NPR essay on losing "America's trust"

To the contrary, my guess would be that the 25 years made him feel way too comfortable. Like it somehow gave him leeway to be critical of the people he works for in a way you shouldn't if you want to keep working there. He comes across as self important.

 

This is not what a government in a free country that protects and values individual civil liberties does.

"Anti-Trust" has become a catch all for authoritarian politicians with no concern about civil liberties having been enabled to infringe on whater rights they want to steal from one person (or group of people) to give to others they prefer. They use populist language to justify the thuggery.

In a free country that hadn't fucked itself up the way we have with this bullshit, if those California politicians wanted to start their own business to compete with Google, fine. But their efforts are authoritarian, and attempted government-sanctioned theft.

As for "Google should pay for content". ... it's the Internet. Make something publicly available on the Internet (Whether it is me, you. ... or a newspaper) and that is your choice. You VOLUNTARILY did it. Presumably you benefit from it in some way, and enough people have made the Internet a huge repository of things for that to be obvious. End of story.

That is the how the Internet works. It's FREE and widely accesible, and everyone who puts stuff on the Internet did it freely and of their own volition. If you want to protect things you have produced. DON'T MAKE IT WIDELY ACCESIBLE ON THE INTERNET.

There is nothing illegal, and certainly not immoral, about Google's business, and in fact. ... what this kind of nonsense does is make everyone worse off, because they will "regulate" away the immense transformational benefit that Google's business brought. If it doesn't entirely do that (or if Google's business becomes obsolete on its own before they can fuck with them enough), they may hamstring them enough to disadvantage them moving forward. It's immoral and everything America wasn't supposed to ever be.

 

1) They are using the tax code to offer a benefit to one company (privately-owned news organizations), but denying the same benefit to another company in the same exact business (publicly-traded news organizations). So calling it what it is. ... they are using the power the state has to try to advantage the preferred businesses of politicians over those businesses competitors that those politicians have decided to use their power to disadvantage. Which is corrupt by its very nature. It will be challenged in court because it violates every principle of people being treated equally (not only under the law, but in taxation of income, which was always supposed to treat people fairly and equally).

2) I really want to know details about what they call a "tax credit." If it is a credit that knocks down any income they earn for taxation purposes, fine. Our tax code is a mess of that kind of crap, but doesn't amount to redistributing wealth between people. It just makes it so that someone isn't coerced to hand over what they earn in taxes. If, on the other hand, "tax credit" means the misnomer it has come to mean when it comes to other things, and they will be giving money to businesses that those businesses didn't earn (and forcing others to pay for the freebie), it's more immorality.