There's something remarkably phony on the front page of every Washington Post proclaiming their motto, "Democracy Dies in Darkness." A new investigative report from Reuters found that the Post's owners at Amazon are partners in a propaganda project with Communist China.
Amazon and the Washington Post are both owned by the same Chinese Communist supporting billionaire, Jeff Bezos. Every dollar you spend at Amazon goes to make the Chinese Communist Party stronger.
Why should only bold looters have all the fun and profit?
U.S.—Amazon is taking a giant leap towards greater equity with the addition of a brand new "Loot" function. Customers will have the option of proceeding to the checkout to pay normally, or clicking the "LOOT IT!" button for social justice.
"If a looter is too timid to smash a window in person, or just too lazy to go outside, we should not be suppressing their important voice by preventing them from looting," said outgoing CEO Jeff Bezos. "We are proud to announce our new app: Amazon Loot."
Customers who select the "LOOT IT" option will be given a list of injustices and microaggressions they can select from that would justify their looting. Items will be promptly shipped in 1 day, just like Amazon Prime items.
“Amazon really feels for all the people in this country who are shy or live far away from the prime looting locations of urban centers,” said Bezos. “We are proud to be expanding looting access to more people than ever. Say it with me-- looting is a human right. Period!"
Amazon clarified that they will not be paying the manufacturers for looted merchandise, but since all makers have insurance this will not be a problem.
Amazon is refusing to publish many reviews and ratings of the No. 1 best-selling “Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court,” according to multiple reports from readers who purchased the book directly from Amazon.
Amazon was about to deliver thousands of new jobs to New Yorkers, and billions of dollars in tax revenue to the city’s coffers — but don’t you worry, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proudly helped put a stop to all that. In flyover country, we’re a bit confused about why someone might not actually want all those jobs and all those billions for their constituents …Here’s the thing about the Postmodern Left: They don’t give a damn about jobs, wages, or really even any particular government program or Green New Deal or Five-Year Plan, or whatever it is they’re peddling this week. They’re just cynically cashing in on the system they pretend to disparage and despise. (Actually, the despisement is real.)AOC is an excellent case in point. She enjoyed a privileged upbringing, was awarded a prestigious credential (I refuse to say she “earned a degree”) by a famous school, enjoyed her mid-20s living the bohemian life, saw her chance to become famous — and leapt at it at once.Courtesy of the voters of her district, AOC has a good-paying job, one with fewer actual responsibilities than her prior bartending gig. Now that she’s on board the Fame Train, she might never have to provide an honest service or produce a useful product for the rest of her life.…Multiply this hundreds (at least) of times, with various “progressive” men and woman holding office around the country, and the result is the — dare I say it? — deplorable, irredeemable state of our local, state, and federal governments.
“The key to competitive markets is that no one entity has too much control of the marketplace,” he says, adding that no other company has violated anti-trust over the past 100 years as Amazon and its ilk. Bezos’ recent support for a universal basic income is alarming, Galloway writes, because it means he sees a near future in which Big Tech permanently puts people out of work.
“Ma Bell couldn’t have been easy to break up, and we unleashed 30 years of incredible innovation,” Galloway says. “Teddy Roosevelt broke up the railroads. If the Department of Justice hadn’t moved in on Microsoft [in 1998], do you think we would have Google? We don’t break companies up because they’re evil or take jobs or don’t pay taxes. We do it because it’s time.”
That influence comes in part from data. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and similar companies are “data-opolies.” By that I mean companies that control a key platform which, like a coral reef, attracts to its ecosystem users, sellers, advertisers, software developers, apps, and accessory makers. Apple and Google, for example, each control a popular mobile phone operating system platform (and key apps on that platform), Amazon controls the largest online merchant platform, and Facebook controls the largest social network platform. Through their leading platforms, a significant volume and variety of personal data flows. The velocity in acquiring and exploiting this personal data can help these companies obtain significant market power.
Is it OK for a few firms to possess so much data and thereby wield so much power? In the U.S., at least, antitrust officials so far seem ambivalent about these data-opolies. They’re free, the thinking goes, so what’s the harm? But that reasoning is misguided. Data-opolies pose tremendous risks, for consumers, workers, competition, and the overall health of our democracy. Here’s why.
Economic power often translates into political power. Unlike earlier monopolies, data-opolies, given how they interact with individuals, possess a more powerful tool: namely, the ability to affect the public debate and our perception of right and wrong.
Many people now receive their news from social media platforms. But the news isn’t just passively transmitted. Data-opolies can affect how we feel and think. Facebook, for example, in an “emotional contagion” study, manipulated 689,003 users’ emotions by altering their news feed. Other risks of this sort include:
Bias. In filtering the information we receive based on our preferences, data-opolies can reduce the viewpoints we receive, thereby leading to “echo chambers” and “filter bubbles.”
Censorship. Data-opolies, through their platform, can control or block content that users receive, and enforce governmental censorship of political or religious information.
Manipulation. Data-opolies can promote stories that further their particular business or political interests, instead of their relevance or quality.
In terms of stock market value, the top five companies worldwide are the technology giants Apple, Alphabet (Google’s corporate parent), Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. In the technology industry, these firms—although hardly interchangeable—are the new Robber Barons.Apple’s famously based its business model on a “closed platform,” compelling users to accede to its vertical integration of software, parts, apps, and iTunes inventory. Amazon, with sales exceeding its 12 largest online competitors combined, captures 46 percent of all online shopping. Aggressive pricing—to the extent of consistently sacrificing profitability—and sharp competitive practices such as below-cost pricing of ebooks to promote its Kindle sales have enabled Amazon to swamp its competitors in an expanding array of product lines.Regardless of profitability, investors value these firms primarily because of their sheer scale—market dominance within the relevant segments. Uber and Tesla, each with a market capitalization exceeding General Motors, have never earned even a single penny of profit, defying traditional models of valuation. Investors presumably anticipate that monopoly (or near-monopoly) status will eventually yield monopoly profits.And how have the new Robber Barons been behaving with their sky-high market valuations, overwhelming market shares, and hoards of cash? In a word, poorly. If actions were words, they would be parroting Vanderbilt’s infamous declaration.Amid great controversy, Google summarily fired an engineer, James Damore, for thoughtfully questioning the assumptions of the company’s diversity policies. More recently, Google appeared to direct the dismissal of a scholar from the New America Foundation, a progressive Washington think tank backed by Google, for praising fines levied against the company by European regulators for antitrust violations. These are the actions of an intolerant bully.In our digital world, the Internet and websites have become the indispensable medium for both commerce and political expression, serving as the modern equivalent of the printing press, Yellow Pages, mail delivery, checking account, and public library—combined. Companies servicing the Internet—and especially search engines—are de facto public utilities, with an obligation to operate fairly, responsibly, and without viewpoint discrimination. Unfortunately, the new Robber Barons have fallen appallingly short of this ideal.For example, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have been accused of censoring users’ posts; Google (through its ad placement service) has bullied conservative websites to alter their content or face financial retribution; online payment facilitator PayPal and domain administrator GoDaddy have banished or withdrawn funding services for websites whose content they disapprove of; and Google has reportedly skewed search results to omit references objectionable to certain Islamic organizations.Most ominously of all, as reported by Paula Bolyard in PJ Media, Google is working with a coalition of liberal groups—including the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center—to monitor conservative websites for “hate events.” In reality, they’re policing expression of views they find disagreeable, such as opposition to the LGBT agenda, criticism of radical Islam, or support for more stringent immigration controls. The goal is to blacklist “offensive” sites, smear them as “hate groups,” and ultimately to deny them access to digital advertisers, online donations, domain registrars, or similar tech support necessary for sites to function. In other words, Google is conspiring with Left-wing activists to suppress their political opponents.‘Regulate Them Into Submission’With the unprecedented ability to control the content and operation of websites, a handful of tech companies wield greater power than governments do, with little transparency and no accountability. This astonishing concentration of power should concern all citizens, regardless of political persuasion. Yet, with a few exceptions, liberals have been strangely quiet. The reason is obvious: The Left has given the new Robber Barons a pass, because they share a Progressive political agenda, as reflected by Apple’s $1 million donation to the SPLC, and the hyper-partisan direction of the Washington Post since its purchase by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.Should conservatives, blinded by their allegiance to the free market, condone this partisan perfidy? Increasingly, commentators on the Right recommend treating Silicon Valley behemoths as the monopolies they are and, in Kurt Schlichter’s words, either break them up or “regulate them into submission.” President Theodore Roosevelt earned the nickname “trustbuster” for breaking up James J. Hill’s and J. P. Morgan’s notorious railroad monopoly, the Northern Securities Company. In the same vein, Attorney General Jeff Sessions should investigate the nefarious conduct of the new Robber Barons.Silicon Valley’s leftist business leaders have a peculiar notion of “creative destruction”; rather than rendering prior paradigms obsolete, they apparently seek to eliminate free speech instead.
I see one logical solution to the dilemma Amazon has created: If the masses can afford environmentally friendly and cruelty-free food, then environmentally reckless and cruelty-full food must be priced high and sought after by the elite.Former Whole Foods shoppers must now seek out expensive cuts of animal-welfare-ignored beef, fatty and guaranteed to come from a cow that was killed in a most merciless way. (Foodies will latch onto the belief that terror promotes better marbling.)Overpriced produce will be stolen from local farmers and then sprayed with fresh pesticides. All baked goods will be rolled in nuts and injected with other potential allergens.The new go-to store for food-related status signaling will be called Cruel Foods. Every customer who walks in will be shot in the face with a gluten cannon, and all purchases will be packed into used petroleum barrels that are carried to your car by underpaid orphaned baby seals.It didn't have to be this way. But Amazon is taking away the one thing Whole Foods shoppers loved most — prohibitively expensive food that made them feel morally superior.So now the tables must turn. Much like heads will turn when you open up an oil-caked barrel from Cruel Foods and pull out an expensive and uniquely loathsome lunch — poached salmon farmed by drunkards and beaten to death with a loaf of week-old Wonder Bread.It will taste terrible and break the bank. But when, once-proud Whole Foods shoppers, has that ever mattered?
