An Inflating Technological Oligarchy Dominates The Political and Economic Playing Fields
We have heard, as of late, multiple individual stories of incremental nudges towards technological aristocracy; Albeit it has not, it seems, been taken as the larger picture that it is. Search engines and social media platforms have become more intrusive, monopolies have formed in various sectors of news media, entertainment, and social interaction, and when combined with a growing propensity for censorship, control, and data mining, we paint a clear image of a snowballing corporatocracy.
Facebook has been the target of recent scrutiny for its overt collusion with tech and data corporations; Most notably, Cambridge Analytica, for its usage of Facebook data to harvest and sell user information to the highest bidder. The way in which the story has been pitched to the public is that of a single, exclusive incident, in which one campaign utilized corporate powers to target likely voters with propaganda. While there is certainly truth to this side of the story, it is certainly not the sum of its implications, as revealed by Cambridge Analytica co-founder and whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who revealed a broader system of information harvesting used by, not just campaigns, but by corporations. While this story is being treated in an individualist fashion by the mainstream press, it is part of a larger, more intrusive of monopolistic networking design to strengthen the stranglehold of the largest tech and data firms over their competitors, and by extension, their users. The implications of a political data-mining company partnering with an already intrusive social media network such as Facebook are massive, particularly when taken as part of the even larger picture of the cooperation between Facebook and Google (under the guise of solving the "Russian meddling crisis"), or Google and Walmart, etc...
Even as we read about the expanding intrusions of social media, the search engine and data monopoly Google is itself expanding its own intrusive network. It should, however, be noted at this point that the very inception of Google by the U.S. Government was for the purpose of spying and collecting data on citizens, partly through a Government program called "PRISM", where The NSA, through the actions of the FISA court, are allowed access to internet communications (note the ambiguity of the term "communications"). Google, in essence, shares your information with the U.S. Government, along with monopolies in other industries, such as the information and economic partner it has recently found in Walmart.
The cooperation and economic mutuality evidenced within this government/corporate network of partnerships aforementioned only act to strengthen the economic, and subsequently political, power these institutions have over the body politic using these goods and services.
The cooperation and economic mutuality evidenced within this government/corporate network of partnerships aforementioned only act to strengthen the economic, and subsequently political, power these institutions have over the body politic using these goods and services.
While Facebook-Amazon-Walmart-Google (I suppose we could call it the "FAWG") continue to become more intrusive and more powerful irregardless of the public's knowledge of the fact, the newfound economic power of these collective institutions results in political power, as the public relies, for instance, on Facebook to express political opinions, and Facebook being the monopoly that it is, finds itself with the capacity to stifle various ideologies through direct and indirect censorship, being involved not only in the political process of democracy, but business and the economy. This relegates an indescribably massive sector of the economic and political landscape to these monopolies, forming, with no exaggeration, an actual corporatocracy (which, according to my website builder, is a word that does not exist. Just FYI...)
Again, the public's knowledge of this has hardly affected the massive corporate snowball, as Google has recently announced that its new CFO (Chief Financial Officer) will be Ruth Porat, the former CFO of the world bank Morgan Stanley. Let's put the pieces together...
Again, the public's knowledge of this has hardly affected the massive corporate snowball, as Google has recently announced that its new CFO (Chief Financial Officer) will be Ruth Porat, the former CFO of the world bank Morgan Stanley. Let's put the pieces together...
Facebook has become larger, more intrusive, and is cooperating with political and economic powers for more information and power. Google, formed in part by the CIA & NSA, continues to amass its monopolistic vision with more expansion, more intrusion, and a powerful world banker at the helm of its financial endeavors. Both are cooperating with consumption monopolies (Walmart, Amazon, etc) to use the same data to drive the markets, and by extension, your buying habits. The powers subsequently granted this data "FAWG" enable it to then stifle, limit, and control political discussion. All of this is being enabled by these institutions, and by the lobbyists and government officials whose elections are being subsidized by them. The circular pattern continues to expand the amassing of wealth and power from this burgeoning corporatocracy in the form of steady incrementalism. Our response to this therefore, can not be an equal and opposite reaction of incrementalism, or we will only have taken 2 steps back from democracy, and only 1 step toward it. We need a swift, radical, and systemic economic and politic response to this before it is (and it almost is) too late.