The Nation has posted an interesting article on how corporate conglomerates are ganging up on on Google to use government to give the innovative company the what for. So I read this because I was curious: what is the leftist answer here? Favor the corporate conglomerate or the corporate conglomerates that are attacking the corporate conglomerate? Just put government in charlge, or the people via the markplace?
But you can read too: there is no answer.
Here is their conclusion:
As media powerhouses seek to make the new digital landscape a better environment for large advertisers, those who care about the potential of broadband to serve the public interest should be engaged in the debate. We should not leave decisions about how digital content is paid for and distributed just to Google and its ever-growing list of corporate competitors.
So what is that? A people’s movement for expropriating everyone? One wonders whether the left has anything constructive to contribute at all.
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those who care about the potential of broadband to serve the public interest should be engaged in the debate
Serve the what?
Their solution seems to be nothing less than upholding democracy at all costs.
“just to Google and its ever-growing list of corporate competitors”
I think this is taking the concept of shared monopoly to a new extreme.
CC
So what is that? A people’s movement for expropriating everyone?
Everybody Belongs to Everybody Else, remember?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
The Left has nothing to contribute… they were too busy planning Utopia through mass robbery.
One wonders whether the left has anything constructive to contribute at all.
Actually, no, Jeffrey, I haven’t wondered that in a long time.
So no matter how many competitors rise up and compete with each other to offer the public better prices and service, at least we know that none of them can be trusted to offer the public better prices and service!
No, you see, the “public interest” isn’t served by serving customers with competition, quality, and lower prices–it’s served by paying lip service to leftest ideals that they try to force upon the consumers through government intervention.
*leftist, not “leftest”. Oops. But maybe we could smuggle in “leftest” somewhere…
Echoing George Gaskell, the conclusion contains a key phrase “public interest”, which methodological individualism and praxeology demonstrate is a sterile concept. There is no public interest, only the interests of individuals. In practice, the public interest ends up being defined by the political apparatus.
If policy types desire to contribute something constructive, they should acknowledge the overriding importance of private property rights to a free and prosperous society, actually to the existence civilization itself.
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