Locked Down And Locked Out: First The State, Then Silicon Valley

This cynical suggestion is the equivalent of, “Let them eat cake,” which, in practice means, let political dissidents go dark or resort to a barter economy.

You might not know it, but financial de-platforming has been a staple of many a long-suffering American dissident’s working life. Financial de-platforming is when you are barred from banking or transacting via PayPal. It is an “existential threat to free speech in America,” inveighed Revolver News.

This observation both trivializes what’s afoot and misses the point, for financial de-platforming teeters on violating another’s natural right to make a living.

How do you make a living if you can’t bank? Do you revert to a barter economy (a book for some bread)? Go underground? Hunker in home-based industries? Keep afloat by word of mouth? Go door-to-door? Oh, I know: Beat the tom-tom drum if your email service is severed, given that our email accounts and other server-supported facilities are currently under threat, too, with nary a remedy from fat-cat representatives.

As a social-media platform, Parler has been found lacking by the Deep Tech overlords simply because it sports a different business model.

Deep Tech restricts speech to comport with its censorious, progressive and politically correct, do-or-die guiding lodestars. Parler’s business model, on the other hand, is based on more free speech, not less of it.

Quislings such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter quickly colluded in flagrant violation of the American pro-competition sensibility and flouting the spirit, if not the letter, of civil rights law to financially segregate, banish and cripple irksome people and enterprises, Parler, in our example. Quick to ape them were other fearful vendors, lawyers, for example.

“Whatever Trump did, there is no excuse for what happened to Parler,” protested David Sacks, a liberal.

“Barring businesses from using online payment systems,” seconded Never Trumpster Bari Weiss, “removing companies from the App Store; banning people from social media — these are the equivalent of telling people they can’t open a bank account or start a business or drive down a street.”

Nice, but Weiss failed to analytically distill the meaning of that prohibition:

“[T]elling people they can’t open a bank account or start a business or drive down a street” is the equivalent of informing them they might not be able to make a living, despite the fact that they are innocent; their only offense is to type or waft words into the ether.

“This is the fate of Parler, courtesy of the Amazon webserver. No such thing as monopoly power? No such thing as deformed, economic gigantism?

I had tweeted out the above in disgust, appended to a screen picture of the following ubiquitous nullity: “We’re having trouble finding Parler; check your network connection.”

“Stop with the monopoly talk,” admonished a diehard ideologue in reply. “You sound like the government interventionists of the Progressive Era.”

Yes, let the unfettered market-place, peaceful and slow, remedy the speedy and deadly aggression of our tech enemies, who come at us in war, not peace.