Posted on 07/28/2024 6:40:44 AM PDT by Twotone
The new VP candidate has made enemies and allies in Silicon Valley, while on a quest to regulate the tech cartel.
Last night, Sen. JD Vance officially accepted the Republican nomination for vice president at the 2024 Republican Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sending optimism to Silicon Valley and the tech community.
A right-wing populist, Vance has been critical of the old right’s market fundamentalism in favor of the new right’s pro-worker economic nationalism — one that calls for antitrust crackdowns on Big Tech. A New York Times article described Vance as “pro-labor, a fan of crypto and the F.T.C.'s Lina Khan, and says Big Tech is too powerful.”
Last February, Vance called for government action against Google, tweeting, “It’s time to break Google up,” since Google is “an explicitly progressive technology company“ and “a threat to democracy.”
“In October and November, as millions of undecided voters consider their choice for president, they will go to Google and ask 'Did Donald Trump say X?' 'Is Biden too old to be president?' The results they see will be explicitly biased towards Democrats,” Vance tweeted. A conservative trustbuster?
Vance has drawn criticism from the libertarian right for bucking the GOP’s free-market orthodoxy and praising Biden-appointed Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s aggressive trust-busting revolution against Silicon Valley and private equity. As FTC chair, Khan has battled various big multinational businesses by cracking down on corporations who make bogus “Made in America” claims, going after a private equity firm’s plan to “drive up the price of anesthesia services provided to Texas patients,” and suing Kochava for selling geolocation data and violating Americans’ privacy.
At RemedyFest, an antitrust conference organized by Y Combinator and Bloomberg, Vance told conference attendees that he “look[s] at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration who ... is doing a pretty good job.”
Following Vance’s VP announcement, Reason, a libertarian publication, put out a story attacking Vance’s “love” for Khan’s “anti-free markets” and “anti-innovation, anti-tech, anti-big business, and anti-consumer agenda.”
“A second Trump administration may mirror some of the tactics of Khan and the Biden administration but turn them against policies and companies that left-leaning types support. No matter who wins the election this November, we're looking at four more years of aggressively anti-free market policies coming from the FTC,” Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote.
Some, like libertarian journalist Brad Polumbo, have also likened him to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), claiming Vance “has more in common with [her] on economic policy than Ronald Reagan” due to his open willingness to go after large corporations, raise their taxes, and “do whatever else is necessary to fight these goons.”
Others, however, are pleased with the GOP’s populist trajectory. Oren Cass, chief economist at American Compass, tweeted, “Exceptional VP pick. @jdvance1's conservative economics and dedication to American workers captures perfectly the Republican Party’s transformation over the past eight years.”
Little Tech vs. Big Tech’s agenda
Vance’s support for aggressive trust-busting and regulations creates an interesting dynamic within the GOP. With the exception of being pro-crypto, Vance holds many ostensibly anti-tech stances, putting him at odds with some of his biggest supporters — tech billionaires and venture capitalists.
It was reported that Elon Musk and tech investor David Sacks helped push Vance over the line for Trump’s VP selection. Furthermore, Vance first got into politics through his exploration into venture capital. He initially worked at Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital after briefly working in corporate law. And a couple of years later, he started his own venture capital firm, Narya Capital, where he raised $93 million from several tech billionaires, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.
After his spell in venture capital, Vance shifted his eyes to holding public office. Vance went on to win an Ohio Senate seat even after a hotly contested GOP primary in large part due to Peter Thiel’s record-breaking $15 million donation. Thiel also helped garner large donations from wealthy individuals, including David Sacks.
Considering the tech sector’s increasing support for Trump and Vance’s ties to tech billionaires and venture capitalists, some are starting to think the 47th administration might go soft on Big Tech and “switch on Lina Khan now.”
Fortunately, Vance is not likely to. After all, Big Tech’s agenda isn’t always in the interest of America’s tech sector because “their interests are often at odds with a positive technological future as they are more interested in regulatory capture and preserving their monopolies. As a result, technology startups need a voice,” venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote in a blog post.
Startups, also referred to as “Little Tech,” are at the heart of the American tech sector and could turn the 21st century into the American century. In Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s Little Tech Agenda, they highlight Little Tech’s role as "the vanguard of American technology supremacy." They say, “From Edison and Ford to Hughes and Lockheed to SpaceX and Tesla, the path to greatness starts in a garage.”
Vance’s endorsement of Khan’s antitrust revolution serves as a net positive for America’s tech industry since Little Tech faces huge disadvantages by having to “go up against incumbent companies that have overwhelmingly superior brands, market positions, customer bases, and financial strength — incumbents that are out to strangle startup competition in the cradle.”
The Little Tech agenda could be the catalyst that recaptures American supremacy. The Trump/Vance ticket must not back down from Big Tech. Andreessen and Horowitz don’t explicitly endorse Khan’s trust-busting, but without tough antitrust legislation against Big Tech monopolies and pro-innovation regulatory reform, Big Tech will continue to enjoy its “wall of laws and regulations that protect and entrench their positions and that new startups cannot possibly scale.” Breaking up Big Tech, on the other hand, will empower startups and foster an innovative environment.
As Andreessen and Ben Horowitz write, “The glory of a second American Century is within our reach. Let’s grasp it.”
Any one on Free Republic who hasn’t removed Google as a default search engine on every browser on every device they own, isn’t paying attention.
https://old.reddit.com/r/degoogle/
JD is doing great. 99% of FR will ignore you.
If you are including the 14th Amendment's sneaky inclusion of corporations as "citizens of the United States," as "the Constitution" you might be correct. But I don't think you are. Sic:
Assuming the story is true, Vance is engaging in rabid leftism, and using the Commerce Clause in ways the Founders never intended.
Equine feces:
So, you'd apply those comments to Ronald Reagan?
How Ronald Reagan’s Record Could Influence Modern Internet Monopolies
Reagan’s Record of Breaking Up Monopolies
The mobile internet monopoly also discourages other businesses from entering the fray, which runs counter to the notion of a free economy, in which competition fuels growth. The lack of competing businesses means fewer jobs, which not only affects Americans’ bottom lines but also trickles down into a lack of investment in the economy.
So how can the mobile internet monopoly best be addressed? Looking to the past is one way to find solutions. For Ronald Reagan, breaking monopolies up was a cornerstone of his economic policies. Shortly after he took office, in January 1982, the nation saw the dissolution of one of its most long-time monopolies. The federal government had sued Bell Systems for antitrust violations, resulting in a settlement that broke up the AT&T telephone monopoly, at the time the largest private company in the world.
Reagan instituted a new method for federal review of proposed corporate mergers, which could be one area revisited to address today’s mobile Internet monopoly. Reagan saw the need for getting ahead of potential monopolies by circumventing potential problem areas at the start. Reviewing and updating merger guidelines to specifically address the realities of today’s Internet-powered age can put the nation one step closer to reducing monopolies and giving economic freedom back to the American people.
These international companies do everything they can to destroy American freedom, and the minute you try to do anything about it, they wrap them selves in the flag and suddenly there patriotic? Not buying.
The bottom line, big tech has done far more to deserve antitrust action than standard oil ever dreamed of. If Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and meta-are not monopolies, we might as well get rid of the law regarding monopolies.
It’s just a guilty pleasure that the people who despise America more than anything should face the music. And all of them have massively gained power and influence by their fascist partnership with government.
This is not “populism”.
This is statist progressivism. It’s anti-capitalism plain and simple. We have been through this before and it is sad that this is what it comes down to.
The 10 friendliest words in the English language are “I’m from the federal government and I am here to help.”
This is exactly right. We have a little too many people here at Free Republic who are covetous of their beloved big government and it is a little both scary and shocking to discover.
We simply do not need to have our big daddy love-of-our-lives government go down the path of centralized planning.
I often advocate that we as conservatives need to get the hell off of these big tech platforms - and start using Linux. Linux on our computers, and Linux on our cell phones.
We can absolutely, on our own, without big beloved government, defeat these big tech companies. But for some strange reason, we all refuse to do our jobs. We refuse to get active. So big tech gets bigger and nobody does a thing about it and then they attack us. Then! Wow, we need government to save us.
It's just plain lazy.
Stop with the big tech platforms from Google Apple and Microsoft. What the heck.
It is NOT that difficult to give these tech companies the Bud Light'ing that they deserve. I just don't know why, everybody around here refuses and embracing big-God government is the easier route for lazy bums.
Other than lazy I just don't know what it is that prevents a Bud Light'ing of Big Tech. I just do not understand. It both scares me and infurates me that any of us would embrace big government. It is so insulting.
Trust busting Silicon Valley would be one of the best things Trump can do to save the country.
Yes, the answer is yes.
It requires us to do our jobs. The way to put an end to big tech is to embrace little tech. So far there is a refusal to do that. I don't know why, but its there.
“We can absolutely, on our own, without big beloved government, defeat these big tech companies. “
Never happen.
It took Elon Musk 44 billion dollars to restore a semblance of free speech to the world.
How did Parler, truth social, gab work out?
GETTR is actually very successful AND Telegram is also very successful!! I actually love Telegram!!
How much influence on the election or society do you think those platforms have compared to Google or Facebook?
1/100th, 1/1000th?
The paucity of conservatives on this site is astonishing. DoodleBob and Mr. Jeeves are conservatives.
FR has gone “populist” - few posters really want to limit government power any more, they just want to turn things around and use that power to smite their enemies, the way the Left does.
Under a capitalist system, the conservatism of Reagan was effective. That is no longer the reality we live in. We need to accept that and adapt.
Name your poison: Do you want high government power, or high oligarch power? They are distinctions without a difference.
Facebook is obsolete as far as I am concerned, the ONLY people using FB now are seniors!! TIC TOC is HUGE and as far as I can see they are not censoring content, there are THOUSANDS of videos there of Trump supporters of ALL races a whole lot of black women and men and they are NOT buying this Kamala crap!! FB is becoming just like the MSM obsolete!! You would be surprised how many conservative channels there are on Telegram, Rumble, GETTR, I stay as far away from Google as possible, had an Android phone and got rid of it because there was NO WAY around Google!! Elon buying X was a HUGE God send AND it is privately owned now he tells everyone to go pound sand he has enough money to give them all the middle finger!! We are making HUGE STRIDES and the best part is the MSM has become irrelevant dying on the media vine!! I am 72 years old and I have not watched a news broadcast in probably 15 years!! The younger generations get their information from Tic Toc and X!!!
Hence the amount of zotting that goes on around here.
I’m ok with breaking up the social media companies. We don’t need them anyway. I would not touch the rest of it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.