Mediaboss Marketing

From Mark Zuckerberg to Barack Obama in four easy steps: do we want the tech industry to take over some functions of the state? Photographs by Getty/Rex. Photomontage by

The outside world might regard Silicon Valley as a bastion of ruthless capitalism but tech entrepreneurs fashion themselves as believers in solidarity, autonomy and collaboration.

These venture humanitarians believe that they and not the wily politicians or the vain NGOs are the true champions of the weak and the poor, making the maligned markets deliver material benefits to those on the fringes of society. Some of the valleys in-house intellectuals even cheer the onset of digital socialism, which to quote digital thinker and environmentalist Kevin Kellys 2009 cover story in Wired can be viewed as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates.

Leaving aside the battles over the true meaning of sharing in buzzwords like the sharing economy, one can discern an intriguing argument in all this self-congratulatory rhetoric. The magnanimous Silicon Valley really wants to be the perfect antidote to the greedy Wall Street: if the latter yields an ever greater increase in income inequality, the former helps to bridge the gap in consumption inequality.

That is, you might be earning less and less than your rich neighbour, but both of you also pay less and less its probably nothing for listening to music on Spotify, doing research on Google, or watching funny videos on YouTube. Soon, this logic might apply to internet access itself: Internet.org, Facebooks flagship initiative in the developing world, offers users nominally free access to basic online services including Facebook or Wikipedia. Once education, health and other services move to the cloud, one can see Silicon Valley playing an even greater role in these matters. Couldnt Google notify you of any developing symptoms, once you share your everyday health data? Wouldnt that offer some basic healthcare to people who would otherwise not be able to afford it? And, in the absence of other options, who could possibly object to Google saving lives?

Silicon Valleys oft-repeated tales of user empowerment are made of these kinds of promises. Set against the background of the failing welfare state, unable to cope with the promises it made to its own people, Silicon Valley offers us a new social net: we might be forced to sell our cars and default on our mortgages, but we would never lose access to Spotify and Google. Death of starvation is still a possibility but death of content starvation is no longer in the cards.

But before those cars and homes disappear, Silicon Valley could also help us turn them into a productive asset. Thanks to startups like JustPark a trendy app which allows property owners to rent their underused parking space to desperate drivers even the income inequality gap can be bridged, if only by a little bit. Ordinary citizens should rejoice: not only would they pay nothing for basic services they could supplement their stagnant regular income by monetising their previously dead capital.

This claim to being the worlds great equaliser is the very factor that makes Silicon Valley into a non-stick industry impermeable to social criticism. But the premises of its venture humanitarianism are not as rigorous and unshakable as they seem. There are at least three possible lines of attack.

First, a nominal increase in equality of consumption does not always entail a corresponding increase in individual autonomy in fact, it might have the opposite effect. To take advantage of all the opportunities offered to us by Silicon Valley including such fancy-sounding projects as Internet.org one must first agree to share ones data in exchange for free services. One has to be very naive to believe that this data is not going to shape how we live the rest of our lives, especially when insurance companies and banks are so eager to incorporate it in their decision-making.

The end result will be more social complacency as we start adjusting our behaviour, expecting that everything we do will affect everything else. It also means that those who can actually afford to pay for all those services that the rest of us are getting for free will enjoy an even greater autonomy in the future: think of the people who dont already have to worry about qualifying for a mortgage or a loan. They are not the ones who would worry how Uber drivers rank them or whether skipping the gym might give them trouble with their insurer.

Visit link:
Silicon Valley likes to promise digital socialism but it is selling a fairy tale | Evgeny Morozov

JACK THE BLASTER explores the history of the Volkswagen Beetle and the Ford Model T two iconic cars with dark origins which became vehicles of the peoples liberation

THIS IS a story of two cars, a president and a Nobel Prize-winning author.

President Jose Mujica of Uruguay (pictured), the one-time political prisoner turned enlightened leader, has been radical and successful. He legalised abortion and gay marriage and his investment in green energy has made his country an net exporter of renewables.

His decision to tackle the drugs trade by treating drug use not as a criminal offence but as a medical issue made him a poster boy for evidence-based legislation rather than simply protecting entrenched corporate interests.

But as his tenure comes to an end this spring, news coverage in the West tends to focus on three things that have little to do with his successes.

We are told about a pet dog that happens to have three legs. We are told of how he chose to stay in his ramshackle family homestead rather than move to the presidential palace, which he turned into a homeless persons shelter.

And we are told he drives a beaten-up Beetle.

While the first fact could be considered to be a cute eccentricity and the second is idiosyncratic, it is the third fact his choice of wheels that reveals a little more about this extraordinary leader. The Beetle is a global icon.

It became an effective way to travel for hippies and workers alike in the 20th century, but it was born in a dark place in a dark time.

Created by fascist Germany, the peoples car became a Third Reich scam to rob the German people of their savings. Deposits were made on the proviso that youd get a cheap and reliable car. The cars were never delivered the money was instead used to build arms.

More here:
Morning Star :: Wheels and socialism: the bug that flew for freedom

GIANNI VATTIMO and DIEGO FUSARO: Heidegger, National Socialism and "The Black Notebooks"
2014. GIANNI VATTIMO and DIEGO FUSARO: Heidegger, world Jewry, National Socialism and "The Black Notebooks". Translated by Fabi Marinacci. http://www.filosofico.net.

By: Diego Fusaro

Link:
GIANNI VATTIMO and DIEGO FUSARO: Heidegger, National Socialism and "The Black Notebooks" - Video

The End of Socialism
Dr. Jim Otteson #39;s presentation will be based on his recently released book The End of Socialism, which explores socialism as a system of political economy ...

By: ZSR Library

Link:
The End of Socialism - Video

Like many of the important discussions in the economic world today, the negotiations between Greece and itsEuropean creditors has become increasingly absurd(see "A Patient Fed Considers Losing Patience"in our latest newsletter). Late onFriday, February 20, in a tense meeting between the new Greek Finance Minister and a host of ministers from 19 Eurozone countries, Germany apparently 'authorized' negotiators to accept a four-month extension of the $272 billion bailout so long as the Greeks promised to make a series of difficult fiscal steps needed to stay solvent over that time frame. Given that they desperately need the money, it should be no great surprise that the Greeks complied.

This of course put Greece's new left wing government, led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, into a difficult position. After all, his Party had recently come to power on the promise that it would not extend the bailout and that it would no longer negotiate with creditors. To save face, he insisted that the new austerity commitments, which would likely be the same as commitments previously agreed to by the former government, would at least be "self-imposed" by the Greeks themselves, rather than crammed down by creditors. This fig leaf apparently provided enough cover for Syriza leaders to claim victory in its first battle with the creditors.

It should also come as no surprise that the Greek policy blueprint, which was delivered under the deadline, was largely vague and came with no new or novel approaches to fiscal sustainability. Notably the document did not touch any of the "elephant in the room" issues like the size of public pensions, revisions of Greece's sales tax,and the sale of state-owned assets. Instead they promised to do the same thing that nearly every Greek government has promised to do, namely crack down on tax evasion, government corruption, and smuggling, etc.

The policies were accepted with muted relief by most Europeans (as they were preferable to the provocations that had been issued by Athens in the first few days after the elections). The official European Commissionstatement on February 24 said that it considered the proposals to be "a valid starting point for a successful conclusion of the review."

However, others could not even muster this tepid enthusiasm. In a letter to Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who is not known for fiscal hawkishness, noted that "there are neither clear commitments to design and implement the envisaged comprehensive pension and [valued-added tax] policy reforms nor unequivocal undertakings to continue already-agreed policies for opening up closed sectors, for administrative reforms, for privatization, and for labor market reforms."In other words, she is looking for substance that is not there. This is a theme that can be traced in a great many discussions about our debt-fueled global economy.

The real issue, that no one is fully prepared to address, is whether Greece's decades-long experiment with failed debt-financed socialism will be allowed to survive much longer.

Eurozone membership gave Greece access to vast amounts of cheap debt, offered largely under the assumption that a single political union would offer an implied EU guarantee for Greek debt. As a result, for years Greek governments were able to borrow almost as cheaply as German governments, even though the Germans had far superior fiscal health.

But for a while this debt accumulation was looked at as a sign of health (much as it is now in the United States). Between 2002, when she entered the EU, and 2007, when the Great Recession hit, Greece was a 'growth champion'. Indeed, her economic growth exceeded even that of the U.S.

Under the camouflage of debt-financed liquidity, massive consumption erupted in the public sector and flooded into the private sector. However, the debt crisis of 2007-8 revealed this over-consumption combined with major gaps in productivity and competitiveness, especially under a strong euro currency. This led to serious recession.

It was this gravely flawed economic model that Germany hoped to dismantle through its 'austerity' demands. But as you can imagine, the Greeks themselves have clung to this fairy tale as if it were their birthright.

View post:
Greek Problems Born from Socialism