Apparently in addition to socialism and open borders, the global rich also have universal suffrage.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/18/technology/google-eu-fine-android/index.html

Damn, Google was hit with a $5bn fine. Still not enough, but it's still good to see bigger numbers.

Ironically, the suit is pretty dang similar to United States v. Microsoft Corp.

On a side note, is anyone else glad the era of Google fanboying is over? I remember circa 2011 there was constant praise given to Google, people thought of them as some kind of benevolent tech giant.

One of Scott Galloway's predictions at the beginning of 2018 was that this would be a big year of antitrust action against the big tech companies (he also predicted that the EU would be more aggressive about it than the US).

To put the $5bn into perspective, Google's revenue in 1st quarter 2018 was about $32bn. I might be wrong, but that seems like a real substantive penalty, and much more than a symbolic slap on the wrist.

I'm still not sure how much the recent turn in how America sees the tech industry is related to its (peripheral) relation to the Trump-Russia scandal. What would be the position of tech in society if HRC had won? Tech strongly supported Hillary Clinton's campaign with massive donations. She was their guy. And would we have Cheryl Sandberg as the Sec of the Treasury (there was plenty of chatter about it)? It's hard to imagine that talk about bringing an antitrust case against any of the big tech companies would be in the ether in the same way it has been in the past year or so.

I read somewhere that one reason why the show Silicon Valley has become less satisfying is because American attitudes around tech have shifted. When the show first released, one reason why it was so refreshing was because, in general, Americans had enormous respect for and adulated Silicon Valley reflexively: it was exhilarating to make fun of something that was so admired. But now that Silicon Valley's darker side has been revealed, playfully making fun of it doesn't seem as fitting. It seems more like making light of something that feels more threatening.

Some pretty crazy remarks from the Director of National Intelligence:



https://www.hudson.org/research/14456-full-transcript-dialogues-on-american-foreign-policy-and-world-affairs-director-of-national-intelligence-dan-coats-and-walter-russell-mead

Jon and/or Reid, do you guys think we've had any other fascistic or fascist presidents in the past few decades?

woah https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1019983840075501568

Sweden, of all places. Once a haven of tolerance, just like The Netherlands always were.

It was heartwarming to see Sweden take in massive amounts of refugees. They put the rest of Europe to shame. It's sad to see this is the reward for their kindness.

So here's an idea: if you decide to become a public servant by running for public office, your own business interests as a private citizen become secondary to your duty to the country. In other words, any president should find a way to keep their businesses running even after releasing their tax returns. The idea that anybody would be privileged enough to both be the POTUS and continue to keep their own financial mystery a secret seems highly questionable to me.

They made Jimmy Carter sell his family peanut farm.

Exactly! Because he was to be a public servant, and put aside his own personal interests in business, whatever they may be. Thanks for sharing that example, which I hadn't known about.

I would be curious to know if Trump did any of the things that the NYT Editorial Board recommended would be proper, back in November 2016:

[quote=The New York Times Editorial Board]
Donald Trump refused to release his income tax returns during the campaign and now seems determined to lug every piece of financial baggage connected to his hotels, golf courses and other businesses into the White House. Unless he takes the sorts of common-sense steps past presidents have relied on to preserve the public trust, Americans will never know for certain if his actions in office are for the public good or his family’s private gain.

Presidents are not subject to most federal ethics and conflict-of-interest laws, so Mr. Trump won’t be required to sell or give up control of his companies when he takes office in January. In the recent past, this hasn’t been a problem, because presidents by tradition put their assets — stocks, bonds and real estate — into blind trusts, run by independent managers, to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Mr. Trump, however, says that he intends to give control of the Trump Organization and the more than 500 limited liability companies through which he owns his assets to three of his adult children — Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka. But this won’t dissociate him from his businesses; members of his family aren’t independent from him. And they are already intimately involved in his transition team. On Monday, CBS News reported that the transition team was looking into the possibility of seeking top-level security clearances for the Trump children, but Mr. Trump tweeted Wednesday that he was not seeking such security clearances for them.

Even if he no longer manages his businesses directly, Mr. Trump will continue to own them and his family will be involved in deals, both foreign and domestic, to develop real estate projects or license his brand. He will still be aware of the existence of his business interests and how his actions as president will affect them. The conflicts between his private interests and his public role will be impossible to untangle.

For example, the profitability of his investments in the Middle East, India, Turkey, the former Soviet republics and elsewhere could put his financial interests directly at odds with American foreign policy, whether it takes the form of sanctions against those governments or American investment and aid deals. In such situations, will he act to protect or grow his family’s assets or advance the interests of the country? His businesses currently owe hundreds of millions of dollars to Deutsche Bank, which is negotiating a multibillion-dollar mortgage settlement with the Department of Justice. How would the public know if he or his Justice Department softened its stance because it involved a bank to which he owes money, or whether that bank cut him a sweetheart deal in hopes of currying favor?

Mr. Trump will also face numerous conflicts with enforcement of domestic laws and regulations. For instance, the people he appoints to the National Labor Relations Board will be in charge of investigating complaints by workers at his hotels and golf courses. The board on Nov. 3 ordered the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas to bargain with a union representing its housekeeping staff, maintenance workers and other employees. Will a board made up of Trump appointees choose to enforce similar decisions? Will the Justice Department be willing to investigate and bring cases against his businesses for, say, racially discriminatory actions? The fact is, any decision by the labor board — or by any agency in the Trump administration — that affects the Trump businesses would be tainted by a conflict of interest.

When Jimmy Carter became president, he put his relatively simple businesses — a peanut farm and warehouse — into a trust that gave an independent trustee the discretion to sell the warehouse and to rent out the farm without Mr. Carter’s approval. An arrangement like that might serve the public interest in Mr. Trump’s case. But the cleanest path out of Mr. Trump’s tangle of conflicts would be for him to sell his holdings and put the proceeds into a blind trust operated by independent managers.

Divesting would also ensure that Mr. Trump doesn’t violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits American officials from receiving any gifts or income from foreign governments without permission from Congress. Mr. Trump has done deals in other countries that involve foreign governments or individuals with links to those governments. But we don’t know the full nature of those business agreements and whether Mr. Trump receives income or shares in profits from companies that have ties to foreign governments, because he refuses to release his tax returns.

It’s very unlikely Mr. Trump will sell his businesses or put them into a blind trust. But that doesn’t mean that Congress, the press and the public should sit by and allow his conflicts of interest to taint the next four years. Democrats and Republicans alike should raise their voices on a matter that is so deeply connected to the integrity of government. On Monday, Representative Elijah Cummings Democrat of Maryland asked the House Oversight Committee to review the president-elect’s financial affairs. Mr. Trump’s tax returns, debts and connections to foreign governments and business partners should all be subject to a thorough review by Congress.

Last January, Mr. Trump said: “If I become president, I couldn’t care less about my company. It’s peanuts. I want to make America rich again and to make America great again.” If he meant what he said, selling his businesses should be an easy call.
[/quote]

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/opinion/what-trump-can-do-to-eliminate-his-conflicts-of-interest.html

I think he effectively put Eric and Donald Jr in charge of his assets and promised they wouldn't talk to him about the business.

But don't his sons by definition have interests that are congruent with his own? This doesn't even gives the illusion of being as good as divesting his assets to some kind of blind trust. And for all we know, he could have already communicated some kind of secret (or not so secret) signal for them to return favors to Russia or something.

Or, you know, he could just lie, like he always does.

I might not be getting this exactly right. But I think the idea was that his assets would be in a "blind trust," by which he meant his sons were going to take care of the business, and they were going to be in NY and he was going to be in DC, which meant there was going to be distance between them, and they were going to promise really really hard not to talk about business. I might not be getting the details right, but the press conference he did during the interregnum period was dedicated to this issue... you can go back and watch it.

Obviously, it doesn't hold up. His sons visit DC all the time, and when they travel the world on business on behalf of the Trump Organization, they receive security detail paid for by US tax dollars. Yeah. He isn't only shameless. He actively draws attention to the fact that he breaks that rules, and that everyone is powerless to stop him. It's his MO.

so by your logic people should have to sell their children before going into public service

makes sense, we could compost them

Spook do you have internet in your house yet?

I mean, I could think of worse things than if Joe Manchin's daughter got composted.

yeah get ready for comment quality to drop further

on the other hand, you might get some vaporwave tracks

Maybe the right answer to this problem is to stop electing ****ty corrupt businessmen to public service??? :shrug:

for reals, we should have elected that ****ty corrupt businesswoman instead

Maybe the fact that you reflexively assume that's the extent of your choices is the root of a lot of your problems??? :shrug:

In an alternate universe, 2016 was Lindsey Graham vs Bernie Sanders but sure let's just sit here in our worst possible universe and assume whenever someone tells you "stop electing business *******s" he was telling you to vote for some other business ******* who lost. That's a healthy and normal way to view the world.

This American binary mindset **** is scary. It really is.

I don't disagree. I was being facetious (typing in lowercase with poor punctuation is massassi shorthand for non-serious statements) though the current binary institutions are so well established it would take a major shakeup (I'm talking a full on war or major catastrophe) or several generations to see them toppled.

[Also: people love to mention how ridiculous the choices in the last election were, yet the first person I ever voted for was Arnold Schwarzenegger]

And to think of all the crap that the South Park guys got for that "Douche vs Turd" episode by "jam the vote"-type people, who decried such talk as spreading cynicism and apathy.

"It doesn't matter how uneducated you are, if you don't vote then somebody else will vote for you."

On the other hand, IIRC Australia makes voting mandatory. Wonder how that's been working out for them.

Yeah but most of the time, in this timeline, that is actually what they mean. So in order for it to not be relatively useful (most of the time) we would have to get into that other timeline. I have been trying a lot of meditation techniques, and I think that a combination of haldol, ECT, and ritual magick could at least give you the experience of not being in this one.

I guess it's a very South Parky kind of cynicism, but I take a certain amount of satisfaction in the idea that it'd blow up in the face of people who are trying to guilt young people into voting. Especially since it's pretty clear that they're actually being quite cynical themselves when they try to get young people to vote, by assuming that they'd vote Democrat. But what happens when many of them vote Republican or for 3rd party candidates, because they genuinely don't care, and don't see the stakes? I think for them, who the stakes of who the president is probably are pretty similar to "I'm going to take your hot dog or your french fries, which is it going to be?"

the election was rigged tho

If the US, with its two-party system, implemented something like this, it'd probably have a moderating influence on the parties, as they'd suddenly be chasing a much larger number of votes.

But of course Australia has a multi-party system, and a pretty sophisticated voting system, though, which takes away the need for strategic voting. Like, in Israel for example, there's a multi-party system, but when you vote, you have to weigh your true preference against voting for the party that makes your vote count the most. So maybe you really want a far-left party to form the government, for instance, but you don't think they have a chance of winning, so instead you vote for a center-left party, so that at least some left-wing party will be asked to form a government. Or maybe you vote for the far-left party because that's where your convictions lie and because you want to empower that party to have more seats, and you take a gamble and hope that enough people will vote for the center-left party that they'll be asked to form a coalition.

In Australia, they get around this need for strategic voting by having people having voters provide an ordered list of their preferences instead of voting for a single candidate. I don't remember exactly how it works, but when they tally the vote, it has the effect of allowing voters to both register their true preferences, without having to worry that by doing so they're effectively wasting their vote on a candidate/party that can't win.

PR best, IRV okay, FPTP garbage for idiots


Edit because people don't just know this I guess:

In Proportional Representation (PR) you don't vote for a representative, you vote for a party. The amount of "say" each party has is proportional to the percentage of that party's popular vote. That might sound kinda crappy if you're used to democracies where you went to high school with your MP, but it's also pretty ****in pragmatic because 1.) parties are cancers that inevitably take over and destroy everything good, so you might as well design your electoral system around them, and 2.) representatives are whipped so well that who they are as a human individual is irrelevant, you might as well vote for a faceless political party because that's who's going to decide how your representative votes anyway.

The "disadvantage" of PR is that it doesn't give people from certain regions more political power. I put disadvantage in scarequotes because it's not a ****ing disadvantage.


Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is what they use in Australia. It works like this: you rank the candidates from favorite to least favorite. Then they count the votes, considering favorites only. If nobody has more than 50% of the vote, they drop the candidate with the least votes and re-count (people who rated that candidate #1 in the first round are now voting for their #2 choice). This repeats until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote.

IRV is a drop-in replacement for the FPTP, regional representative system used in the US and others. It makes it very safe to vote for a third party candidate. The disadvantage is that it doesn't make a vote cast in Utah not worth, like, 500 votes in California. But whatever.


First Past the Post (FPTP) is absolute trash. It's the **** moron voting system used in the United States and pretty much every country that uses the Westminster system, because I guess being ****ing idiots is endemic to that drizzly happy slap hellhole. You vote for a representative. Whoever gets the most votes wins. It turns political engagement into a ****ing nightmare because a well-populated field of qualified candidates is actually a bad thing because it automatically makes the one crazy person win.

Either of the first two systems would have stopped Donald Trump from ever becoming US president.

Alternatively, FPTP can also have the other (sometimes unfortunate) effect of moderating the views of candidates from the two parties, when instead of trying to expand their base by appealing to the far-left or the far-right, candidates trying to pick up undecided voters in the center. That's how it worked in the 90s and the 2000s, anyway. In the 2000 election, the principal complaint about the two presidential candidates was that they were too similar.

https://unherd.com/2018/07/why-we-cant-ignore-the-working-class-identity-crisis/

I'm not opposed to the idea of regional representation at all. It strikes me as one of the great delusions of both parties right now that, because it's made the passage of ideas and goods between borders so easy, globalization has made place irrelevant. I think that's really wrong: place is key. We want states and districts sending politicians to Washington who will fight for the specific interests of people who live in those locations. The problem with the current balance of power isn't that small states have too much influence because all states have the same number of senators no matter how large their population; no: it's that the politicians who represent them aren't beholden to the people who elect them. It's that they're wrapped up in national discussion that has little to do with what's happening in the places that they represent.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2016/11/29/another-clinton-trump-divide-high-output-america-vs-low-output-america/





I think these two charts -- going all the way back to November 2016 -- are still the single most relevant facts of the 2016 election. Democrats have done almost nothing to address the fact that the spoils of globalization have been unequally distributed in the country geographically.

And why would they? Their entire voting base is located in cities/wealthy counties.

I mean, the single problem of American history is: how can you have one country, that is united, yet at the same time, a continental power, comprising both a vast territory and profoundly diverse populations and diverse financial interests? Sectionalism is the one recurring themes of American history, and it's threatened the integrity of the country repeatedly over the course of its history. Why do we assume that we've somehow overcome this perennial problem?

Why should the spoils of globalization be distributed geographically though? I don't mean that poor counties should be left to die on the vine, but only to point out how (potentially) misleading it could be for that chart to be chopping up the red part by county rather than population. In other words, why did they measure share of the GDP per county rather than share of GDP per capita? Some of those counties are pretty sparsely populated, so their low contribution to the GDP is hardly a surprise.

On the other hand, don't the sparsely populated counties need more investment, precisely because of their geography? I.e., per capita, they are going to require longer roads and other infrastructure.

I mean in theory, there is some sense that a two-party system like ours might pump the 'forgotten' counties full of investment every other election cycle, but has that happened under Trump?