It is getting crazy out there. But there is a silver lining.
Companies have always grown, become dominant in their markets, then leaned on their sheer size to maintain supremacy, abuse their users and generally rest on their laurels. You look at any big company that is now gone, this is exactly what they did. Blockbuster is my favorite example, but the music industry did this too, and the film industry is currently going through a disruption that is the result of this mindset.
These social sites and PayPal and the like, theyre making themselves fragile against disruption by doing things like this. They're actively creating disruptive opportunities in their own industries by making this ridiculous proposition of disallowing customers the norm. They think their size can stop this disruption, just like every single dead company of the past. They're killing themselves and I for one am very excited about it.
Of course they have, do you think the government is just now getting in the business of leaning on private enterprise? You had the Big Ben system for US telephony, you had Operation Mockingbird which supposedly ended, you had many government agencies contracting with studios to produce propaganda (the most well known of these is wartime propaganda to counteract Nazi propaganda), fruit companies, oil companies, the lost goes on.
If you can influence the department that makes these decisions at <payment provider>, you've got McCarthyism-as-a-service.
For anyone who thinks that their internal thought-police department will use that power wisely, look at the diversity and inclusion dept at US medical schools that are right now trying to ban the use of terms like 'male' and 'female', which are fundamental to medical practice. There is no line that cannot be crossed, by these people, when they are allowed to define what is acceptable. And there is no gold standard method for deciding what is acceptable either. For payment systems, it should come down to this: "Is it legal?". Full stop.
I like how he calls out what is going on as Populism. Its interesting to think how a few years ago, the spectre of populism was mainly seen as a threat from the right. There was Orban, LePenn, the PIS in Poland, Bolsonaro, Trump, etc. (And to be clear, evidence supported right wing populism as a threat, although there were left wing variants too).
And then suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of a serious populist threat that is not coming from the right, but from both a one-size-fits-all technocratic front, and what some people call the woke left (personally I don't think the characterization as "left" is accurate or adds value). My point is, across some key areas, we are now in a regime where recourse to due process and liberties normally afforded to liberal democratic societies has been dropped in the name of what the (real or percieved) majority is pushing for. That is populism, that everyone agrees is bad when it runs against something they want, but that somehow people are ok with when it aligns with their desires. It's nice to see this being called out.
I'm really not a fan of cryptocurrency but yeah, this is it's ace card. It's "store of value" is absolutely terrible though. If someone pays me $10k for a used car, I know that I'll have $10k in 6 months. With bitcoin I could have $5k or less.
> If you really believe our democracy barely survived a stress test these last several years, and don’t wish to subject it to another, the last thing you should do is create hordes of desperate people, denied a voice and livelihood, and primed to be rallied to a future autocrat’s cause.
Or in other words "That's a nice democracy you have there... It would be a pity if someone came along and insurrected it."
The logic isn't necessarily wrong, but such an argument needs to be made explicit, and placed in the context of a wider strategic and moral landscape. It seems to be saying "Big platforms can do whatever they like, unless their actions are used by a potential autocrat to rally supporters", which is a position that fails to defend Freedom of Speech from either the whims of the big platforms, or the threats of the potential autocrats.
I don’t take it at all as the threat you portray it as.
Instead, it is a sage warning — I fear the man who has nothing left to lose.
Let’s be honest, our society has major cracks at the seams, and it is prudent to be worried about the ripping social fabric leading to worsening unrest, and, ultimately violence. (Apologies for the terribly mixed metaphors)
Does taking away a man's Twitter account really mean he has nothing left to lose?
I will grant you that if (or when) big platforms collude together to prevent millions of people from buying and selling, that will lead to some desperate people deciding they need to resort to violence to survive, but that's not what we've seen so far and it's not the stated goal of the big platforms.
The existing violence we saw was not a reaction to people being censored, but instead arguably a result of lies about the election spreading unimpeded due to a lack of censorship. To argue that it was censorship that triggered the problem (and that a few people losing their social media accounts justifies an insurrection) is the tail dangerously wagging the dog.
Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not pro-censorship, and I wouldn't trust big platforms to decide what the truth is, or what "dangerous ideas" need to be hidden from people. I'm just pointing out that the argument of "If you do this (technically legal) thing, you will be met with violence" is not automatically a moral or decisive one, even if it is correct.
> Does taking away a man's Twitter account really mean he has nothing left to lose?
Of course not.
The article was about shutting people out of the financial system (I acknowledge that you mention this later, albeit briefly, in your comment), which is all that my response was intended to address. It is unfortunate you chose to lead with what amounts to a strawman.
> To argue that it was censorship that triggered the problem (and that a few people losing their social media accounts justifies an insurrection) is the tail dangerously wagging the dog.
I didn't, which again sounds like a strawman. Perhaps you misunderstood my comment to be broader than it was.
> the argument of "If you do this (technically legal) thing, you will be met with violence" is not automatically a moral or decisive one, even if it is correct.
I can't parse this. What is a moral argument? Do you mean "in bad faith?" I wouldn't even equate those two concepts FWIW. An argument is correct, or it isn't. I don't assign morality to an argument itself.
If all you're saying is "shutting people out of the financial system will leave them with little choice but resorting to violence" then I probably agree with you.
The author's reference to the recent "stress test", though, and your mention of the existing "cracks at the seams", at least hinted at the position that past violence was attributable to past censorship. However, your comment didn't explicitly make that point, and the inference may only exist in my head, in which case please accept my apologies for associating you with that position.
> What is a moral argument?
I suppose what I meant was "an argument in support of a morally acceptable position". Perhaps the adjective doesn't juxtapose well with the noun, but I think there needs to be a way to condemn some arguments on moral grounds. For example, "You should commit that crime, because you'll never be caught" is not a (morally) good argument for committing a crime, even if it is factually true.
Companies have always grown, become dominant in their markets, then leaned on their sheer size to maintain supremacy, abuse their users and generally rest on their laurels. You look at any big company that is now gone, this is exactly what they did. Blockbuster is my favorite example, but the music industry did this too, and the film industry is currently going through a disruption that is the result of this mindset.
These social sites and PayPal and the like, theyre making themselves fragile against disruption by doing things like this. They're actively creating disruptive opportunities in their own industries by making this ridiculous proposition of disallowing customers the norm. They think their size can stop this disruption, just like every single dead company of the past. They're killing themselves and I for one am very excited about it.