Tag Archives: Jeff Bezos

February 1, 2022 · 16:07

That first step

We have all heard it, the first step is admitting you have a problem. There is of course debate on WHAT the problem is. I am not any different. I hate stupidity, hypocorism and bot to mention short sighted issues. One of these issues is ‘Tax the rich’, we see all these stupid people screaming ‘tax the rich’ whilst the system is set, there is a tax system, there are tax laws and instead of all screaming to adjust the tax system we see the empty gesture to tax the rich, the rich do not care, they adhere to tax laws, so these laws will PROTECT them. Another issue was seen in ‘Greed and Law helping each other’, I wrote it on July 9th 2021 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/07/09/greed-and-law-helping-each-other/). There I set out the short sighted setting of the Oxycontin setting. I wrote “Yes, there are culprits in this story. You see some sources give us that in 1996 316,000 prescriptions were dispensed, it grew to an impressive amount topping over 14 million prescriptions with an estimated value of $3,000,000,000. The issue we see everyone painting over is ‘prescriptions dispensed’, this is not something that a person can get, it needs a doctor and it needs a pharmacist.” You see there are laws and rules, and they were massively broken by doctors and pharmacists. So when do they go to court? 

It is Reuters who give us today (at https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/sacklers-near-deal-contribute-more-opioid-settlement-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy-2022-01-31/) the story of ‘Sacklers near deal to increase opioid settlement in Purdue bankruptcy’, I personally do not believe that members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma LP were completely innocent, yet that is not the setting is it? SOMEONE handed a paper to dispense Oxycontin, a pharmacist handed over the drugs. Yet nearly all of them banked the money and did not ring the alarm bell (some really did that) and those who cashed in on 14,000,000 prescriptions? Why are they not in court? Members of the Sackler family cannot hand over prescriptions, they cannot dispense drugs to people, they can merely distribute to pharmacies. So I do not believe that they are completely innocent, but to go after them and not after the doctors and pharmacies is (as I personally see) immoral. 

Yes, I know that in Torts you go after the money.

So in that setting: “Jeff Bezos, I do believe you owe me $50,000,000 post taxation, pay up please!”

But is any of that fair? You might say that fair has nothing to do with it and it is not incorrect but it is wrong. So when Reuters gives us “An agreement involving members of the Sackler family and several state attorneys general could potentially end a legal challenge that has prevented Purdue from exiting bankruptcy, and clear the way for a plan aimed at helping to abate the opioid crisis” my personal thoughts are wondering how many of these state attorney generals went after the doctors and the pharmacies? Justice handed in August 2021 a verdict, ‘Doctor Sentenced To More Than 15 Years In Prison For Conspiring To Distribute Thousands Of Oxycodone Pills Illegally’, there is no way in hell that only ONE doctor did that, so how many are serving 15 years? 

It is U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss who gives us “Dr. Emmanuel Lambrakis wrote medically unnecessary prescriptions for thousands of oxycodone pills – an addictive and potentially fatal opiate.  Instead of abiding by his oath to ‘do no harm,’ Lambrakis pumped deadly drugs into the community.  Lambrakis put his own greed before his duties as a medical professional, and for that he will now spend a lengthy term in federal prison.” And as stated before, there is no way that there was merely one doctor guilty of that, in addition, there are truckloads of pharmacies that require the same amount of attention and that too is not being done to the degree it had to be done, it is my personal opinion that some state attorneys general’s were lazy and decided to go after the money, go for the easy conviction. Yes, the Sackler family benefitted, but who prescribed? Who handed them over? I see close to nothing on that. It is a simple tax the rich approach to a failing in law and a failing to observe the law and there are clearly a vast amount of doctors and pharmacies more guilty than any of the Sackler family. But we do not get to see that, do we?

As I see it, it started with that first step and the law has a problem, it cannot properly dispense justice to the wrongdoers. It merely went to the richest person and found them guilty. So what happens when it becomes about something more problematic? What happens when someone figures out that any Ponzi scheme can be done online handing the mess to Apple or perhaps Epic systems? So what happens when the hackers find the weakness in something like Nvidia’s GeForce Now service? What happens when 300,000,000 people lose $10-$35 and Epic goes ‘Not my Problem’, and Nvidia goes ‘We know nothing’? Who will end up with that bill of $3,000,000,000-$9,000,000,000 because the people will demand payment and as I see it the Justice departments will be globally clueless on how to proceed. The nice part here is that the court setting makes Apple automatically innocent, they had to open up the system and the people will merely lose their money. 

How a spindled world wide web we weave.

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January 25, 2022 · 23:36

Not just America

This train of thought started when the BBC gave us ‘Inflation surge sends UK interest payments higher’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60117150). In the past, to be a little more specific with ‘Utter insanity’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/04/utter-insanity/) on October 4th 2021, with ‘How stupid are we?’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/17/how-stupid-are-we/) on September 17th 2021 and even before that going back to 2015 and 2016 I made it clear that debts have interest. The US (now at 28 trillion), Japan (well over 14 trillion) and the EU with several at €5,000,000,000,000 as well as the UK with well over £2,000,000,000,000 now sees (via the BBC) the quote “The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said interest on government debt hit £8.1bn last month – up from £2.7bn a year earlier.” Is anyone even surprised? It was always going to be worse, but I admit that was before Covid took centre stage, as these elements unfolded, debts all over the planet is soaring and the interest is due. And if you think the UK is in a bad setting, consider that France and Germany have a similar setting, but with a larger debt. Germany has options, yet I am not sure how many France has and as I am taking notice of it the article more thoughts come to mind. You see, I wrote with some degree of speculation “The US laughed and sniggered when Wall Street offered vulture solutions to Argentina in 1998, now the vultures are ready and set to rip the US carcass apart. Is it a fair view? That is not in question, yet the stage is now that it is becoming a likely view the only people treated fair are the hard workers who just tried to get by.” And this view is not taking into consideration what the US will do to regard their registered patents and IP to be part of the debt leverage. It made me consider where to put my IP. In all this Canada was the safest bet, more important, Amazon could set the market upheave with securing up to $15 billion in IP, IP that is still unsecured. And as I notice a few articles in the BBC, there is ever chance that one of the IP settings could well over double. Another IP (a concept IP setting) could well exceed that if the IP for the printable displays takes hold. You see, power needs are exceeding massively what is available and the idea that we could optionally reduce power requirements to one device by well over 60%, the idea of doing that to up to 100,000,000 devices will count, the optional military setting (as their is a notion that this solution is speculatively EMP proof, would exceed the expectations by a lot more, by more than even I could imagine. But I will accept that DARPA is a much better source then I ever would be. 

So as debts and power needs rise to way above the acceptable norm, there could be a partial union between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (or whomever runs Amazon). And in this Reuters news from December 18th telling us ‘U.S. to face increasing power reliability issues over next 10 years’ merely fuels my IP value. There is optionally a larger stage that has everything to do with people moving from California to Texas and I wrote about it in the past. It doesn’t just set the environment with not enough power, it also sets the available power in the wrong place, giving places like Texas a few more headaches. In this the solution that Elon Musk has will be essential and needed almost immediately. 

But this is not about him, it is about Amazon and Amazon has as per today an optional solution for issues in the UK, issues in a few places in the EU and that is all before someone realises that Neom (Saudi Arabia) requires a very different approach to marketing and retail visibility. I based part of my IP on that shift in 2019 and now that it is closing in, someone will realise that whatever is set there could influence and strengthen it position in Egypt and Israel as well. This relates to the previous part because the US has done almost nothing in that regard other than alienate Saudi Arabia, the EU is in a similar position as they cater too much towards Iran and Saudi Arabia can together with Huawei set the 5G base to include Egypt which brings close to 100,000,000 subscriptions and they all want to do marketing. And in all this I have been right again and again and now that the UK is realising that an interest increase from “£8.1bn last month – up from £2.7bn a year earlier”, the need for commerce is overtaking all other considerations and Amazon has the inside track on several options. At that point do you think the US will be about fair play? They will take what they can and they will leverage IP as required to not fall over, because if the UK is facing this, then so are Japan and the US to some degree and none of them has the stamina to wage a long fight with debts drowning them, especially when the interest is too much too handle. In all this Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have the option to be saviours (at a price), especially when the short sighted governments should have seen this coming a mile away. Why? I saw this point as early as 2015, thus I was aware of the danger 7 years before the BBC informs its audience and this is not merely ‘speculation’, this was always going to happen, only through covid there is a chance that the UK will beat the US and Japan to that point of drowning. And when that happens it will the the one marker where all retirement funds will dry up faster than oasis in the Sahara. Feel free to doubt me, but I leave it up to you to await the bad news from your retirement funds. Some studies were made that in the US 40% will run out of retirement funds due to all kinds of risks and governments running out of cash is a big one, that is why (for them) patents and IP are so important, they are the leverage some companies prefer not to give them. They might prefer to call it ‘Leveraging Federal Resources’ but in the end that is where it is heading and it will not merely be the US, it will be a lot more places who play that game, so in the end, those who own their IP are in an exulted place of negotiating. Hence the benefit that Amazon and Musk will end up having and should either be a larger part of Neom, their value will merely go up, because it is not (merely) about  Neom, it is the strategic place it has for Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. From there a whole range of options open up and the first one there gets to serve all the others. 

It is not about the US, it is not merely the US. You need to see that before it is too late to act, it might still be too late to act, but there is an option to reap some rewards in that mess and that is all up to you, I placed my IP in a strategic place, outside of government reach. It was a good as I would be able to steer it, now it is up to others and I might still miss out, but I gave it one hell of a try. 

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December 17, 2021 · 22:24

The media as enforcer

It is a thought, it is my thought and I wonder if there is enough that I am correct? You see, most people are crying foul, blaming rich people. Making noises on the need to tax the rich and the media is helping out. That is the operative part, the media is helping out. To show you just how far they go, let’s take a little trip.

Search by Google
When you search for ‘Charles P. Rettig’ you see two results. One by LGBTQ Nation, one by Mondaq. Consider the following parts
1. Charles P. Rettig is the Commissioner of the IRS.
2. Taxes are on the plate of responsibility of the IRS.
3. The media has nothing to report on the IRS? They are merely all flaming the tax the rich part?

Looking at the media
The BBC gives us another flame article on how ‘How billionaires pay less tax than you’, yet no one is looking at the simple fact that people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other billionaires are doing what they are allowed to do, and it is not “special strategies to avoid paying income tax, say experts”, it is “Merely paying what Tax laws and tax codes are telling people how much to pay”. A setting that comes from the office of Charles P. Rettig, the people who were there before him like John Koskinen, Daniel Werfel, Steven T. Miller, Douglas Shulman, Linda Stiff, and Mark Everson a collection of people that were there for almost 20 years when nothing was done to overhaul taxes, and the media is not reporting on it, is it not news or is it part of the filtered information that some people do not want you to have. Yes, I am focussing here on the US, yet the mess in the EU is not better, it is actually worse as they got well over 20 nations to do NOTHING!

I am not stating that Elon Bezos and Jeff Musk are innocent (or was that the other way round?), I am stating. I am saying that they use tax laws as they are ALLOWED to be used, in black letter setting (meaning: literal interpretation) all whilst the media is shouting about the spirit of the law, the spirit of the law is not in writing, in writing we find “A tax code is a federal government document, usually numbering thousands of pages, that details the rules individuals and businesses must follow in remitting a percentage of their incomes to the federal or state government”, yes, and then the politicians added tax codes, exclusions, tax write-offs and that results in people like the ones we see mentioned as well as the Koch Family ($113,000,000,000), the Walton family ($220,000,000,000) and the Mars family (not the planet) with $127,000,000,000 we do not see these names do we? Just like Charles P. Rettig we see very little on them, we see houses bought and sold and two weeks ago we see ‘Influential Koch network rocked by an alleged affair scandal, donor departures and a discrimination lawsuit’ and I only see the CNBC mention, the other papers seemingly left it alone, why is that?

So whilst we see all flames we do not see anyone (including media) invoking the need to overhaul tax laws, no one seems interested in the essential step that is required. 

More important, no one in media is taking that step either, why is that? You still think that they are free to speak their journalistic minds, or does the hierarchy of Shareholders, stake holders, advertisers starts making sense. To realise that you the reader are a mere 4th place in any media source, how does that feel?

It is not a setting where the rich pay less, it is a setting that non-overhauled tax laws benefits the rich more and this is not semantics, consider that CNBC gave you “So if you want to find a way to lower your taxes like the rich do, it could be a good idea to meet with a financial advisor or CPA”, for a really rich person a CPA ($119,000 annual) is nothing, and they KNOW what tax laws are there to aid and which ones are not. And it was simple, it has been for decades and no one seems to focus on that part, they merely advertise the scream ‘Tax the Rich’ which is funny, because it goes nowhere and gets people nothing and when you realise that the taxation laws were the problem for decades, when will you see that the politicians and their IRS commissioners were part of the problem and never any part of the solution the USA desperately needs. So whilst the news is all about ‘Biden signs legislation raising US debt limit, averts potential default’, now consider your own situation. How much upgrades can you get on your credit card until is gets blocked, banned and retracted? How many upgrades can you get until you show more income? That is the stage; that is also why tax laws need overhaul. It is not names like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, it is the stage that the USA has according to some sources 614 billionaires. You still think that there is no gain in overhauling tax laws? Oh, and when we look at those with a value that tops $100,000,000 you get to a number of people that is slightly surpasses 5000. When you consider all this, do you think it makes sense that the media has zero interest in people like Charles P. Rettig? Consider that he should be in the targeting view of EVERY American media outlet, but he is not, why is that you think?

I am starting to believe that the media is nothing more than an enforcer that uses the old premise of panem et circenses, a stage introduced by the poet Juvenal. Decimus Junius Juvenalis (his original name) was around in the age of Nero and Galba and a whole lot of other emperors, including the year when they had 4 of them (it is a hazardous job). A stage we see now exploited by media, politicians and rich people. Making us all watch where they want us to look, not where we need to look and the US (EU too) is running out of time. When the US defaults, what do you think will happen to the Yen and the Euro? So when you get angry at Jeff Bezos, wonder why the media is so focussed on giving him the limelight and they are actively avoiding the limelight on a whole group of 614 equally filthy rich as Jeff Ross (sorry the other comedian) Jeff Bezos and we do not see their names, not ANYWHERE, why is that? Consider that for a moment before you start shouting ‘Tax the rich’. Let’s be clear I have nothing against taxing rich people, but that is what tax laws are for, to tax all 5000 of them, not the three overly mentioned in media and there is the rub, that is where the media needs to ask people like Charles P. Rettig and the tax laws makers behind him very serious questions, but the media is not doing that. Why is that?

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December 11, 2021 · 19:16

A two sided sword

It is nice (novel too) when the press does your work. Al Jazeera (at https://aje.io/xvndmj) with the headline ‘Nobel Peace Prize winners warn of growing disinformation threat’, which sounds nice, but the complication is that the press is part of the problem, in the last two years 

I looked at issues with the NSO group, Jamal Khashoggi (the reporter no one cares about), one sided accusations against Saudi Arabia, bungled investigations involving Jeff Bezos (and the UN), Ignoring the events from Iran and Houthi forces and that running joke known as the ICIJ with their papers of hope (Pandora papers). All issues that show the press being part of the problem, not a solution. All vying for digital dollars any way they can. 

So when I see “Maria Ressa of the Philippines said the greatest threat to democracy is “when lies become facts”, while Dmitry Muratov of Russia said society is currently in a dangerous “post-truth period””, I am not opposing Maria Ressa, I am stating that the disinformation problem is a lot larger than what we hear and journalists are part of that problem. 

Journalists have with some regularity placed themselves on the axial of a seesaw and tried to keep a balance between events taking place and Stakeholders that need things go certain ways (my speculation/presumption). It is a setting that have been going on since 2012 (which is when I started to take notice). So when I see “Muratov also told Al Jazeera that disinformation was a significant and growing threat. “Manipulation leads to war,” he said. “We are in the middle of a post-truth period. Now, everyone is concerned about their own ideas and not the facts,” Muratov said” I feel an involuntary giggle coming up. It is correct what he states, but the part of ‘Manipulation leads to war’, was this communicated to the morning breakfast shows? Was this communicated to newspapers who do this way too often? 

Yes there are problems and they are all over the place, yet the press is part of the problem, it stopped being part of the solution when shareholders needed to see more money from news outlets. A plate for pigs and there are too many pigs and the plate is seemingly getting smaller. 

So it needs to be clear, I am not opposing the person who achieved the standing of winning a Nobel price, I am however pointing towards the wannabe’s behind these people maximising digital coins at the expense of clear reporting. In case of the ICIJ, has anyone seen a clear dashboard giving us numbers of people per nation, nations with government people involved and non-government people? No, you haven’t. More importantly when we see the stage of those in zero tax nations (and their right to be there), what is left? In that stage we see the ICIJ speak like parrots, repeating the same thing over and over without any real revelations, any real criminal activities. So when you see “The new data reveals confidential information about the owners of offshore entities mostly registered in the British Virgin Islands, a notoriously secretive jurisdiction, between 1980 and 2018.” You get no real information, merely some silly essay person waving his dick. The problem is that this so called “confidential information about the owners of offshore entities”, is absent of criminal activities. It is about tax laws and these clowns have not achieved anything, merely made you all angry that some people get LEGALLY away with avoiding taxation. So Boo Hoo flipping Hoo. 

So I get it that some journalists should receive protection, but in my personal view, we could do without those 600 at the ICIJ brilliantly. The term of “when lies become facts” sounds really nice, but that means that we hold journalists and what they write accountable, an act that hasn’t been the case for the longest of times, should you doubt that, read the Leveson report. The stage is changing and to some degree journalists and news outlets are responsible for that mess. Consider that the big papers which include the Wall Street Journal, The Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Boston globe and the NY Times. How many did a real piece on how tax laws have failed a nation? None as fr as I can tell, they are all screaming ‘Tax the Rich’ but it were these tax laws that got them in that setting. The disregarded acts by Iran are visible all over by the bulk of these papers seemingly disregard these parts, just like the assaults by Houthi’s but they are all eager to slam the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one sided reporting is disinformation, I hope that this is clear? Filtered information (like morning shows) is also a form of disinformation and they all serve some stakeholder (as I personally see it).

A stage that has to change and it should start with those calling themselves journalists. 

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November 27, 2021 · 21:41

Hindered by bias

I am in a few cases hindered by bias. I will admit this, there is no denying it. To throw diplomacy on the side, it is my personal opinion that the average crack dealer on a schoolyard tends to have more credibility than the average journalist. The media world has become that bad. Not all mind you, but the larger group has lost credibility.

To show you an example, I will take you now to Reuters, one source that is actually good (for the most), but the story they give you (at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-privacy-lobbying/) gives a few items that I have a problem with and it might merely be me. I will let you decide.

The article ‘Amazon wages secret war on Americans’ privacy, documents show’ shows a few sides I have a problem with and even as Reuters tends to be a good source, the article shows parts that do not fill me with confidence, you might feel different.

It starts with “This story is based on a Reuters review of hundreds of internal Amazon documents and interviews with more than 70 lobbyists, advocates, policymakers and their staffers involved in legislation Amazon targeted, along with 10 former Amazon public-policy and legal employees” In the first, how did Reuters get a hold of these documents? The word ‘documents’ is shows 14 times, not one of them gives a stage HOW the documents were acquired, and how these documents, these internal documents add up. We see one mention of that word with “The premise of this story is flawed and includes reporting that relies on early, incomplete drafts of documents to draw incorrect conclusions” in the second, we see the mention of 70 lobbyists. Which lobbyists? We see the names Anthony William, Meade Spotts, yet there is mention of 70 interviews, if only 2 were set in some light that comes over as optionally as debatable, it becomes a simple equation of statistics. And to be more precise, there is no mention that these lobbyists did anything illegal. It implies an optional debatable situation with 2.8% of the interviewed lobbyists, that is when you consider that the article gives us that in 2020 Amazon had registered at least 180 lobbyists in 44 U.S. states, the percentage is a joke. We are most likely to get more criminal behaviour from Catholic priests. 

Then we go to “Consumer advocates considered the resulting law essentially worthless, said Shankar Narayan, a lawyer at the time for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state. “It’s riddled with so many holes; it’s like a Swiss cheese,” Narayan said. “It falls in the category of bills that try to make you feel better about biometrics without providing meaningful protection.”” Here there is one direct issue. Lobbyists do not draft laws, Amazon does not draft laws. Lawmakers do that, and which lawmakers were investigated in that bill? Then there is the small setting of “Amazon dominates U.S. smart speaker sales. An estimated 69% of smart-speaker users, about 64 million people, use devices from Amazon, according to research firm Insider Intelligence” Here we have a few issues, one is debatable, but I am a stickler for the small stuff. So what exactly is a smart-speaker? There are 4 mentions, yet none give us a definition. And where does the 69% come from, how was 64 million people assessed? Consider that there is Google, Amazon, Sonitrek, Harmon Kardon. You see, one source gives us “Global Smart Speaker market shipments hit 154 million in 2020” that number does not come with any drill down in brands and 64M from 154M is not 69%, more importantly the 154M number was 2020 only, so when we go back to 2018-2021, how many were sold? That gives a light towards the shoddy practice in the article as I personally see it. If it was all on the up and up (not relying on creating emotions) the 64 million would be specified in a few ways. 

And then we get to “only after lobbyists for Amazon and other firms had chiseled away at its privacy protections by convincing lawmakers to insert alternative language, often verbatim, according to emails between lawmakers and Amazon lobbyists obtained by Reuters through public-records requests”. Other firms? What other firms? And if lawmakers were convinced to change the language, what was done by Amazon lobbyists and what was done by ‘other’ firms? Google perhaps? Google has a decent share of this market, so why is that part not chiseled out with some precision? And when we see “often verbatim, according to emails between lawmakers and Amazon lobbyists obtained by Reuters through public-records requests”, why does the article not give us examples? No names of lobbyists and lawmakers? There is (as I personally see it) an issue here. At this point I get to “Amazon representatives never took a public position on the bill, relying instead on trade groups the company funded to oppose it at hearings, according to Amazon documents and public records of the debate”, so as it stands, who were these trade groups? And what evidence is there that these trade groups were funded by Amazon? The lines become blurry in several ways and I am willing to bet that Amazon never broke any laws, they never did anything illegal, but Reuters gives us “Amazon wages secret war on Americans’ privacy”, they never give us “Amazon uses legal methods to undermine privacy” (with specific evidence presented), ass such I wonder where this article will ever be taken and who will they take into the limelight? 

Finally we need to consider “The reporter’s data request revealed that Amazon had collected more than 90,000 Alexa recordings since 2017 – averaging about 70 a day”, so over a period of 4 years, there are 90,000 recordings. All whilst in 2020 alone 154 million smart speakers were sold? And the earlier quote “An estimated 69% of smart-speaker users, about 64 million people, use devices from Amazon”, 90,000 recordings over 64,000,000 people is a mere tenth of 1%, did anyone do that math, so what is this article? A mere slap Amazon around article? Perhaps I can help Reuters out here. You see, I discovered how Jeff Bezos got to be so very rich. I saw that Harrods sells shampoo at $240 per bottle, Jeff Bezos does not need to spend that on shampoo. Actually I have lived in apartments with a lower monthly rent, so that is how he allegedly got to be this rich. So there! 

Am I biased? I personally feel that I am, but this article shows too many shady sides, too many shoddy approaches to slap the rich, this is all the premise towards another joust for ‘taxing the rich’. I have nothing against that as long as it is done fairly and that requires an overhaul of tax laws. And in regards to ‘the secret war’? If it gets to be in Reuters, it cannot have been that secret, can it? And in all this Google has similar goals, so where is Google in all this? You see lobbyists tend to have an open hand to the masters that pay them, are any of these lobbyists paid by Google? Was that checked, or investigated? 

All questions that beckons an investigation on what the holy bloody hell Reuters has been up to, and with the lack of actual and factual information, the article becomes a mess, with an aftertaste that represents a bad joke, but that is my personal view on the matter. So what gives?

What do you think this was really about? Creating flames or handing over information?

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November 26, 2021 · 22:14

Stupid people never learn

This is not an accusation, it is merely a setting we need to accept. This all started half an hour Aho when the BBC gave us ‘Protesters hit Amazon buildings on Black Friday’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59419572), with the setting “An international coalition of unions, equality and environmental groups called “Make Amazon Pay” is staging a day of action, demanding concessions”, it is like the approach of a hurricane, and making the one person who left a window open giving him (or her) a bill for the draft damage. People just do not get it, and I am at a loss why that is. It is not hidden information, it is not secret information, it merely is information out in the open for anyone to read.

The setting is not “Amazon takes too much and gives back too little”, the setting is that governments would not overhaul tax laws for the longest of times. I first make a case for overhauling tax laws in 1998, now 24 year later none of it EVER happened. Amazon did not take too much, it took what Amazon was entitled to take. Amazon (only) gives what it is mandated to give. There are las out there and Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Facebook and Google adhere to these laws. All the rest is merely discriminatory bullshit. So when I see “Worldwide, nearly 50 organisations have signed up to a list of “common demands”, published by the Make Amazon Pay coalition”, so I wonder who they are. And it does not really matter as they cross over from one into the other. Consider “A global union federation representing 50 million workers in 140 countries in a range of sectors”, this implies less then 350.000 per nation, which includes the US, which imply that they basically amount to nothing. Then we get “A global union federation of journalists’ trade unions, representing more than 600.000 media workers from 187 organisations in 146 countries” I merely wonder whether they include the same essay writers that grace the ICIJ, a fair question, because journalists are supposed to be smarter than this. All the flames, the bullshit and the need for click bitches that spike digital revenue, all to have a go at a company that struck it big by being actually innovative. 2 years ago Amazon would not be on the mind of console gaming. Now the Amazon Luna overtakes what Google and Microsoft have and that is just for starters. They equal Apple in a few ways and there is no end to Amazon at present. All that and they adhere to laws, or lets just states that they adhere to what their legal department states that they need to adhere to. And no one is putting actual and factual pressure on the politicians that need to get shit done (like overhauling tax laws) but then people get quotes like “It is a really complex situation”, so complex that in 24 years nothing was done, so the utter nonsense of 50 organisations that have call signs making them close to ludicrously useless. If they were not useless, they would put pressure on politicians overhauling tax laws. 

The lesson has been out there for almost 25 years, the facts were out there for almost 25 years and still the people will not learn, the politicians do not want them to learn, because they will have to do something and over time it might amount to something pissing of the rich friends they have. In all this, the setting is much larger then the FAANG group. It includes people like the Walton Family, the Green family, the Koch family, the Yuan family and as such several dozens more. All billionaires, all doing what the law allowed them to do. The feigned anger against Amazon is just pointless bullshit and we need to wake up. Flames and emotions will not get us anywhere and that is the problem with Grassroots people, all about anger and emotion and when the anger subsides, when they realise (if ever) that the law was adhered to we see the pointlessness of the situation and stupid people never do so, in this, how come the journalists are part of this? Who do they serve? Because in the end they serve the shareholders and advertisers. But what of their stakeholders? Who are they and why are they embracing pointless actions? Did you ever consider that part of the equation? 

As such will you learn, or will you just pointlessly embrace a coalition that wastes another two decades going nowhere? It is up to you, you can chose and making the choice that goes somewhere is always better, even if the destination is not better, sometimes things get worse before they get better, that is the outcome of change, the changing process is never better, the outcome can be, it is up to us to make that so, and it is not an easy fight, that much is an absolute given.

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November 2, 2021 · 03:57

Population One

It might be the most depressing outlook one could ever have. When the population depletes to one, thee will be no reproduction (and no sex either). It does not matter who wins, whether it is a he or a she. Greed is based on the foundation that everyone else must fail. So it ends with a population of one. Yet I did not get there in a single stroke, I went beyond the DNA virus that could kill 97.3% of all people. I went beyond the fake promises of politicians, the calculated misinformation the media aids them with and it all comes down to the man in charge. The most greed driven ding dong on Wall Street. We are all in a stage of self destruction. Whether it is some form of discrimination, whether it is some form of gathering wealth by people who should not be allowed to have a dime in the first place (not referring to the wealthy people like Beff Jezos, Gill Bates or Zark Muckerman), I am talking about the wannabe’s who got creative and turned the law into something productive FOR THEM. I am talking about those who cut corners so that they can scrape a few coins they never worked for and if that results in some gap driven solution where people in the UK find out their house is stolen from under their noses, that is just business. So when you read the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-59069662) and see “the duplicate driving licence issued by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Mr Hall’s name, details of a bank account set up in his name to receive the proceeds of the sale, and phone recordings of the house being stolen” You would be wrong that this is a fluke. You could optionally accept “We work with professional conveyancers, such as solicitors, and rely on them and the checks that they make to spot fraudulent attempts to impersonate property owners. Despite our efforts, every year we do register a very small number of fraudulent transactions”, and I would too, but in this case we are both wrong. You see, this was not a fluke, this was well thought through, this was orchestrated and this was intent and all parties failed to protect a homeowner. Yet in all this, the banks cut corners. So where was the notary? Oh right, someone gave the clear indication that a notary was no longer required, it is so much faster to get a councilman doing that. It is a mess and the mess is merely increasing, all because some players are crying that things have to move faster and we all complied, we all did this.

But this is not about a house, or a notary, or any form of simple matter. This is a much larger problem and it includes politicians, the media and us. We were always part of the bungle. Me too, I cannot claim innocence, I am a part of this screw up, just like you are. And perhaps it is already too late. 

Step One
In step One I wish to remind you of older articles. On December 10th 2020 I wrote ‘Uniform Nameless Entitlement Perforation’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/10/uniform-nameless-entitlement-perforation/) There I brought a report to the surface by the European Environment Agency. A report from the United Nations Environment Programme was included at the end of the article. But the most striking part was that the EEA gave us that 147 facilities are producing 50% of ALL pollution damage. That is a clear indication, we saw the Guardian helping out some vague friend by setting the stage that if rich people stopped using their jets, 10% less pollution would be the case (a setting I highly doubt), so whilst we aren’t clearly seeing that, the claim of “Global ‘elite’ will need to slash high-carbon lifestyles”, it amounts to I will fuck the neighbours wife without a condom so that we can safe the environment. Yes, we could all slash high carbon living, but that means we would be able to have a life, and that is not the case (at present).

Then on July 1st 2021 I wrote ‘Big Oil in the family’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/07/01/big-oil-in-the-family/) there we are given “An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way”, you see it is another wave of the blame game. There is truth in the statement, but it also comes with the seal of approval by Wall Street, greed never sleeps and oil was an instant moneymaker. People in the oil industry were printing money on the spot. Do you have any believe that those people give up that gained benefit? I think not

Step two
Here we take a gander. 

we take a small step to Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiehailstone/2021/10/01/industrial-air-pollution-costs-europe-2-3-of-gdp/) there we are given “The report – by the European Environment Agency – concludes that half of this pollution is caused by just 211 facilities scattered over the EU”, which is interesting as the images I gave you all shows it to be 147 facilities, but the locations are unknown. In addition we are given “Just 211 sites of the 11,655 facilities reporting emissions caused 50% of the pollution in 2017”, interesting as I was looking at 2020 material, So why is Forbes, in an October 2021 article going back to a 2017 report? And I got to that point 10 months before Forbes did. Someone does not want the whole enchilada out in the open. So where is that stakeholder? My assumption is Wall Street. 

In one of the articles I gave the quote “In the early 1990s, Kenneth Lay helped to initiate the selling of electricity at market prices and, soon after, Congress approved legislation deregulating the sale of natural gas” and now we see prices of Gas explode out of proportions. We see ‘electricity at market prices’ yet they did not upgrade installations and the need for electricity has also exploded out of proportions. Now one of those really wealthy people is sitting on a solution, but governments have not made any interesting move to make it happen, to push renewable industries to a much greater extend, and that is now starting to bite. 

Step Three
Now we get to the good stuff. I see a video by some grandmother named Gina McCarthy pass by. I see the text “the US is back in a leadership position”, it took 3 vials of Haldol to get me back to hysterics. The US has not been in a leadership position for the longest of time, Wall Street is. And in 7 weeks we get to see them flexing their muscles again. You see, we see headlines like ‘Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveils £3bn climate aid commitment at COP26’, where is he getting the money? Where is the US getting the money? Their clock runs out in 7 weeks and they do not have any funds, the larger polluter is China according to some of these reports, but where are they? What are they setting up? In all this the US is seemingly the least powerful player (an empty wallet does that), it is one of the less rich players (Canada) that is making larger and optionally tougher strides, will it be enough? 

You see, it remains to be seen, there are too many eyes on this event, so we are getting all the same messages. Yet it is next month, and January (after Christmas) that counts and it is then that we are more likely than not see more wealthy jet stories (the Guardian) or older reports (Forbes). And that is when you will need to take a stance, will you hold politicians and media accountable for luring you away from the limelight of truth? Consider that one source gives us two quotes. The first is “Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef, Warren Entsch won’t attend the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow”, the second is “Mr. Entsch has now confirmed he opted out of the summit after the uncertainty around being able to return home”, so how committed is he? Perhaps he is afraid he’ll miss an episode of Home and Away? #JustAsking

We have global problems, we have problems all over the world, yet to be honest, I never would have guessed that Australians would be guilty of destruction of their Great Barrier Reef by being ignorant. And a similar (optionally even worse) event is happening is Western Australia. We all destroyed our planet, you, me, all of us. We let the Wall Street people act and cut corners to facilitate greed and we let the politicians assist them. As I personally see it, getting rid of 97.3% of all people might have been the humane solution. I will let you consider whether I am absolutely insane, or if I might have a decent case. In the end Greed only requires a population of one, my solution would be an option for 210.6 million people. Around what it was in the year 800. We need to reconsider what we do, we need to reconsider what will work, but flying people all over the world making presentations they cannot keep, enforce or pay for is not the solution. 

I will let you decide.

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October 19, 2021 · 21:58

Searching for a reason

We all do that at times, we all search for a reason. Whether it is for a solution, to blame or to incite. These are the most likely reasons, but they are not the only ones. The thought came to mind when the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58961836) gave me ‘Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ‘may have lied to Congress’’ a stage where ‘may’ is operative. So there is not even any level of assurance that he ‘had most likely’ lied, that on the premise it was highly likely that he was not truthful, or any other stage of ‘creating doubt towards sincerity’. We are also given the claims that “Amazon copied products and rigged its search results in India to boost sales of its own brands”, as well as “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question” and in finality we get “they were considering referring the firm “for criminal investigation””, so in the third, what ‘criminal investigation’? For allegedly rigging results in India? For inaccurate media articles? It is an open field and in all this, we need to consider that US congress is merely trying to get fines from rich companies any way they can get, it is what incompetent people tend to do, play the blame game. 

Yet to understand it we need to take a look at the Reuters article (at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging) where we get ‘Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show’. Here we are given “The internal documents also show that Amazon employees studied proprietary data about other brands on Amazon.in, including detailed information about customer returns” this is indeed a solid accusation. In addition we get “It is difficult to develop this expertise across products and hence, to ensure that we are able to fully match quality with our reference product, we decided to only partner with the manufacturers of our reference product”, it is quite the accusation, yet this happened in 2016. So in the first, why is this not in Indian courts? In the second, why do we see a bland US Congress setting when it is not an activity on American soil? It was Amazon.in, it was in India and referred to Indian products. In addition we get the small part at the very end of “In sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained that the e-commerce giant prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business. And, in 2019, another Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them” I see it as two parts, in 2019 there is a stage of “Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them” which would support the stage of wrongful action mentioned earlier, and in 2020 we get “prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business”, as such a stage optionally exists that a flaw was found and dealt with. Optionally there remains a stage that in 2016 “Amazon employees working on the company’s own products, known as private brands or private labels, planned to partner with the manufacturers of the products targeted for copying”, so a stage remains that Indian employees became creative to create their own private fortune in debatable ways, a stage that was close over time and there Reuters has a larger issue. The documents, what EXACTLY do they prove? I am not against Reuters here, they have proven themselves a few times over, so I am asking exactly what internal documents were in play? If they were emails and there the language and the path is also important. Reuters might be on the money, but they start with “A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods” and there we see the assumption it is linking ‘internal Amazon documents’ towards ‘the e-commerce giant’, yet these employees, how high up the ladder were they, were they all Indian? In that case can a quality case based on quantifiable data be made against the e-commerce giant, or is this the event involving a few rotten apples (sorry, rotten pieces of fruit). So when we see the questions that rise from the Reuters article, the US Congress made leaps without investigating the evidence before referring it for Criminal investigation. You see, there needs to be a viable case before referring it, so there needs to be decent questionable evidence and so far, no one has seen it and I reckon it might not be there in the way the BBC article gives us the goods. I think there is a lot more and in all this, when we see “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question”, we could have seen evidence and more importantly the media can show the evidence that it was wrongful data handed to them, but we do not see that either (at present), the media is very protective of one another at the alleged expense of anyone else. 

Can Amazon have done something wrong? Yes, absolutely, the firm is too big, things fall through the cracks. Yet the chance of Jeff with the Telly Savalas hairdo Bezos, or Nate Sutton, Amazon’s associate general counsel to openly lie to Judiciary Committee is too ludicrous to consider. That is the stage and when I see “We strongly encourage you to make use of this opportunity to correct the record… as we consider whether a referral of this matter to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation is appropriate,” I feel that this is an attempt to get another fine out of Amazon. Yes, I agree that the letter is merely good form, but I reckon that the players would have done a decent level of homework before that letter went out, and with another shutdown 9 weeks away, America needs all the cash they can lay their fingers on, I am merely wondering if their path is all on the up and up. But that is merely me, questioning whatever I see. I merely wonder if anyone else noticed the questions that the article brings up, it might be my not so trusting nature.

If Amazon did something wrong, OK. It happens and a fine will be the result, but this happened in India, so why is there no reference to a request from India, a request from Indian vendors and a more thorough investigation into the evidence. All that seems to be missing, weird, is it not?

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October 4, 2021 · 15:14

Utter insanity

To get to this part, I need to grab back to another article which I wrote on May 6th 2020 called ‘New World Order’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/05/06/new-world-order/), yet that one also takes a step back and refers to an initial article I wrote in 2013 called ‘It hurts every time, but we love it’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/02/06/it-hurts-every-time-but-we-love-it/) . In 2013 the US debt was $17,000,000,000,000 (17 trillion), and over 8 years 8 trillion was added, a nice $8,000,000,000,000. This implies that the US government overspends a trillion a year with no exit strategy on how to cope with the debt and it is on both Republicans and Democrats. They raised debt ceiling again and again and this president might be the one who gets to live through the fallout of such stupidity. We (me too) might grab at the ludicrous waste of billions upon billions in only two defence contracts (F-35 and USS Zumwalt) but the problem is a lot larger. The decades wasted by not overhauling the tax system (I suggested changes in 1999, might have been 1998), it would not have solved everything but it could have optionally solved a few things. It is the relentless boasting government approach towards “My Credit Card is too big too refuse!” Yet that is at this point exactly what is going to happen next week Friday. Unless there is another ceiling raised and it merely pushes the problem forward. The larger problem is not merely the politicians, it is their favourite tool the media as well. 4 days ago the Financial Times gave us ‘The US debt ceiling needs to be raised’, and they do give us “The very regularity of fiscal cliff edges inures people to their seriousness. The markets expect Washington to fear default enough to do what is needed in the end.” However none of the media told in clear harsh language to politicians (and naming them) that they need to act and as it is soon too late, the US population will get one of the loudest and harshest wake up calls since December 7th 1941. It will hit them square in the face and there will be no escape. A setting of pensions gone (the US is bankrupt), for many their homes will be lost (the debt collectors will collect on EVERYTHING), infrastructures will collapse (the money is gone) and systems will stop functioning (the US credit card will be destroyed). A setting that continues on for decades, unless the US has any friends left, the US seizes to exist and on the side lines China and Russia will howl with laughter. 

Yet not all is lost, the US could become part of the Commonwealth again, although the US politicians will mostly be out for a job, Canada could oversee issues for London and the political seat of power will be in Ottawa, did anyone consider that there was more to my ‘We stand on guard for thee’ article? The article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/03/we-stand-on-guard-for-thee/) had a small reference to “CANZUK time, is Canada ready?” When drenched in “Canada has a chance to be a major player in CANZUK to usher in a more politically stable and mutually beneficial version of a modern Commonwealth”, it is the modern Commonwealth part. And in this there is every reason to trim a lot of fat, especially political fat. In 2013 I gave the reader “Those two, when a change is set might mean that the US could be bankrupted overnight” I never saw a pandemic coming, but that pandemic pushed the US straight over the edge into an abyss of debt. It also gave me shivers to sell my IP to an American player, my 5G and I left without anything? Screw that! I would rather take my chances with China. And that is the larger setting, when the brain drain starts and China pays for the IP the avalanche will be complete (not merely me, dozens of others too), the US will have a dwindling IP vault, manufacturing will go to Asia (optionally India too) and the US will be a container of lard, no bones or muscles holding it together. A body of mass with merely the strength of the barrel containing it all. 

So as Reuters gives us a day later ‘U.S. debt ceiling impasse warrants nuclear options’ (at https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/us-debt-ceiling-impasse-warrants-nuclear-options-2021-09-30/) with “That could spare the United States a default, but would force other cuts, possibly in areas like Social Security or military pay.” We see the beginning of a larger stage where the people would soon be left with nothing, it takes a whole new vibe out of “We the people” doesn’t it? And the “Unable to borrow more, the Treasury would have to cut some 40% of federal spending by mid-November”, it is the icing on the cake, a setting of larger dangers to a large chunk of 331,000,000 people in the US. Did you think I was kidding on the US stampede into Canada? The rich will prefer 30% more taxes against nothing and an angry mob at their doorstep. Up to $3.4 trillion in personal wealth will take any option against losing it all in the US. House prices in Monaco will soar (for the really rich) so if Jeff Bezos can offer me €150,000,000 for all my IP (payable in Monaco) I will seriously consider it. Google, Netflix and Amazon will take to the global skies and they will double register their IP to keep it safe and keep it out of governmental hands, because that will be the next stage, the US will need to find money wherever it can be found. A station the US has never faced before. There is one upside, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can get their required hardware for dimes on the dollar and optionally buy out a few factories and all their patents putting them on par for their 2030 promise of taking home based defence build projects to a whole new level. The US laughed and sniggered when Wall Street offered vulture solutions to Argentina in 1998, now the vultures are ready and set to rip the US carcass apart. Is it a fair view? That is not in question, yet the stage is now that it is becoming a likely view the only people treated fair are the hard workers who just tried to get by. 

Should there be an 11th hour solution of debt ceiling raising, the people will need to consider that the end is nigh and the US did this to themselves. Irresponsible spending for well over 2 decades and with no exit strategy the USA will enter a field it so desperately tried to avoid and with innovators moving to other shores their field of choice becomes ever more limited. 

And when you wonder why no one is writing about those dangers, consider that I opted for this day to come for 8 years, I never saw a pandemic, but when you realise that the US was overspending a trillion a year, 83.3 billion a month for 8 years. Did no one catch on that this clambake could come to a sudden stop? Wonder about that part of the equation. I reckon that a lot more people should have seen the dangers after the 2008 events. Now 14 years later the people of the US will face hardships that is 10 times worse than the events of 2008, not merely because of what is now, but it happens when it’s infrastructures, social security and healthcare are totally gutted. 

Mozart wrote Requiem 230 years ago, I doubt he ever envisioned it used on an entire nation, but that is life, or the lack thereof. 

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June 30, 2021 · 01:27

The future doorstop

That is how we sometimes see a book, a doorstop, a missile towards our partners (and sometimes really annoying elderly teens), a weight for the papers we need, when a book is not really what we wanted, it gets a secondary function. So even as some saw this specific book as ‘A beautiful defense of the common man and woman against a technological elite’, I consider a book like ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech’ as one that is not stating the issues. 

Did I read it?
Nope, and I do not have to, the article clearly shows a republican (who looks like he recently stopped being a teenager) who is aiming for money from both the left and the right. When we see “According to Hawley, it’s not our politicians, our lawyers, our Ivy League graduates, or our Hollywood celebrities. It’s Big Tech – those big names like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and Google that have embedded themselves in our lives to an almost irreversible degree”, I see the beginning of a BS string of texts that will most certainly become debatable and utterly rejectable. You see Zuckerberg attended Harvard whilst designing Facebook, Dorsey came up with the idea for Twitter at NYU, Jeff Bezos was already done with Princeton when Amazon became the idea, Apple was the child of Steve Jobs who attended part of Reed and dropped out, Sergey Brin and Larry Page came from Stanford, so what is left of “not our Ivy League graduates”? Oh and I with my 5G IP am from UTS (Sydney), so there! And when we get to “have embedded themselves in our lives to an almost irreversible degree” we get a lot more. Apple (Macintosh) offered what consumers wanted, Google did the same, Facebook did it even more and created a new digital era and they all OFFERED it to consumers, they planned long term and they won, the small minded people lost. The exception is the Amazon guy who doesn’t need to spend on Shampoo, he offered something to rural people all over the world which they never had access too. In the US this is 60,000,000 people and in the EU it is 125,000,000. One firm aimed for a little over 180 million consumers. The people shops forgot and now Amazon is the bad guy? So this is the setting from the start and the man with the teenager look (Josh Hawley) is already off to a bad start. So when we see “the robber barons reshaped the economy into a corporate monopoly to serve their own ends, in which an aristocratic elite govern above the labouring masses”, all whilst the US government stole from the native Americans whatever they could (99.655% roughly) is like the pot calling the kettle black. In this one pushed what they wanted, the other (current big tech) let the people decide on WHAT they desired and the consumers liked the free 1GB email (Google) whilst the internet providers offered 20MB for a fee. What would you do? That same grocery store (still Google) came up with additional ways to service the consumers (cookies anyone?), the offered shopping, information and choice, whilst those dabbling on the internet wee all about grabbing whatever coins they could get. When the consumers were happy players like Amazon created the Amazon Web Services offering a pay as you go approach, a cloud approach to small businesses. First web services in 2002 and cloud services in 2008, it would take IBM and Microsoft years to offer anything near that, the big tech of then were made basically redundant. And with the pay as you go there was a larger SaaS (Software as a Service) setting. The big 5 became big not because “Big Tech is a direct descendent of the Gilded Age robber barons”, but because they offered choice when the others were unwilling to do so. In this Apple stands alone. They were always the elite DTP solution (a lot more expensive than others) and in 1998 they recognised the needs of the consumer and the iMac was born, all whilst the consumer got the amazing phrase “There’s no step 3!”, an affordable solution in an age where PC’s were still running behind the facts. If you were not up to speed you were either lost or you became an Apple user. All this whilst the writer wants to push “descendent of the Gilded Age robber barons”, a stage none of them pushed for, it merely is in the statements of those who were asleep at the wheel between 1996-2006, they lost it all by not pushing the envelope and 5 companies got ahead. The fifth (Netflix) was like Facebook, it offered something never offered before and whilst we had to seek TV provider after TV provider, they offered what we wanted, movies and specifically movies not hindered by advertisements. They went from sales to rental to streaming and as the firm started in 1998, Hulu, Stan, HBO Max and Disney Plus, some well over a decade AFTER Netflix, so the statement from Josh Hawley is not just bogus, it is utter nonsense. So when we see “Washington, D.C. politicians routinely protect the interests of Big Tech over and against the freedom and well-being of the American people” we see the joke that this book seemingly is. These systems were offered to consumers, you can walk away! I kept my Yahoo account for years later, until the information offered was too outdated or too much adjusted for localisation (against my will), so when we see ‘well-being of the American people’ I wonder what data he can actually produce (raw data, not aggregated and weighted data) and in the grand scheme of things, the US has 320 million people, Europe has 750 million and India has 1.3 billion. All enjoying what the five players are offering. In all that, the US is a mere 15% and on the global scale they do not add up to much, and the US is actually part of that failing. In the era of 1990-2010 American firms remained largely absent on the international scale, relying on someone to pick up the ball and none of them did and the American needs were swallowed by the voice of the consumers, no barons, no lawyers and no politicians. The people wanted what Google offered and Youtube now has over 2,000,000,000 viewers (I am one of them), so far none of the offerers were able to meet this and more important by 2005 both IBM and Microsoft were merely relying on Adobe Flash, these two players had nothing to offer. In 15 years they never really woke up and here I get to use Microsoft against itself with “Microsoft Stream is a corporate video-sharing service which was released on June 20, 2017 that will gradually replace the existing Office 365 Video”, so 12 years of inactivity, in comparison, the Chinese (the makers of Won Ton soup) gave us TikTok one year earlier and now has 100,000,000 active users. Players like IBM and Microsoft have been that much asleep at the wheel. As I personally see it, American BigTech is the only player (all 5 of them) that stops the USA from becoming utterly irrelevant, if they were not there China would be superpower number one and they are close of becoming that anyway, any issues with BigTech and every BS article in every newspaper with  some ‘alleged’ and ‘watchdog’ is merely another delay and it will help China to become the greatest tech power, US politicians (EU politicians as well) are helping China meet that goal.

BigTech, the virgin
BigTech is not holy, it is not innocent and it is no virgin (they got screwed by global politicians again and again, so they are definitely not virgins), BigTech are merely the innovators we always needed and the rest is merely a wannabe player, even Microsoft and IBM have fallen that much from grace. Microsoft had the most powerful console in the world and within 2 years they were surpassed by the weakest console of all (Nintendo Switch), IBM has its own stream of non-successes, and they are all crying to their politicians as to the bad bad tech companies. Most of them had no idea what the digital era was until they were surpassed by a lot of other players (some of them Asian). So when we consider the stage, we need to see the whole stage, not some setting of “Ending Big Tech’s sovereignty is about taking back our own, and we can begin to do that in the lives we live together. Big Tech works relentlessly to force individuals into its ecosystem of addiction, exhibitionism, and fear of missing out. It seeks to create its own social universe and draw all of life into its orbit. But the real social world, the life of family and neighbourhood – the authentic communities that sustain authentic togetherness – can act as a counterweight to Big Tech’s ambitions”, in this phrases like ‘force individuals’ is massively wrong, people have choices. I do not have Facebook on my mobile, I have no need for it there, I do not order from Amazon (I am a support your local hooker kind of guy) and I have currently no Netflix or Disney Plus subscription. That is 3 out of 5, I have an Apple because Microsoft dropped the ball 4 times in the last 5 years and IBM is too expensive for what it offers. I chose! We can all choose and that is where we realise that ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech’ is like a Chicago politician, all hot air and not too much on substance (judging from the article (at https://mindmatters.ai/2021/06/a-book-review-the-tyranny-of-big-tech/). He might at some point present a few parts that are relevant, I am certain that he will, but as a former Missouri’s Attorney General he will tread on places where he knows the answers, so as I see “holding Big Tech accountable where others don’t dare tread. In investigations, in legislation”, I merely wonder how much legislation against BigTech made it through? It matters because it is what you can prove that matters, not what you claim. I made no claims, it is all timeline stuff, including the Chinese parts. 

Consider the choices YOU have, and make choices, it is your right. You need not be on Google, you can select Microsoft Bing. You will lose out on a lot but that is the choice you make. For well over 20 years Google offered choices, YOU were the consumer that selected WHERE you wanted to go and you went there. All whilst Microsoft could not be bothered, it seems to me that the Netscape Victory made them lazy and now they are no longer the relevant company, they are merely the Column B (or C) company. And consider being in a place like Antigo Wisconsin. Now try to buy a game, a DVD, a bluray, a 4K movie, a CD and a book. How many of these items will require Amazon? It was the foundation of 4G (Wherever I am) and it will be the stage of 5G (wheneverI want it), so when will 5G be available in Antigo Wisconsin? Consider these points and consider whatever Josh Hawley is trying to imprint on you and consider what you can find out for yourself. BigTech is not evil, BigTech is because the others became lazy, BigTech merely is and governments do not like the self sufficient organisations, the ones that do not make large contributions to them. In the end if you look into the shareholders and stakeholders of some of these players you get a very different picture, one you need to be wary of.

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