The Social Dilemma is a popular Netflix documentary that purports to be an exposé of big tech companies. The documentary spotlights a number of whistleblowers who reveal how people are being manipulated by companies such as Facebook, Google, and Instagram. (I refer to these companies collectively as “big tech” throughout this paper.) Specifically, the whistleblowers detail the tactics used by big tech to get “users” to spend more time online than they otherwise would, for the purpose of collecting information about users and exposing them to more and increasingly tailored advertisements. Doing so means big bucks for big tech, on the one hand, and diminishing healthy, offline interaction for users on the other.
And herein lies the “social dilemma”: a technology that is both immeasurably life-enhancing and yet dangerously addictive and open to abuse.
The documentary is interlaced with hokey, Hallmark Channel-like dramatization, which depicts the adverse effects of social media addiction. For instance, one story line deals with a young mother who tries to wean her kids off their smartphones—their portals to social media—by locking their phones away in a glass container. The scene ends with the youngest child liberating her phone by blithely picking up a hammer and smashing the container to bits.
The filmmakers apparently intended this scene to be funny—their attempt to inject a little humor into a dark subject. The attempt failed. The mother’s mild, “gee-whiz” reaction struck me as unrealistic. It was almost as disturbing as the child’s destructive behavior. I had to wonder: What other violent outbursts had this child gotten away with?
Regardless, I don’t want to dwell on the melodramatic aspects of the documentary. The misfires in the script are the least interesting parts. What I find most interesting is the docudrama’s resemblance to an old Brer Rabbit trick.
Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch
If you’re familiar with the story of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch, you’ll recall that when Brer Fox finally catches Brer Rabbit, intending to eat him, Brer Rabbit begs the fox not to throw him into the briar patch. He tells the fox that he’d rather be skinned alive and roasted than thrown into the briars. Brer Fox now has the idea that he can cause greater harm to his enemy by throwing him into the briars instead of eating him right away. He then throws Brer Rabbit into the briar patch, whereupon the rabbit escapes.
The Brer Rabbit trick is basically a form of social engineering. By pretending not to want what you really want to happen, you just might cause your enemy to act in a way that benefits you.
Where is the analogy? Where is this trick in The Social Dilemma?
The trick lies in the documentary’s setting the stage for legislative reform that will ultimately benefit the same big tech firms being exposed.
To see this kind of social engineering more clearly, we have to understand that variations on the Brer Rabbit trick have been performed many times in American history. Two instructive case studies come to mind: 1) Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906; and 2) the Pujo Committee and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Welcome to the Jungle or: Down the Brer Rabbit Hole (Part I)
Consider the role played by The Jungle in the passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Sinclair’s novel purported to expose the unsanitary working conditions of the large meat-packing plants in Chicago. The novel caused a furor and served to mobilize public opinion in favor of legislative reform of the meat-packing industry. Even the President felt compelled to act.
“…Roosevelt sent two Washington bureaucrats, Commissioner of Labor Charles P. Neill and civil service lawyer James B. Reynolds, to investigate the Chicago industry. The famous ‘Neill-Reynolds’ report that apparently confirmed Sinclair’s findings, in fact, only revealed the ignorance of the officials, as later congressional hearings indicated that they poorly understood how slaughterhouses worked and confused their inherently foul nature with unsanitary conditions.” (Rothbard, The Progressive Era, p. 238)
It is interesting to note that The Jungle had little impact on the contents of the Meat Inspection Act. In fact, Sinclair himself was disappointed, as the Act failed to adequately address the major issue raised in his novel, namely poor working conditions.
Even more interesting is that contrary to the prevailing myth, the large meat packers were not opposed to government regulation of their industry. In fact, they had been pushing for such regulation for decades. Why? Because government regulation invariably benefits the larger, more established firms, because these firms have the capital and wherewithal to comply with the new regulations. Smaller competitors have fewer resources at their disposal and find it more difficult to meet the high costs of compliance. Having to divert more resources to compliance rather than production, they are often forced to cut back operations. They may even find it necessary to sell some of their capital goods and equipment to their larger competitors, if they do not sell out or shut down completely. Government regulation thus reduces competition and tends to cartelize the industries it targets.
Murray Rothbard explains:
“The large meat packers were enthusiastically in favor of the bill [what became the Meat Inspection Act], designed as it was to bring the small packers under federal inspection. The American Meat Producers’ Association endorsed the bill. …One advantage to imposing uniform sanitary conditions on all meat packers is that the burden of the increased costs would fall more heavily on the smaller than on bigger plants, thereby crippling the smaller competitors even further.” (The Progressive Era, pp. 239-240, emphasis added)
Thus, to the extent he won popular support for legislative reform of the meat-packing industry, Sinclair played into the hands of the same big businessmen he opposed. Sinclair unwittingly abetted his enemies by helping pave the way to cartelization of their industry through government regulation—and this was done to the detriment of small business and mom-and-pops whose operations were definitely not the site of the alleged horrors depicted in Sinclair’s novel.
Although the analogy is not perfect, elements of Brer Rabbit are present. We can equate government regulation with the briar patch into which the large meat packers (Brer Rabbit) want to be thrown. The twist here is that the large meat packers are sometimes quite open about their desire for government regulation. However, thanks to Sinclair’s muckraking attack on the industry, as well as the subsequent “Neill-Reynolds’ report,” a third party enters the scene, namely the public. The prevailing attitude is that something must be done to rein in big business. A misguided public then voices support for government intervention, pressuring a confused Congress (Brer Fox) to throw the meat packers into the briar patch of regulation.
The Federal Reserve Act or: Down the Brer Rabbit Hole (Part II)
Brer Rabbit social engineering can also be seen in the banking reform movement that led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System, perhaps the crowning achievement of the Progressive Era. (See *Note below.) The story is well documented but not well known. For all the sordid details, see Gabriel Kolko, Murray N. Rothbard, and G. Edward Griffin (sources listed below). For our purposes, I will give the thumbnail sketch of this mass deception, and then point out parallels in The Social Dilemma.
By 1910, it was clear to J. P. Morgan, Paul Warburg, and other Wall Street bankers that they were losing market share to country and state banks cropping up in the growing cities of the Midwest and beyond. Reform had been at the forefront of the bankers’ minds for some time. But the “problems” they saw with an increasingly decentralized banking system—specifically as these problems diminished their share of deposits and prestige in the banking community—had not become a serious public issue.
It occurred to the bankers that they would have to come up with a plan: a blueprint for legislation that would centralize control of the banking system into their hands and, at the same time, provide for a more “elastic currency,” which was banker-speak for the ability to create money and credit out of thin air. A secret meeting at the Jekyll Island Club off the coast of Georgia was set up for this purpose. Attendees included agents of Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb & Company, as well as the organizer of the event, Nelson Aldrich, Republican Senator from Rhode Island and father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
(Note: If this sounds like “conspiracy theory,” it isn’t. It is verifiable, historical fact. [See Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, pp. 3-23; Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism, pp. 184- 186; Rothbard, The Progressive Era, pp. 474- 478].)
Of course, the bankers realized that their plan to remake the banking system in their own image would have no chance of passing into law, if it became generally known that they were the ones behind it. So, in order to promote the plan—without it being connected to Wall Street in any obvious way—Warburg took the lead in setting up an organization in Chicago, which was to be administered by an economics professor.
The absurdly named National Citizens’ League for the Promotion of a Sound Currency gave the banking reform movement of, for, and by bankers the “bogus appearance of grass roots populism” (Rothbard, The Progressive Era, p. 476). The League, of course, was an “Astroturf” organization. It was a front for Wall Street. Its purpose was to propagandize the banking community and the public about the merits of the plan hatched at Jekyll Island, which the bankers euphemistically referred to as “banking reform.” It also helped mobilize support in Congress.
The League’s public relations campaign, however, was not entirely successful. A year or so later, despite the League’s efforts to promote the idea, banking reform still had not captured the public imagination. Meanwhile, big bankers who were fundamentally in agreement on the question of reform squabbled over the details, as a bill based on the Jekyll Island plan went through several drafts in committee. The bankers sensed they were losing momentum. The political will to push through legislation seemed to be evaporating.
Enter the Pujo Committee. The Pujo Committe changed everything. Kolko picks up the thread:
“Fortunately for the reformers, the Pujo Committee swung into high gear in its investigation of the Money Trust during the summer of 1912, and for eight months frightened the nation with its awesome, if inconclusive, statistics on the power of Wall Street over the nation’s economy. The Pujo investigation was a blessing in disguise. Five banking firms, the elaborate tables of the committee showed, held 341 directorships in 112 corporations, with an aggregate capitalization of over $22 billion. The evidence seemed conclusive, and the nation was suitably frightened into realizing that reform of the banking system was urgent—presumably to bring Wall Street under control.” (Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism, p. 220)
Muckraking journalists did their part to promote the bankers’ cause. Kolko continues:
“The ogre of Wall Street was resurrected by the newspapers [that] quite ignored the fact that the biggest advocates of banking reform were the bankers themselves, bankers with a somewhat different view of the problem of concentration in banking and in fear of the very real trend toward instability and decentralization in finance. Yet it was largely the Pujo hearings that made the topic of banking reform a serious one.” (Kolko, Triumph, p. 220, emphasis added)
Now that banking reform had become a serious public issue, the bankers renewed their effort to promote their kind of reform, and additional pressure was placed on Congress to act. Then, on December 22, 1913, the reform bill passed the House and the Senate. The next day President Wilson signed The Federal Reserve Act into law.
Regarding the Act’s similarity to the initial Jekyll Island plan, Kolko writes: “In major areas the differences between the two plans were of degree rather than kind, and, if anything, the new Act provided for substantially greater centralization.” (Kolko, Triumph, p. 247)
In other words, the bankers got what they wanted. The new Act created a regulatory apparatus called the Federal Reserve System, which functioned as a central bank or “lender of last resort” capable of expanding the money supply and bailing out member banks in trouble: a monopoly privilege that gave Wall Street greater control over the allocation of the country’s resources at the expense of smaller banks and depositors. Thus, the Act institutionalized a conflict of interest and established a banking cartel—all in the name of protecting the public.
The average American was none the wiser. Most Americans believed that the banking reform was intended to keep Wall Street in check, because that’s how it was sold to them by self-interested parties and the newspapers. But for the bankers who met on Jekyll Island a few years earlier, the briar patch was precisely this kind of banking reform.
The bankers’ success in foisting their system on the public was in large part due to the proposed banking reform having acquired this appearance of a “progressive,” anti-bank measure. The Pujo Committee—along with the usual muckraking journalism, and to a lesser degree the bankers’ own National Citizens’ League—helped create this false impression, thus generating popular support for government intervention. Without this bogus appearance and mounting pressure on government to “do something” in the face of a perceived national crisis, Wall Street bankers might not have persuaded Congress (Brer Fox) to throw them into the briar patch of government regulation.
The Social Dilemma in Historical Context or: Brer Rabbit Returns
Now we are in better position to see more clearly the Brer Rabbit trick in The Social Dilemma. From a broader, historical perspective, it is no longer unthinkable that a popular documentary that exposes the ways in which big tech is trying to manipulate its “users” is itself being used as a public relations tool to manipulate its audience into supporting a false solution. It is certainly not hard to imagine if we consider the following items:
From The Hill: “Zuckerberg: Maybe tech should face some regulations” (see Zuckerberg: Maybe tech should face some regulations | TheHill).
From Marketwatch.com: “Mark Zuckerberg is begging for governments to regulate Facebook” (see Mark Zuckerberg is begging for governments to regulate Facebook – MarketWatch).
From CNBC: “YouTube and its users face an existential threat from the EU’s new copyright directive” (see YouTube faces existential threat from the EU’s new copyright directive (cnbc.com)).
Note the “key points” of this CNBC article: “Legal experts say the directive could end up further entrenching powerful players like YouTube who have the means to comply with the new laws.”
(Thanks to James Corbett of The Corbett Report for drawing my attention to these articles.)
See also Big Tech Shows “Net Neutrality” Battle Was About Power, Not an “Open Internet” | Mises Wire.
And from Forbes: MeWe Social Media Platform Offers A More Private Alternative To Facebook (forbes.com)
Given these items, I don’t think it is far-fetched to draw an analogy between The Social Dilemma and Sinclair’s The Jungle or the Pujo Committee (or both). While the social and political impact of The Social Dilemma remains to be seen, the documentary performs a propagandistic function insofar as it generates misplaced enthusiasm for government regulation—regulation that would entrench the “powerful players” in the same way the Meat Inspection Act and the Federal Reserve Act entrenched the powerful players in meat-packing and in banking, respectively. From this perspective, the documentary is indistinguishable from propaganda designed to further the interests of big tech in the name of opposition to big tech.
(Caveat: I do not claim to know whether the makers of The Social Dilemma are witting agents of big tech. That remains an open question. My aim here is to show how the documentary plays into the hands of the very people and companies under scrutiny. It may well be the case that the filmmakers act in good faith and are simply unaware of the history of government regulation and its cartelizing effects on the economy—not to mention economic theory that describes the “unintended consequences” of regulation [e.g., see Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation”; see also Kolko, Triumph, pp. 57-61]. It may be the case that a common (yet unjustifiable) reading of history, combined with economic ignorance, explains the framing and major thrust of The Social Dilemma. Regardless of intent, the documentary invites the audience to contemplate a false solution to the so-called dilemma. That is what I find objectionable here.)
There is a bigger picture here that the producers of The Social Dilemma clearly miss. The news articles and case studies mentioned above form parts of this picture. They are pieces of a puzzle which provides historical and political context for the problems discussed. As we put the pieces together, we begin to see the main contours of the bigger picture. The contours are as follows.
As Facebook, Google, and other tech giants face intense competition from upstarts such as MeWe, Duck Duck Go, Odysee, Bitchute, and others, we find big tech in a position similar to that of Wall Street bankers just prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. Why else would the founder of Facebook welcome government intervention into his industry? For the same reason Wall Street bankers welcomed government intervention into theirs: to bring the sledgehammer of regulation down on the competition. In this way, big tech can solidify its position in the market and establish itself permanently as the official “public square.” In other words, having achieved a certain level of success in the marketplace, big tech can now use the power of government to pull up the ladder behind it and thereby deny their competitors the same opportunities they enjoyed as they climbed to the top.
By reaching for the visible hand of government, big tech companies show their fear of the “creative destruction” of a dynamic, highly competitive economy. In such an environment, a new competitor or innovation might catch them flat-footed, unseating them from their dominant position. They do not want to go the way of Netscape, Myspace, or Friendster. But instead of refining their services to better please customers, tech giants might be tempted to use the power of government to tilt the playing field in their favor—just as so many other corporate chieftains before them have done, with great success. It is no coincidence that as the U.S. government has grown into the largest, most powerful government in world history, various sectors of the economy have become increasingly cartelized and centralized in the hands of a small number of large, politically connected corporations—the primary beneficiaries of state intervention.
As I’ve outlined it, this bigger picture seems completely lost on the whistleblowers and producers of The Social Dilemma. There is no indication that they understand the tactics of Brer Rabbit social engineering or that the controversy they are involved in is conducive to this kind of mass deception. Consequently, they are not on guard against it. Even if they act in good faith, they still may be unwitting pawns of big tech, playing their part in a corporate boondoggle beyond their comprehension.
The Social Dilemma’s False Solution or: Tristan’s Illusion
One thing that alerted me to the possibility of Brer Rabbit social engineering was the documentary’s overriding concern with “unregulated messages.” According to the whistleblowers, the scariest messages on the Internet take the form of “conspiracies” and “fake news.” For whistleblower Tristan Harris, the problem with these messages is that they erode people’s trust in government. “Imagine a world,” Tristan says, “where everyone believes the government is lying to them.” Such a world is Tristan’s nightmare vision of dystopia.
(I find it hard to believe that Tristan expects to be taken seriously. Does he really believe that government officials are like angels descended from heaven, incapable of telling lies? Does he not understand that the American form of government is based on distrust of people in power? This is Civics 101. Why else would it be necessary to have checks and balances, due process, separation of powers, and a Bill of Rights? All of these measures are based on the idea that power corrupts. Has Tristan forgotten this elementary history lesson? Or is he just playing dumb?)
All this hand-wringing over the idea that someone on the Internet might think that a government official is telling lies is revealing. It reveals the naiveté of these whistleblowers. It shows just how vulnerable to manipulation they themselves are. Not surprisingly, Tristan’s highly suggestive framing of the issue, his heavens-to-Betsy fretting over “unregulated messages,” has the effect of nudging the audience toward acceptance of a more coordinated, robust censorship of the Internet. Having been so nudged, the audience is left to wonder: How are we to deal with the threat of unregulated messages, if not by regulating them?
A second red flag shot up when another whistleblower praised telecommunications companies as a shining example of a regulated industry that respects customer privacy. But the idea that telecoms respect their customers’ privacy is preposterous. It is common knowledge that telecoms have participated in a warrantless wiretapping program whereby they share their customers’ data with government intelligence agencies. In fact, this once secret and illegal program was a huge scandal for the George W. Bush administration. It also became a campaign issue in the 2008 election. How this whistleblower can hold telecoms in such high regard is beyond this writer’s comprehension. Regardless, the whistleblower’s message comes through in a nudge and a wink. Big tech should follow the lead of telecoms and submit to government regulation. We need big government to save us from big tech.
Starting around the 82-minute mark, the whistleblowers begin explicitly calling for government intervention. Before then, there were only nudges and winks urging us in that direction (as we have seen), preparing us to accept the political solution when finally offered. Now, finally, we learn in no uncertain terms that the tech industry is simply incapable of solving the problem of fake news.
Reading between the lines, we know what we are expected to believe. People questioning authority online is now intolerable. Some external force must be applied to solve this “problem.” What force could that be? Who else besides that same authority being questioned? The answer is no one, of course. No one but the government is capable and willing—perhaps more than willing to do the job.
Thus, after all the beating around the bush, the whistleblowers finally remove all doubt and tell us what needs to be done. “There is no fiscal reason for these companies to change,” asserts one whistleblower. He then adds, “That’s why I think we need regulation.” Another whistleblower laments, “We have almost no laws around digital privacy….”
Having the last word in this segment is another whistleblower, Justin Rosenstein, who turns out to be quite the showstopper. Justin takes the opportunity to hector us about the devastating effects of the profit motive in market economies. Here, the mask drops. We now see the rotting corpse of Karl Marx resurrected once again, just like Jason Vorhees in another ridiculously bad installment of Friday the 13th. Like a good neo-Marxist, Justin eagerly informs the audience that the capitalist pursuit of profit is ruining our lives and, worse yet, destroying the planet.
Justin conveniently leaves out the reality of capital losses in his spiel—as do all confused Marxists when they regurgitate yawn-inducing formulations about the alleged contradictions of free market capitalism. Contra Justin, a genuine free market—not the “crony” capitalism or “corporatism” we have now—is a system of profit and losses. In such an environment, there are no guarantees. Losing one’s shirt as a business owner is an ever-present danger in the face of dynamic, free competition. It is precisely this fear of losing one’s shirt that compels some big businessmen to use the power of government to insulate themselves from the risk of losses and to smash the competition, which is why we often see big businessmen (and women) calling for regulation of their industries. But that’s not the free market at work. Such intervention is a deviation from free market capitalism, an assault on liberty that defines the corporatist system we have now. (The “progressive” Federal Reserve Act and the Meat Inspection Act are Exhibits A and B of this corporatist system.)
But don’t expect neo-Marxists like Justin to make these fine distinctions in their rush to give us apocalyptic warnings about what happens when we don’t listen to them. They can’t be bothered about basic economic principles and inconvenient historical facts when they are too busy attacking a straw man.
(The economic ignorance on display in The Social Dilemma is both amusing and frightening. The feverish, anti-market diatribes of people like Justin are particularly disturbing. Many of these people self-identify as “progressive,” if not socialist. Yet they seem completely unaware of the extent to which they have embraced the ideology of the very corporate interests they criticize. Many of the social problems they cite can be attributed not to an unfettered capitalism—which exists more in the minds of these critics than in the real world—but to politically organized deviations from the free market and the routine violation of property rights. Almost the entire budget of so-called leftist concerns can be traced to the unintended [or intended] consequences of government intervention [for examples, see Block, “Environmentalism and Economic Freedom: The Case for Private Property Rights”; DiLorenzo, “Why Socialism Causes Pollution”; Rothbard, “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution”; Stromberg, “The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American Empire”].)
The Social Dilemma thus cracks the door ever so gently before throwing it wide open to the idea of government regulation, perhaps even a Ministry of Truth to determine what is genuine news and what is “fake news.” Clearly implied in all this is that people shouldn’t be allowed to think for themselves. In this formulation, users are reduced to passive consumers of information, incapable of separating fact from fiction. They are helpless “lab rats” in need of protection. On this point, the whistleblowers are curiously united with the big tech programmers they criticize, sharing their belief that we, the users, really are just “computing nodes” in a network to be programmed. The whistleblowers just want the government to be more openly involved in the programming. (And we can trust Big Brother!)
This Orwellian scenario is infinitely more frightening than any commercial enterprise that wants to send me advertisements, which I can either ignore or consider voluntarily. Yet there seems to be no concern whatsoever in The Social Dilemma about the prospect and danger of an all-seeing Ministry of Truth backed by the power of the state—a power we can’t ignore. In fact, some whistleblowers seem to relish the idea. Is this really a “dilemma” for them? Perhaps they see career opportunities in throwing Mark Zuckerberg and big tech into the briar patch of regulation.
Conclusion
The Social Dilemma seems to be the modern-day equivalent of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle or the Pujo Committee (or both). The parallels are striking. They are most evident in the degree to which the documentary induces a moral panic and prompts people to demand government intervention, just as Sinclair and Pujo did in the Progressive Era. We should keep these similarities in mind—as well as the sad history of government regulation and its cartelizing effects—as the debate over regulation of the Internet intensifies, lest Zuckerberg and big tech escape into the briar patch.
Beyond the Briar Patch: Reflections on a Viable Solution or: “the Heresy of All Heresies”
I don’t want to leave the impression that there is no viable solution to any of the problems addressed in the documentary. Fake news certainly is a problem, but there is nothing new about fake news. People have been subjected to fake news for as long as there have been liars. That’s why free speech is so important. We need to be able to express our views freely and evaluate factual claims in a free and open marketplace of ideas. (And may the best ideas win!) Science is perhaps the highest expression of this sentiment. How else can we possibly know what the better ideas are—and arrive at them peacefully—if ideas are not tested in free and open discourse and debate?
That is precisely why politics is not the answer to fake news. There is nothing peaceful about politics. Politics is simply the exercise of power over others. It is a zero-sum game. As such, it has the capacity to cripple the free market for ideas (besides markets for goods and services). It does so by privileging certain ideas (perhaps some very bad ones) over other ideas (perhaps very good ones). The privilege here is in the degree to which political power is used to remove an idea from the intellectual contest—where it might be thoroughly tested—and elevating it unfairly above other ideas. This unfairness is usually achieved through censorship of competing viewpoints, or by simply writing the privileged idea into public policy so that it carries the force of law. Politics thus imposes the ideas, values, and preferences of one individual or group on the rest of society (see Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, pp. 106-109). That’s why political solutions are so divisive. Rarely do political solutions solve problems. They tend to make existing problems worse, while creating new ones.
It’s not the Internet, then, that divides people. It’s politics. It’s the ever-growing power of the state that divides people and brings countries closer to civil war. That’s why each presidential election since at least 2004 has been widely trumpeted as “the most important election of our time.” Simply because the government is so powerful—because it has managed to insinuate itself into almost every aspect of social life—each of us is now faced with the possibility of being ruled over by people who want to control us. So, voters take to the ballot box in self-defense (so they think). Meanwhile, we have arrived at a point in history where getting together with our families to celebrate the holidays is now seen as a political statement. Such is the undue power of the state.
With the problem of polarization and fake news redefined more properly as one of too much politics intruding into every aspect of our lives, the solution almost suggests itself.
I’ll suggest it anyway.
Here’s an idea: Maybe the government shouldn’t be so powerful. Maybe the government shouldn’t have the power to decide whose voices can be heard or how many people you can have over for dinner or when you can go outside and see your family and friends this holiday season. Nor should it have the power to censor and regulate the Internet.
Q: So what exactly is the alternative to the political solution you see being promoted in The Social Dilemma, beyond just railing against big government?
A: Good question. The funny thing is that the solution I have in mind is actually presented in the documentary—only it appears at the very end, interestingly enough, while the credits are rolling.
As the credits roll, notice that the same whistleblowers who told us only a moment ago that we’re all just helpless zombie lab rats—the playthings of big tech—these same whistleblowers are now telling us that we have something approximating human agency and free will. There’s still hope after all! It turns out we can take steps to wean ourselves off our devices and avoid social media addiction. For instance, we can turn off notifications and spend more time with family and friends offline. We can choose to walk away. We can go outside in the sun and breathe fresh air. We can do all this and more, voluntarily of our own accord.
No kidding! The simplest solution is the most effective and least costly!
One whistleblower recommends that we seek out different points of view. We should make an effort to understand all sides of an issue and thus sharpen our critical thinking.
I couldn’t agree more.
All these words of advice amount to so much common sense. Taken together, they constitute what I call the “common sense solution” (the real solution) as opposed to the political solution the documentary seems to favor.
Of course, there’s no political hay to be made from common sense, precisely because it’s so widely distributed—or common. It does not require government “expertise” or coercion to implement. That might explain why the common sense solution gets buried at the end of the documentary. Viewers don’t get to it until after they’ve been bombarded for an hour and a half with propaganda orienting them toward a completely different solution—a solution predicated on the assumption that we are all helpless children in need of Big Brother’s protection.
That reminds me of something Orwell wrote in 1984. In describing his dystopian nightmare, Orwell said, from the point of view of the state, “The heresy of all heresies was common sense.” (Orwell, 1984, p.83)
I should add that a large dose of free enterprise and competition would discipline big tech far more effectively than any government regulator. We already see this happening. New platforms are using business models that do not involve sharing customers’ data with third parties. And being less creepy than Google and Facebook, these platforms are gaining market share. For instance, I mentioned the “anti-Facebook” social media platform MeWe. MeWe is now gaining new subscribers by the millions.
This is precisely the kind of market discipline that established firms historically want to be protected from in the briar patch of government regulation. Instead of reworking their business models in response to new competition and changing consumer preferences, big businessmen often reach for government assistance (always at taxpayers’ expense). They lobby the government to intervene so that they can achieve or maintain a privileged position in the market. Congress answers the call by passing laws—always in the name of “protecting the public.” Power is then delegated to federal agencies and bureaucrats who translate the legislative act into rules and regulations enforced by those same bureaucrats, who often hail from the very industries being regulated (Hayek, Serfdom, pp. 104-111). As we have seen, these new rules and regulations disproportionately affect smaller businesses. They set up barriers to market entry and thereby keep out new competition—always to the benefit of larger, established firms. This explains why big businessmen tend to love big government and hate the free market (see Hayek, Serfdom, pp.92-4; Kolko, Triumph; Shaffer, In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign against Competition, 1918- 1938; Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation”; in addition to other works listed in Sources below).
And this might explain why Mark Zuckerberg is not averse to the idea of government regulation. If Zuckerberg knows his history, he knows that government can be used to gain monopoly privileges and regulate the competition out of existence.
If you are concerned about online privacy and free speech, consider patronizing these smaller platforms that offer better, more secure services. This has to be part of the common sense solution. At the same time, we should keep the Internet free from government interference. We should insist on letting the various platforms compete for our business freely and fairly on a level playing field. We shouldn’t allow the government to decide the winners and losers, because that only opens the door to further corruption. We “users” should decide the winners and losers through our voluntary purchases.
I hope that answers your question.
Q: Would you be interested in a job at the NSA? They need fact-checkers.
A: Are you serious?
NOTES & SOURCES
*Note: These case studies form a part of a growing body of scholarship that overturns an entrenched myth of the Progressive Era. The myth holds that during this period (roughly 1900 – 1917) enlightened statesmen and intellectuals dedicated to the “common good” joined together to promote legislation that checked the power of “the Trusts”—i.e., big business cartels and monopolies that were running amok on the free market. According to the myth, big business threatened to destroy economic opportunities and the prospect of higher living standards for the average American by raising prices and shutting down competition.
The progressive movement emerged in response to this threat. Progressive intellectuals and statesmen believed (or pretended to believe) that they could keep big business in check if they had the power of government behind them. They believed that big government was needed to safeguard the common good against capitalist greed. The movement succeeded insofar as it led to the creation of regulatory agencies that supposedly curtailed the power of big business, while protecting small businesses and the public.
So goes the myth.
The myth, however, is 180 degrees opposite the truth. Regarding progressive banking reform, Kolko is worth quoting at length:
“The entire banking reform movement, at all crucial stages, was centralized in the hands of a few men who for years were linked, ideologically and personally, with one another. The problem of the origin of the Federal Reserve Act, and the authorship of specific drafts was later hotly debated by [men] who greatly exaggerate their differences in order that they might each claim responsibility for the guiding lines of the Federal Reserve System. Yet although they may have differed on details they agreed on major policy lines and general theory. The confusion over the precise authorship of the Federal Reserve Act should not obscure the fact that the major function, inspiration, and direction of the measure was to serve the banking community in general, and large bankers specifically.” (Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism, p. 222, emphasis added)
Thus, progressive banking reform had nothing to do with the common good or public welfare or restoring a sound currency. It was all about banker welfare and centralizing control of the banking system—and the nation’s money supply—in the hands of a few politically connected men on Wall Street.
Writing in the same vein, Rothbard speaks more generally of the Progressive Era (also worth quoting at length):
“It then became clear to these big-business interests that the only way to establish a cartelized economy, an economy that would ensure their continued economic dominance and high profits, would be to use the powers of government to establish and maintain cartels by coercion, in other words, to transform the economy from roughly laissez-faire to centralized and coordinated statism. But how could the American people, steeped in a long tradition of fierce opposition to government-imposed monopoly, go along with this program? How could the public’s consent to the New Order be engineered?
Fortunately for the cartelists, a solution to this vexing problem lay at hand. Monopoly could be put over in the name of opposition to monopoly! In that way, using the rhetoric beloved by Americans, the form of the political economy could be maintained, while the content could be totally reversed. Monopoly had always been defined, in the popular parlance and among economists, as ‘grants of exclusive privilege’ by the government. It was now simply redefined as ‘big business’ or business competitive practices, such as price-cutting, so that regulatory commissions, from the Interstate Commerce Commission to the Federal Trade Commission to state insurance commissions, were lobbied for and staffed with big-business men from the regulated industry, all done in the name of curbing ‘big-business monopoly’ on the free market. In that way, the regulatory commissions could subsidize, restrict, and cartelize in the name of ‘opposing monopoly’….” (Rothbard, “The Origins of the Federal Reserve,” p.4)
In the light of these historical insights, we can see that progressive reforms are almost invariably shot through with Brer Rabbit social engineering. This pattern of deception continues to this day, as more and more people on both the left and the right are conditioned to believe that there must always be some political solution to our problems, however real or imaginary.
I think we are on firm ground to conclude the following: 1) There is nothing progressive about “progressivism.” Historically, progressive measures have done nothing to advance a prosperous, liberal society. As we have seen, such measures have instead served to enrich a small minority of politically connected corporate elites at the expense of everyone else; and 2) we should seek more viable, voluntary solutions by appealing to common sense and reason. We should insist that businesses compete fairly on a level playing field, without government interference. That will keep businesses focused on pleasing their customers by providing better goods and services at lower costs, rather than lobbying government for special privileges and unfair advantages over the competition. In the process, we can free ourselves and the market (the source of real progress) from the tentacles of the state and its corporate partners.
SOURCES
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Corbett, James. The Corbett Report. Website: www.corbettreport.com.
DiLorenzo, Thomas J. 1992. “Why Socialism Causes Pollution.” In The Freeman (March): 107-112.
Griffin, G. Edward. 2010 [1994]. The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve (5th Edition). Westlake Village, CA: American Media.
Hayek, F.A. 2007 [1944]. The Road to Serfdom (The Definitive Edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kolko, Gabriel. 1963. The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916. New York: The Free Press.
Orwell, George. 2003. 1984 (Centennial Edition). New York: Plume.
Rothbard, Murray N. 1997. “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution.” In The Logic of Action Two: Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School (pp. 121-170). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Rothbard, Murray N. 1999. “The Origins of the Federal Reserve.” In The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics vol. 2, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 3-51.
Rothbard, Murray N. 2017. The Progressive Era. Auburn, Ala.: The Mises Institute.
Shaffer, Butler.2008. In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918- 1938. Auburn, Ala.: The Mises Institute.
Stigler, George J. 1971. “The Theory of Economic Regulation.” In The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science (Spring): 3-21.
Stromberg, Joseph R. 2001. “The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American Empire.” In Journal of Libertarian Studies (Summer): 57-93.