Month: September 2015

You Keep Using That Word: Monopoly Edition

you-keep-using-that-word

Monopoly is one of those words that gets thrown around too loosely. The word monopoly means, “exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.” So monopoly actually defines a condition that only exists under government interventionism. But the word, like so many other words, has been twisted by the State. Today monopoly implies any company that has become extremely large. Case in point, Google:

BRUSSELS — European Union lawmakers have overwhelmingly backed a motion urging antitrust regulators to break up Google. The non-binding resolution approved Thursday by the European Parliament is the strongest public signal yet of Europe’s concern with the growing power of U.S. tech giants. The resolution is a largely symbolic protest vote without immediate impact. But it was approved with a large majority — 384 votes to 174, with 56 abstentions — showing widespread political backing. Andreas Schwab, German conservative lawmaker and co-sponsor of the bill, said it was a political signal to the European Commission, which is tasked with ensuring a level playing field for business across the 28-country bloc. “Monopolies in whatever market have never been useful, neither for consumers nor for the companies,” he said. Google declined to comment.

Google isn’t a monopoly. In fact it’s not even close to being one. Every single product and service it provides is also provided by others. I’m proof of this since I use very few Google products or services. Most of my searching is done using DuckDuckGo. My e-mail is handled by my server sitting in my dwelling. My phone is manufactured by Apple and runs iOS. None of my laptops are Chromebooks.

The only Google services I really utilize are Google Maps and YouTube. I use Google Maps because I find the alternatives provided by Microsoft and Apple lackluster and choose YouTube because it has more content I’m looking for than Vimeo. But in both cases you’ll notice I mentioned competitors that exist.

If you want an actual example of a monopoly look up Ma Systems. Ma Bell was a company that enjoyed a government granted monopoly over telecommunications. But outside of government intervention in the marketplace you’re going to be hard pressed to find an actual monopoly so you may want to stop throwing that word around so willy nilly.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong

In addition to war being immoral I also disagree with the United States’ involvement in the Middle East on practical grounds. The biggest one being the fact that nobody in the United States government seems to have a goddamn clue of what they’re doing. I get the feeling that the top brass and other people “in the know” are throwing darts at a dartboard of ideas and going with whatever one they hit. That can be the only explanation for suggesting something like this:

The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast.

The circle of unintended consequences continues! Back in the day the United States government funded and armed al Qaeda because it was fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After the Soviet Union ceased being a thing al Qaeda eventually turned its sights on the United States and flew a few planes into a few buildings. This resulted in the United States basically bombing everybody in the Middle East as it pursued its revenge. Now things are looping back to the beginning where people “in the know” are seriously arguing that the United States needs to fund and arm al Qaeda.

I like to say the government is incompetent at everything it does except wield violence but this kind of shit makes me think it’s event incompetent at that.

Being A Good Skeptic

I enjoy a good conspiracy theory. While I don’t subscribe to the idea that the 9/11 attack was really perpetuated by shape-shifting lizard people cleverly using high explosive and holograms I enjoy hearing about it. But I seldom enjoy the presence of hardcore conspiracy theorists. This is because of their religious belief in questioning everything.

Questioning things is a great practice but often a futile one when you don’t know what you don’t know. A classic example is the “all natural” crowd. You know the type. They can’t help but bitch about whatever you’re eating because it’s not organic, fair-trade, all natural, non-GMO, grass-fed, and locally grown. According to them all of humanity’s problems are caused by “unnatural” foods. Unnatural, in this case, means pretty much anything that has been genetically modified. Credit is deserved for not taking the statements of geneticists at face value. After all, no geneticist takes the claims of another geneticist at face value. But most of the “all natural” crowd has almost no background in genetics or biology so they tend to base their claims on pseudoscience. Because they lack a background in genetics and biology they don’t know what they don’t know.

This is a characteristic common amongst the “question everything” crowd. More often than not they lack even a basic understanding of the science behind what they’re questioning. Because of this their attempt to question everything quickly becomes an exercise in making up an alternative explanation for commonly accepted beliefs. Meaningfully questioning things requires having an understanding of the topics being questioned.

So how does one become a good skeptic? By asking meaningful questions. How does one ask meaningful questions? By researching and experimenting. If you question whether genetically modified crops cause cancer you should research biology, namely the field of genetic modification and cancer. Without that knowledge you will likely make assumptions that subject matter experts refuted ages ago.

Being skeptical is good but there’s a world of difference between somebody whose skepticism is based on a scientific understanding of the subject matter and people who just want an alternative explanation to be true so they can feel superior to all the “sheep” who are too dumb to know the truth. Be the former. If you want to question something, which you should, spend time researching it instead of parroting some bullshit vomited out by Alex Jones.

The State Has Redundancies To Protect Itself

There’s a sentiment that the proper place to fight the State’s illegal activities is in the courtroom. Sometimes this strategy seems to play out but more often than not if one court rules against the State’s power another court will reverse the decision. In this way the court system acts as a redundancy for the State to preserve its power while maintaining the illusion the people hold the power. Take the National Security Agency’s (NSA) illegal domestic spying operating as an example. In 2013 its actions were ruled illegal by a court but after a lengthy appeal process a higher court has overruled that decision:

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has overturned an injunction against the US government’s phone surveillance program. Today, the court handed down a decision in Klayman v. Obama, a lawsuit arguing that the NSA’s mass collection of phone records is unconstitutional. It found that there was not enough evidence that the lawsuit’s subjects were actually under surveillance, reversing a decision made in late 2013.

The court didn’t address whether the surveillance program was legal or constitutional. Instead, it concluded that the case’s subjects lacked standing to bring a complaint at all, because they were unable to demonstrate that they’d suffered harm. The secrecy of US surveillance programs has made it almost impossible to prove that a specific person or organization was subject to them, so Klayman and other recent cases have relied on leaked documents from Edward Snowden, particularly a court order requiring Verizon Business Services to hand over metadata on all its customers’ calls.

Isn’t it interesting how this court ruled that the plaintiff didn’t have a case because there wasn’t enough evidence to show they weren’t be spied on by a nationwide domestic surveillance apparatus? That’s a twist of logic if ever one existed. Let this be another lesson though. The state protects itself even against itself.