Posted on 04/26/2022 4:45:53 AM PDT by FarCenter
What if you lost access to your servers overnight?
This is what Moscow threatened because of data. After the Ukraine conflict began, many Western technology companies left Russia. This led to a cloud crisis, leaving Russia with only two months of data storage capacity. To alleviate this, the Russian government threatened to seize the servers of those companies that had exited.
The case of Russia's cloud problem goes well beyond Ukraine-Russia geopolitics. It has to do with a new era of globalization that has already begun. As the technology revolution continues, countries are being pulled apart from one another.
Instead of the world being more open and accessible, as it has been for decades, it is now becoming a place full of technology-based walls and barriers, things that I classify as vertical. These new vertical borders that are forming are enough to put every company in the world in the hot seat.
Are you ready to pick between Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates? Starting on Jan. 1, 2024, any company that wants to do business with the Saudi government, including state-owned companies, must base their regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia. This is part of what Riyadh calls "Program HQ," a new tech-focused strategy to localize everything.
Through it, Saudi Arabia wants Riyadh to replace Dubai as the region's new economic hub, and it is already in talks with 7,000 global companies to achieve this. Instead of cooperation between these two neighboring Gulf states, Saudi Arabia and the UAE might soon find their hitherto friendly relationship undermined by competitive rivalry.
(Excerpt) Read more at asia.nikkei.com ...
The chip companies are the ones who built back doors into everything.
I guess not enough people laid down for Horizontal Globalization.
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Not exactly a rhetorical question, given what we have seen happening to de-platformed conservatives from an IT perspective for nearly a decade or more in this country.
In the last decade, it seems that they simply became more open and transparent about de-platforming conservatives because they have seen there are no consequences to doing so, and have done so with the acquiescence (and open approval) of the government.
Thinking from the Adam Smith notion of "invisible hand" acting in the overall economy, it is interesting to consider how new social media, web hosting, video hosting and other alternatives have sprung up in response to the attempts of the corrupt and powerful to control. Even the Musk takeover of Twitter signals that "big" will be confronted by forces it cannot control. CNN+ died from hubris, and Netflix loss of paying customers shakes it up. The number of alternative news and opinion sites is represented here throughout the Free Republic posts from so many sources.
I suspect that liberty is such things grows to the consternation of the corporatitsts and globalists, though they pretend it is not happening.
Vertical localism will always trump -- verb intended -- what another comment termed "horizontal globalization" as a joke on "vertical globalization."
The 2009 Nobel in Economics lecture is most interesting in this regard because it answers the "problem of the commons." The authoritarians and their toadies want to solve all problems from the top down in enormous and distant governance, whereas the effective solution will always be local and easy-to-reach governance, which no globalist nor corporatist wants.
Take heart. The Towers of Babel all fail and fall, in time.
=This= is what Starlink + Twitter + Cryptocurrency is about. Musk is brilliant. He’s creating a system of information and commerce beyond the reach of terrestrial control.
Are some of these events (Russia invasion, Pandemic lockdowns, etc) the hand of God establishing a modern babel? As the “new” towers get built. Medicine, Tech, Finance, Education, all seeking a communist utopia in place of God.
Medicine via CDC and Fauci’s pandemic lies are now discredited by many. Moms are fighting the education commies. Elon is messing with the tech commies. Putin is messing with the financial nexis.
Stewart Brand told Steve Wozniak:
On the one hand you have — the point you’re making Woz — is that information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable — the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information almost wants to be free because the costs of getting it out is getting lower and lower all of the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free
I found your post most interesting.
I have never really thought of that socialistic dynamic (that there are forces who don’t BELIEVE in the “invisible hand”, don’t LIKE the concept, and view it as something to be controlled and contained, if not eliminated) being interjected into information control rather than economic control.
Socialism in a nutshell.
It is the concept of the “invisible hand” that SHOULD NOT be manipulated and controlled. Kind of like an aspect of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, in which simply observing certain things changes what is being observed.
In this case, any human effort to intervene in the “invisible hand” can ONLY have a deleterious and destructive impact on the feedback-action mechanism which makes the “invisible hand” wonderfully self-regulating and leveling.
Which is exactly what socialism or planned economies do, where individual humans assume control on the decision-making for prices and production and take it out of the collective hands of hundreds of millions of people who would vote for prices and production levels with dollar bills they use to purchase products. (I assume this is what you meant by “horizontal localism” versus “vertical globalism” if I understand it correctly? If not, could you expand on that?)
I do see a clear analogy in the efforts by a smaller number of individuals to intrude on and control information dissemination, with the same deleterious and undesirable effects that we see in the economic sphere.
Thank you. Very thought provoking.
Ah, a typo on my part...I meant “Vertical Localization” vs “Horizontal Globalization” as you stated...
On one hand, we have more expensive accurate information, and on the other, cheaper and less accurate information.
The Elephant In The Room is clearly the unmentioned aspect-the value added in making information more accurate and therefore more expensive.
That is...how is THAT sausage made? HOW is information made to be "right" (more 'accurate' if that term is definable in this context) and WHO is tasked with performing that function?
Right now, it is clear to me that democratization of information with resultant crowd-sourced vetting is significantly better than allowing people who do not have my interests or my country's at heart to assume the task of telling the rest of us what the 'right' (more 'accurate') information is.
To me, allowing those few people (who I regard as enemies of the founding principles of this country) to determine 'truth' is a far, FAR worse option since that is (and has historically proven to be) the road to tyranny.
I disagree that what I speak of is “Bernie Sanders stuff”.
Given the destructive and deleterious role that private companies took in the past election, it should be clear that the real question is how private companies operating in the public space as a public forum are allowed to censor information.
I am not saying the answer is easy.
But doing nothing will allow people like Zuckerberg and Dorsey and to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the electoral process with one hand, while on the other hand, selectively censoring content in the public space via their companies such as Facebook and Twitter (which is what is being done in a most destructive and selective way by all of them, and the one that gets far less attention than Facebook and Twitter is Google) is a recipe for tyranny.
Whether we like it or not, right or wrong, critical decisions about many things are being made on the basis of information obtained from Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
And those decisions are being shaped by entities such as to provide aid and comfort to enemies of this country, both foreign and domestic. (The specific use of that language is deliberate)
I suspect that is NOT what he is saying. Rather others in various companies have toed the government "line" about that which may be discussed.Certainly the information / disinformation / misinformation game being played in the moment is merely more of the Lakoff word games trying to hide content in how one uses language.
Combining notions of a wider Overton window with freedom, any form of shutting down opposing thought is the closing of that window and thereby a closing off of liberty. The fool should be able to be heard, such that those who know fools may better know a particular fool. Obama's being trotted out of late as regards "misinformation" is a fine example of this, wherein those seeking greater censorship hope to use the argument from "authority" to cover the simple goal, censorship.
Often police interrogation is about letting a criminal speak, for in speaking much and often, the "text" lengthens and errors occur. Such has been the case of late as those like Obama and Bill Gates has spoken admiringly of Communist China because -- you will recall -- they can "get stuff done."
Foolish to praise Communism / corporatism / fascism because it can "get stuff done." So their "testimony" because they had the chance to speak and speak and speak is that they and others are fools. And stand against liberty.
In total agreement.
As to your assertion that we have "more expensive accurate information," I disagree. Correct statements and clear conclusions are not expensive. I use "official data" on other posts to continue to prove that, from "official information," the pandemic has been survivable by 99/9 % of the world, in spite of all the hysteria. One need not divide between "expensive and accurate" and "inexpensive and less accurate," I should think.
On a parallel subject, the "invisible had" concept was merely a way of expressing the "laissez faire" understanding of capitalism, in the sense from de Tocqueville through to von Mises, Hayek and beyond.
I conclude that economics comes down to clearly identifying where decisions are made. From individual to family to local to nation to the supposedly wise internationalists, who have proven themselves to be the most obvious of tyrants. Liberty calls from the most local of control possible while enslavement means its obvious.
Slavery exists today, and enslaved nations exist today. The dreamed of "green pass" and "social credit score" system are methods away from local decisions into the hands of the distant decision makers. Tyranny versus liberty. These are what are fighting, each the other. I think most here are on the side of liberty, though sometimes "the dark side" beckons some. Whatever else, power intoxicates those who seek it. And they are fools so to do.
Best wishes to all.
By the way, great statement: "...Liberty calls from the most local of control possible while enslavement means its obvious..." but did you mean "obverse"? I suspect you did, but didn't want to put words in your mouth.
Reminds me of a funny thing I saw this weekend:
"Frankly, Autocorrect, I am getting tired of your shirt!"
Thank you for posting this reality, versus the constant 24/7 and negative posting/harping by those, who only post the negative re our economic system.
For months, FR has been littered with the constant negative B$ of how there are constant grocery and whatever shortages.
Yet, when I buy on line or go grocery shopping in person, it is very seldom that the place where I buy on line or in person is out of what we want. We gave up on Walmart for their out of stock B$ on orders well over 2 years ago.
We hear B$ stories about how Costco is out of stuff in their stores, yet with our monthly order for about 2 years now, all if not most of our 20+ item order is shipped in 2 hours.
Amazon ships the next day or daily from Whole Foods or a 2 hour pickup. One time they were out of our favorite rice mix, Seeds of Change, and we got a shipment at their sale price from Sam’s Club, which we are not members of at the sale price. It was delivered by UPS and no delivery charge for the delivery.
I go weekly to our favorite small chain store due to their produce, deli section and little butcher shop. A freeze in Mexico did limit some produce items earlier this year. No outages nor empty shelves this year.
The major package delivery companies have expanded their warehouses and increased their # of delivery trucks and warehouse in a 3 county area.
Amazon has opened 3 new distribution centers in the same market area. Many items if ordered before 5 pm are delivered the next day.
Home Depot is doing something similar with next day delivery or 2 hour pickup at the store with many items.
Yesterday, I did a drive to drop off some items for friends, and many gas stations are back in the $5.80/gallon bracket.
Those with regular over or just under $6/gallon had zero people buying their gas.
I understand your point completely.
I have to admit, I am extremely pessimistic when it comes to our economy, and part of it is because I view the economy as a supertanker. It takes a long time to get it going in one direction, and it has a lot of momentum.
Once it is moving, its speed and direction are not easily changed to provide short term fixes to issues, so managing a complex economy means thinking ahead.
In short, while I am very pessimistic, I don’t see the economy crashing for some time. However, like a cantankerous internal combustion engine, getting the economy going again and moving in the right direction isn’t going to happen in the short term easily either, so...I see very difficult times, perhaps the worst in my lifetime, ahead.
I just have the ominous feeling that we are going to be gutted by inflation, if not hyperinflation. And anyone who is a student of history knows, once that inflationary process digs its talons into an economy, it can be very difficult to free ourselves from its grasp.
Gasoline and Diesel are the two things I expect to hit home first and result in shortages, and the ripple effects from that, like a tsunami going outbound at slow speed in all directions, is going to cause the most damage.
I hope to God I am wrong. But I have always been a “we are only three days at any given time from ripping the supporting fabric of society asunder” kind of person. Which saddens me, because I have never been like that for long stretches in my life before.
As for other shortages, well, I have seen a few, but not critical ones yet. No chicken wings at the supermarket? I’ll buy drumsticks or thighs...or beef. I’ll manage as many other people will.
“As for other shortages, well, I have seen a few, but not critical ones yet. No chicken wings at the supermarket? I’ll buy drumsticks or thighs...or beef. I’ll manage as many other people will.”
My bride went to cooking chicken thighs last year, and we like them better than whatever from the chicken.
Our mothers and grandmothers survived the great depression and world wars and kept their families well fed and healthy by buying what was available and preparing to be tasty.
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