Cracks In The Facade

Ferdinand Lundberg said that industrialist families tend to work in combination, and I would say that's generally true, but Lundberg at the time he published The Rich and the Super-Rich in 1968 was still living in a culture dominated by the post-Civil War robber barons' desendants. The major industries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, lumber, mining, steel, railroads, oil, and automobiles were still staples of the economy, with air transport on the rise. Computers still used punch cards.

One of Lundberg's main theses, in fact, was that more recent fortunes made from the 1920s onward were mostly hype, and few new industrialists of the 1950s and 60s started from scratch -- their opportunities arose because their families were already wealthy, and a closer look would show that modern fortunes were often smoke and mirrors. This was before the rise of authentic new multibillionaires like Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates.

While the super-rich do often work in concert when it suits them, and some of the great fortunes have had staying power, this doesn't cancel out the fact that some multibillionaires are more successful than others, and some are phony products of PR. Rockefeller Sr is reported to have said, on learning the actual value of Pierpont Morgan's estate, "And to think he wasn't a wealthy man". This is likely the case with the current group of arrivistes.

This brings me to Jack Dorsey. He's best known as CEO of Twitter and most recently for banning Trump from the platform while he was still in office. The problem is that both Twitter and its much larger companion app Facebook basically sell advertising over the internet, which neither controls. They folllow the old broadcast model, in which access is "free" or at fairly low cost to individual users, who select their own programming.

The advantage for Twitter, Facebook, and the many similar products is that, unlike newspapers or traditional television, markets are much more clearly identifiable, since the apps can gain much more information about individual consumer preferences, which makes it possible for advertisers to target them much more granularly.

The difficulty for this business model is that, unlike traditional broadcast, there are few barriers for new competitors to come into the market. TV and radio need government licenses to operate, which are few and expensive to get. A new clone for Facebook or Twitter needs far, far less. And when the magnates behind them, like Dorsey and Zuckerberg, become tone-deaf and ill-tempered, it's easy for their customers to switch to just another "free" app.

This is why the traditional big fortunes were made in fields like railroads, lumber, steel, old media, and mining, where barriers to entry could be erected. Dorsey and Zuckerberg need to play whack-a-mole with each new competitor.

So there are smart multibillionaires and dumb ones. I think this is something Lundberg only partly understood: he was in an age when, by the early 20h century, the robber barons had come to understand the value of public relations, and the advertising and PR fields were working effectively in a stable environment. Traditionl print and broadcst media had well-established markets with well-developed public stereotypes and high barriers to entry.

The current environment is nothing like that. This is probably another component of the social tensions behind the current global panic.

Parler, Bezos, Dorsey, Zuckerberg, And The Rich And The Super-Rich

I've said here before that Ferdinand Lundberg's The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today is one of the most important literary works of the 20th century if considered in the same genre as Milton's prose or Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. (It's available in pdf here.)

Lundberg's thesis was that US politics are dominated by an exclusive combine of wealthy families who manage centers of corporate and social power in the Fortune 500, the Ivy League, foundations, the federal govenment, and other institutions. I think he would have found no surprises in the saga of Parler, the social media upstart, over the past week. According to the Wall Street Journal,

In a complaint filed Monday in Seattle federal court, Parler alleged that Amazon Web Services kicked the company off its cloud servers for political and anti-competitive reasons. The conservative social network founded in 2018 exploded in popularity among supporters of President Trump after the November U.S. election.

“AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus. It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter , ” according to the complaint, which also accused Amazon of breaching a contract between the parties.

Amazon said Saturday that it would cut off Parler because it wasn’t confident in its ability to sufficiently police content on its platform that incites violence. The company said while it would no longer provide web services to Parler after Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time, it would preserve the platform’s data and help it migrate to different servers.

In related moves, Google and Apple removed the app from their stores. It was plain that the tech bilionaires regarded Parler as outside the bounds of received opinion and felt entitled to remove it. If it removed a potential competitor, so much the better.

But the recent crop of the super-rich, such as Bezos, Dorsey, and Zuckerberg, differ from the robber-barons and their descendants who were Lundberg's targets. The arrivistes, if they have descendants at all, won't be producing Rockefeller Jrs, Nelson Rockefellers, or Averell Harrimans. Those families, as well as their associates, struck me as magnanimous in the classical sense, endowing public institutions and undertaking public service.

The current crop strikes me as a group of petty, cowardly, small-minded men, not in the same league as Lundberg's rogues gallery, thuogh they may be just as influential, at least for now -- but this may be part of what's at the root of the social tensions behind the currnt global panic. These folks are terrified of Trump, it's plain, or they wouldn't be trying to engineer a bill of attainder against the guy.

The problem is that Trump was an opportunist who saw an opening. He didn't create the opening. Whatever becomes of Trump -- and I think 2024 is too far in the future for any sort of prediction -- the trend will still be there, and it will still be something that can be understood through Lundberg's insights.

The Collapse Of Conservative Opinion

A news item yesterday was American Thinker's retraction of allegations against Dominion Voting Systems that it acknowledged were "completely false". But this wasn't the end of the story. At the same time, alhough apparently for reasons umrelated to Dominion, the site deleted its comment section. And although there doesn't seem to have been an announcement, the site no longer carries ads.

My reaction to this is somewhere between "no great loss" and "good riddance", and I characterize myself as conservative. I used to visit it now and then, but I never did during the 2020 election cycle. The pieces there showed no particular insight and usually amounted to just preaching to the choir. In fact, the site has a lot in commom with the other currently popular sites like Breitbart, Red State, Conservative Treehouse, and so forth -- it runs hysterical headlines about days-old news and reiterates same old-same old viewpoints. What we aren't seeing, at least so far, is any attempt to regroup after\ the Trump defeat, recalibrate, and recover.

This brings me back to what I think is a key year, 1976, and what conservatives did to prepare for a Reagan victory in 1980. In the 1970s, I read both Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal, especially its editorial page. (I voted for Carter in 1976, but by 1980, I'd dropped Rolling Stone and voted for Reagan.) WSJ at the time was intellectually stimulating: it nurtured supply side economics, while Benjamin Stein wrote for them as well. It tackled current issues like the fuel crisis and stagflation with innovative policy recommendations that worked when Reagan applied them.

So far, I'm seeing nothing like that in the wake of 2020. If there were an equivalent of Robert Bartley's Journal now, it would be publishing influential critiques of COVID policy and serious discussions of Persian Gulf stragegy. Instead, it's simply gone never-Trump, which isn't what we need. Let the Democrats self-immolate over Impeachment II and start to ask serious questions about why Trump couldn't expand his base and why he lost with an unimaginative replay of his 2016 campaign.

Nobody's doing this. The most respectable conservatives right now appear to be unserious people like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson. Rush Limbaugh is on his deathbed, figuratively at least, but he's always suffered from the need to fill three hours a day when there's only 20 minutes of good material.

How to address issues like big tech censorship is a separate but related question. It seems to me that there are two parts to it. One, as only a few commentators have pointed out, is that Parler neglected a basic business duty by not planning for contingencies. If your business requires a vendor to supply servers, as Parler did with Amazon, you absolutely need to have a backup vendor, and not just in your Rolodex -- you need to have someone on contract, and you need to test yuur ability to recover on the backup, like twice a year. Yeah, Amazon can break its contract on a whim, but a hurricane or earthquake can take them out, too. Parler was an amateur show on that basis.

The other question is the income stream. Talk radio hosts now and then speak of their problem getting out of the painkiller-and-erectile-dysfunction ad market, where many are stuck. Most of the conservative web sites rely on hysterical clickbait headlines to pay the bills. Some of these people need to work out a better ad strategy.

The same applies to YouTube, since the YouTubers are mostly doing this as their main job and supporting themselves by letting YouTube sell ads for them. If YouTube doesn't think ads on their channel will sell, they won'tt run them. This is no different than if you were trying to sell stories to the Saturday Evening Post back in the day. Some YouTubers are willing to experiment, and many are doing the essential business task of planning for contingencies.

But the fact remains that old venues like National Review and the WSJ are no longer markets for innovative thinking, while the list of commentators who've flamed out over the past several years, like Jonah Goldberg and Michael Medved, is lengthening. Dr Sebastian Gorka is not a credible replacement. Buckley is long dead.

The Dog That Isn't Barking

So we've had two of the most respectable blue politicians, Gov Cuomo and Mayor Lightfoot, announce that lockdowns don't work and economies must reopen. There are headlines of a "narrative shift" with the appearance in Newsweek, which nobody has read for decades, of a respectablke study that says lockdowns don't work.

So, where is the groundswell of opinion that says, "What came over us? Of course lockdowns don't work. We're destroying the economy! I hereby decree that schools immediately return to in-person classes, sports resume, restaurants and bars reopn!" Er, no. Not happeing. Gov Cuomo, in whose power it is to say those very words, has been silent. He may as well decree that the rain stop, or start, as the case may be. The lockdown is a force of nature over which he has no control, it would appear.

I more or less expected this, though I'm not sure what the reasons for it are. One might be that Cuomo and Lightfoot are holding their economies hostage for bailouts. That lockdowns would create a situation where closing "non-essential" businesses would severely reduce tax revenues was known from the start. While Republicans had some measure of control, the federal government wasn't going to go far enough to restore these revenues by gifting them to the states and cities. With Democrats in control, this is much more likely. The message that's actually being sent is hurry up and bail us out, or. . .

There are two implicaations here. One is that, although government workers generally are deemed "essential", some, in the Department of Redundancy Department and elsewhere, have had their pay reduced. Federal bailouts will restore them to full pay and bring the arrears up to date as well. We may rely on that.

The second issue is all the "non-essential" workers who won't be in that privileged class. At this point, all they've had is some measure of unemploymennt -- that is, if they're eligible; many aren't for variouis reasons -- and ex gratia payments of $600, $1200, or $2000, whatever it is, every six or eight months. This is not enough to sustain people. Exactly what governments are going to do to address this if they choose to continue lockdowns indefinitely is a vexed issue, and it's by no means clear.

David Freiheit of the Viva Frei YouTube channel is beginning to recognize these issues as they relate to the Quebec lockdown-cum-curfew:

The curfew is reinforcing a new social arrangement, whereby government workers in particular are "essential" (and bus drivers continue to drive empty buses at full pay), while those not in the elite are screwed. He doesn't expand on this, but it's worth considering that the lowest class, on public assistance, continues to receive public payments. The wealthiest and those lucky enough to have pensions, are largely unaffected. The people who are badly hurt are those in the middle, the plebs.

Oh, by the way, journalists and opinion writers are "essential" and even get to work from home -- including the hacks who write for the conservative sites. They're pretty much fine with all this, too, left, right, or center.

Meanwhile, the US states show no special urgency in distributing vaccines. The people who matter don't see a problem. Even the right wingers are still just mourning the kraken.

So, Which Is It?

An unintended consequence of the 2020 electoral cycle is that it's put full responsibility for handling the COVID crisis in the hands of Democrats. This is another parallel I see with 1976, where Democrats took over in the face of worsening inflatoin and a fuel crisis and were incapable of handling them, which led to a Reagan landslide in 1980.

This morning's headline is that Chicago Mayor Lightfoot is "seeking to reopen Chicago’s bars and restaurants for indoor service as soon as possible". The public rationale is that alllowing indoor drinking and dining will provide a "safer outlet" for people who will otherwise, apparently, make their hookups elsewhere. I assume that's what's meant by "cut down on underground parties where attendees do not social distance or wear masks".

I suspect the real reason is that the city can't tax underground parties. I think Gov Cuomo was slightly more ingenuous when he said, “we are looking at months of shutdowns and the economic, mental and spiritual hardships they bring. We need to act now." I think it's starting to sink in that even with a Democrat congress and executive in Washington, there's no way any federal bailout can remedy the tax deficit the blue states and cities have brought on themselves.

In a move that hasn't been generally reported, Pennsylvania allowed a three=wek ban on all indoor dining to expire on January 4. This in itself is unusual, since California has simply renewed an equivalent three-week ban on even outdoor dining, with no relaxation in sight.

However, restrictions on alcohol in Pennsylvania (served only with meals, none after 11 PM, all visible drinks removed after midnight) continue. As seems to be the case with COVID curfews, this appears to be intended in practice to discourage fornication -- you'd better have your hookups arranged before 11, and you've gotta buy them dinner.

Well, as long as we get the tax money, we can still do something about the fornication as well, huh?

The problem for Mayor Lightfoot specirically is that she's up against "scientific" targets Pritzger has imposed on the state, and neither Chicago nor Cook County is anywhere near them. The targets -- under 6% testing positivity rate, for instance -- have been as a practical matter unattainable. Similar tasrgets in California have all but the most rural parts of the state locked down.

The difficulty is that all such targets are simply decrees, never passed by a legislature and never negotiated through any political process. Normally, lobbying groups for restaurants, food service unions, and others would have a chance to balance their interests against public health. This isn't happening here.

In effect, those who petition for redress must approach the emperor, or at best gain the ear of the emperor's mother, or possibly Cardinal Schmidlap. Clearly this is what's beginning to happen here, but it's all now intramural, with Trump out of the picture and Fauci ascendant. I would imagine someone is going to have to come to Fauci with an offer he can't refuse, and maybe then he'll let Cuomo reopen "safely". I assue "safely" means in a way that responsibly limits above all the opportunities for fornication among the plebs.

Good luck. I don't think this is going to work.

Global Mask Pushback?

The photo above is from a January 4 anti-mask protest at the Westfield Century City mall, where protesters caused disturbances in variouis stores at the upscale venue in the Beverly Hils-West Los Angeles area. Videos of the event went viral, although it doesn't appear that large numbers were involved. Nevertheless, just yesterday the Hollywood Reporter belatedly covered it:

Amid the last gasps and bellows of the Trump presidency, it seems no place is immune to recent spikes in outgoing MAGA madness — not even deeply blue Los Angeles County. Over the past few weeks, numerous sites across the city have been converted into ideological battlegrounds pitting maskless, Trump-supporting agitators against, well, everyone else, even as more than 7,000 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 around the L.A. area and ambulances are being told not to bring in patients unlikely to survive.

. . . But the ugliest event has to be the action that occurred at Westfield Century City on Jan. 4. As seen in videos posted to social media, a dozen or so provocateurs converged at the mall for seemingly one purpose: to openly defy and verbally ridicule the mask-wearing mandates that nearly every private business in L.A. has been following for the past several months. Participants — several of whom were wearing MAGA paraphernalia — can be seen browsing the aisles of stores as they shout down anyone who requests that they put on a mask.

I'm not sure how big this movement is. Certaiinly ordinary citizens, like it or not, wear masks as required, and generally they aren't allowed into stores or churches without them anyhow. In LA, masks are effectively universal. However, that the Hollywood Reporter should be bashing anti-maskers a week after a fairly small protest suggests the media elites are nervous. Maybe they should be. People aren't happy about moving goalposts and indefinite lockdowns, especially when civil authorities appear to be slow-walking vaccine distribution.

In the UK, HSBC Bank has threatened to close accounts of customers who refuse to wear masks in its branches.

HSBC bank has told its customers that wearing masks inside its branches is mandatory and those who refuse could see their accounts closed.

The warning comes as a further 1,234 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded in a single day.

It's notable that both the Hollywood Reporter and the UK press cover the issue of masks with hysterical references to death counts, although the question remains if masks are in fact near universal -- which in fact they are -- and lockdown rules are draconian -- we must assume that any customer in a UK HSBC branch is now there due only to direst exigency -- the death rates continue to spike.

Why hasnb't media anywhere begun to ask this question?

And why are the UK powers that be nervous enough to threaten anyone who thinks of entering premises maskless? The January 6 US Capitol riot seems to have focused the Hollywood Reporter's mind on what could happen if the political authorities don't find a better solution to the COVID crisis.

Global Hysteria Update

In another update to the story of how much worse the COVID hysteria is outside the US, the video above from Montreal YouTuber David Freiheit of the Viva Frei channel outlines arrests and fines being imposed on Quebec citizens for violating an 8 PM - 5 AM COVID curfew. What interests me is that, as in the UK, local law enforcement is doing this.

In the US, both police unions and police command structures have been near unanimous in announcing they enforce legislatively enacted statutes, not temporary executive orders or health regulations. As a result, governors have had to call on resurces under their direct control, such as state highway patrols, and health departments have had to rely on food inspectors, to do enforcement of COVID orders, which limits their reach.

The next question is one that I don't see asked seriouisly very often. which is what effect a curfew is intended to have on the pandemic. The germs presumably spread 24/7, and people are less active at night anyhow, since they aren't racoons. The speculation I see is that it's meant to limit people going to bars. If so, I assume this is actually a disguised ban on fornication, which goes along with a disguised implicit ban on most liturgy in churches, which is also near universal.

Well, if you close the churches, how else can you control fornication? Seems reasonable to me.

But I'm less concerned with the "ain't it awful" part of the story than the question of why this is happening. If governments feel they have to control both liturgy and fornication, which it's hard to avoid thinking, then we're talking about a superstitious response to what's in effect an invisible crisis. And let's face it, the bogeyman isn't COVID.

The US Congress is focused on impeaching Trump after he's left office. We must assume this is a substitute for what, up to modern times, would be the headsman's block. Ths was prefigured by the Kathy Griffin meme at the tme of his election. But given its intent as cearly expressed by advocates of the move, it's meant specifically to end his public career, which strikes me as not an impeachment, which is constitutional (and would be if he were still in office), but a bill of attainder, which is not. But whatever becomes of that particular action, it's limited to the US and a particular figure, Donald Trump. But since Trump will be out of office before any impeachment move can be made to remove him, this stikes me as an action as superstitious as banning fornication or controlling liturgy.

But again, this superstitious panic is a worldwide phenomenon, and as I've covred it here, it's worse at least in Canada and the UK. It says something for US institutions that at least so far, there've been no $1500 fines for being out after 8 PM here.

What's the source of the panic? It can't be COVID, that's an invisible cover for another invisible enemy.