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.”
The question ALWAYS should be: is this with fidelity to the Founders and the bases of life, liberty, and property on which this nation was founded and refined?
There is a difference between individual property and collectively owned property. Earth to DoodleBob: The Constitution starts with "We the People." Corporations are not people; they are "fictitious persons." We'll start there, as you never addressed the blatant corruption in the 14th Amendment I exposited and linked for you.
Now, you might be surprised that I would agree to a degree that the Commerce Clause as originally intended does not apply to a corporate breakup. but not as you would think. The word "regulate" at that time actually meant "to make regular" effectively, 'to proceed without inhibition.' Most of what the Commerce Clause was to address was to prevent tariffs between States, indeed most of Federalist 42 as you cited is about treaty law and FOREIGN commerce, not commerce between the States.
Your problem is that breaking up a corporation does NOT inhibit the conduct of commerce among its several parts; indeed quite the contrary: Breaking up a corporation increases competition with and commerce among its former elements and their new competitors. Hence, breaking up a monopoly makes commerce MORE regular as we saw with the breakup of AT&T.
"Life, liberty, and property"? Break up a corporation and no one dies. Commerce increases with more options for vendors, so there is an increase in liberty, or are you asserting that Google is a champion of liberty, or are they harming the liberty of others by virtue of their acquisition strategies to maintain their monopoly? There is no loss of personal property as the fractions remain.
That makes your "reply" specious.
Thanks for your reply.
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