I’m a big supporter of using antitrust to go after Big Tech monopolies, but it’s important to understand that the vast concentrations of power are primarily a cultural problem that is expressed through these monopolies. Silicon Valley’s past flirtations with libertarianism have largely given way to lockstep leftism.
We would be facing a huge problem either way, but the ability of a handful of companies concentrated around places like the Bay Area, Austin, Seattle, and so forth gave the culture of these areas vast amounts of control that were used to fund radical politics across America. As bad as Soros is, he doesn’t hold a candle to the sheer concentrated funding of leftist causes that flows from the executives and top employees of Big Tech companies. And, more importantly, their ability to control and shape the marketplace of ideas.
The concentrations of power in any industry and in any significantly large enterprise put particular cultures in power. That culture is in various ways now dominant among the multinationals. But there’s little doubt that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, etc helped fundamentally shift the general corporate culture which followed the “disrupters” as their models. CEOs seek to emulate more successful pathbreaking CEOs. And so the virus spreads.
If the big players force affinity groups and whiteness awareness sessions, the guys who hope to be like them are going to adopt these awesome “innovative” “best practices” and that’s how the disease spreads.
Breaking up Big Tech monopolies is important, but the challenge of breaking up a cultural monopoly is the really big one. Culture is downstream of politics. It’s also downstream of technology and oligarchy.
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