephenKMackSD's Blog 