Commentary: Generations of Distracted, Greedy Idiots: Pretended Free vs Intellectual Property: From Napster and Microsoft's Internet Explorer–to Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Beyond: Anti-Competitive Business Models that Deceive the Public, Destroy Innova…
- Updated: 2022-07-25
- By: Dr. Floyd
- Summary: Explanation of how only corruption created four key mega-companies: Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon
- Tags: big tech, antitrust, corruption, corporatocracy
Contents
- A Tale of Four Frauds
- The Case Against Intellectual Property
- The Case For Intellectual Property
- Conclusion
- Participate at Your Peril
A Tale of Four Frauds
The four castles of Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon–were all built on the precarious sands of lies, theft, and corruption. These four frauds arose not by work, much less by wit -- they each arose by slithering lies, and by illegal privileges from government.
Microsoft
Around the same time that Napster famously popularized giving away other people's property online, Microsoft went from prominence to dominance by the anti-competitive business model of monopolizing certain parts of the computer industry. Microsoft lied and thieved in the 1990s by sneaking around behind its customers' back to monopolistically forbid computer manufacturers from creating computers that could use non-Microsoft products–especially a non-Microsoft internet browser. Microsoft also anti-competitively swallowed the cost of giving away its internet browser–internet explorer–in order to collapse the profitability of the internet browsers of Microsoft's competitors, for example Opera and Netscape Navigator. Cf. United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34. (2001). Now, many people in government believe that Microsoft is "too big to fail"–or at least too politically useful to fail–and so Microsoft, though founded and funded by deception and crime, is allowed to continue a pretended dominance that arose–and survives–only by the privilege of political corruption.
Facebook lied and thieved in the 2000s, through the anti-competitive practice of collapsing its competitors by giving away a costly services for which Facebook's competitors were charging: uploading and hosting unlimited pictures and videos online. Facebook economically managed these deceptive anti-competitive giveaways by a criminal business-model of covertly stealing and selling users' data without the users' knowledge or permission. One example is how Facebook secretly trafficked its users' medical records. See Smith v. Facebook, Inc., 262 F. Supp. 3d 943 (N.D. Cal. 2017). Now, many people in government believe that Facebook is "too big to fail"–or at least too politically useful to fail–and so Facebook, though founded and funded by deception and crime, is allowed to continue a pretended dominance that arose–and survives–only by the privilege of political corruption.
Google's lies and thefts are ubiquitous and a matter of record–yet a matter of the kind of record which the tech terrorists at Google, through their carefully crafted and privileged hegemony, now systematically stuff down a worldwide memory-hole. Cf. Orwell, 1984 (1949). Now, many people in government believe that Google is "too big to fail"–or at least too politically useful to fail–and so Google, though founded and funded by deception and crime, is allowed to continue a pretended dominance that arose–and survives–only by the privilege of political corruption.
Amazon
Amazon went from industrial participation in the 1990s to industrial hegemony afterwards, because some fat lady in Seattle decided to give a twenty-year monopoly to Amazon for "inventing" the idea of paying for things online with a single click. More specifically, the fat lady forbade Barnes & Nobel from efficiently processing online payments. See Amazon, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble, Inc., 73 F.Supp.2d 1228 (1999). Then a pair of bipartisan bookworms solidified the fat lady's temporary command: ruling that it would be illegal to let anyone compete with Amazon–for two decades. See Amazon, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble, Inc., 239 F.3d 1343 (2001). Now, many people in government believe that Amazon is "too big to fail"–or at least too politically useful to fail–and so Amazon, though founded and funded by deception and crime, is allowed to continue a pretended dominance that arose–and survives–only by the privilege of political corruption.
Four Corporate Cults of Rats and Snakes
So these so-called tech-giants really arose only as the greedy, slippery beneficiaries of fraud, corruption, government overreach, and illegal monopoly. That is how they got started. But their pretended dominance continues by their current calculated participation in the systematic destruction of the right to intellectual property (IP)–a destruction that at least impedes, if not prevents, anyone from inventing or offering anything that could interrupt the hegemony enjoyed by these four corporate cults of politically privileged rats and snakes.
The Case Against Intellectual Property
Sometimes, giving away other people's intellectual property (IP) makes the IP, itself, better and more accessible to the public. For example, open access allows everyone to tinker with products and services to create derivative products and services. But other times, infringements of copyright or patent (IP theft) just makes the IP's development more risky–even too risky. Thus, sometimes IP theft worsens a product: theft reduces profits, so inventors and producers of stolen IP will invest less in costly research and development (R&D) to improve the IP, because the inventors and producers know that IP theft would simply swallow any potential profits from R&D. This is one example of how IP theft worsens products: theft creates doubt in the prospects of profit. Sometimes this doubt drives the inventors and producers into totally abandoning the IP: the IP simply ceases to exist (besides its derivative forms). Yet despite how IP theft tends to harm products' quality–even availability–still, there are those who oppose IP rights. One argument against IP rights is that IP theft's benefits outweigh the risks and costs. But the above analysis describes how that argument is weak.
The Case For Intellectual Property
IP theft is inefficient, because thieves are lazy. The truth of this shows by the habits of IP thieves. A common fantasy is that enough IP theft will eventually usher a utopia of endless stuff: everybody will have access to everything–and so everybody will help to improve, promote, and proliferate everything. But that fantasy is a delusion that ignores how IP theft causes inventors and producers to give up. Also, that fantasy is a delusion that ignores why people steal. After all, IP thieves do not aim to improve the world: their goal is simply to have more stuff–by taking stuff without paying. Thus, few ideas are as foolish as believing that IP thieves will somehow parlay their lazy, greedy theft into a commitment to improve the world. Meanwhile, if IP theft proves only a single thing: it is that IP thieves are too lazy and greedy even to pay their own way–thus, they are the last people who would ever be energetic or egalitarian enough to use ill-gotten IP in ways that are socially responsible, i.e., socially responsive and kind. So to say the least: theft is socially inefficient because thieves, by definition, are too lazy to help others.
IP theft is immoral, thus demoralizing–and thus inefficient. IP theft is socially inefficient, because thieves are lazy. But even if thieves were not lazy, still, there is no reason to believe that thieves would be better than an inventor or producer at proliferating a given piece of IP. All that is known of thieves is that they refuse to pay for things. Thus, imagine the two sides of IP theft–the benefit and the cost: the benefit of IP theft is that a lazy person gets something without paying for it; the cost is that inventors and producers–actual or potential–learn that efforts to invent or produce might lead only to lazy people taking without paying. This demoralizes actual or potential inventors and producers, which causes less to be either or both invented and produced.
Conclusion
The castles of Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon–are all built on the precarious sands of lies, theft, and corruption. These four frauds arose not by work, much less by wit: they each arose by slithering lies and by illegal privileges from government, and by the systematic theft of other people's intellectual property. These four corporate cults of rats and snakes constantly lied and cheated to get where they are–and they now lie and cheat to prevent competition. These four horseman of corporate corruption have now lulled generations of distracted idiots into believing that the four horseman give things away–when really the tech tyrants' business model is just a complicated and cowardly shell-game of lying about how they make their money.
One key consequence has arisen by this sociopolitical reality: the U.S.–and the world–has become infected with a belief in free. Now, droves of distracted idiots expect–indeed, demand–that everything can and should be free. Generations of those distracted idiots can hardly tolerate ever paying for anything. To say the absolute least: this ubiquitous greed has completely gutted entrepreneurship. Now, for every person actually trying to build or bolster a legitimate product or service–there are a thousand frantically lethargic, screen-addicted, quick-fix-obsessed, skill-less, impolite losers–whose singular goal in life is to get more stuff.
In the end, this carefully crafted worship of materialism has invited a modern era where–again, to say the least–there are unprecedented rates of poverty, misery, and indeed self-murder: both the direct self-murder of traditional suicidal, as well as the indirect suicide of coasting along through life–aimlessly and angrily just trying to get more stuff, while cheating everyone, everywhere, all the the time, about everything.
Participate at your peril.
My child, if sinners try to lead you into sin, do not follow them. They will say, 'Come with us. Let’s ambush and kill someone; let’s attack some innocent people just for fun. Let’s swallow them alive, as death does; let’s swallow them whole, as the grave does. We will take all kinds of valuable things and fill our houses with stolen goods. Come join us, and we will share with you stolen goods.' My child, do not go along with them; do not do what they do. They are eager to do evil and are quick to kill. It is useless to spread out a net right where the birds can see it. But sinners will fall into their own traps; they will only catch themselves! –Proverbs 1:10-18 (NCV)