Democratic Capitalism

It is in America's political heritage that the word socialism is considered dirty. For a country that defeated the Soviet Union, it might be partly pride. 

There are more than 3,000 kinds of apples on the planet. I have a feeling socialism might be similarly varied. Countries in northern Europe practice a brand that I quite like. 

But the American political and economic systems have serious problems that I think can be better addressed by using the term Democratic Capitalism. If America is a democracy it is unraveling fast. One of the two parties is party to organized attacks on basic voting rights nationwide. Even before that the system was hardly democratic. My definition of democracy is one person, one vote. 

Campaign finance reform has to happen. Public funding of elections has to be considered. 

People should vote for the president directly. You get enough presidents who lost the popular vote and the person starts illegitimate on day one in office. The electoral college needs to be abolished. Every vote ought to count. 

Abolishing the filibuster would be a joke since, already, it is like 10% of the country rules over the other 90%, such is the structure of the US Senate. But, yes, the filibuster has to be abolished. It is a Jim Crow relic, except Donald Trump outdid Jim Crow. 

The Senate has to be restructured. The US needs to become a union of 100 states, one Senator each at the minimum, with the more populous states having more. 

Gerrymandering has to be outlawed. Democracy is people electing politicians, not the other way round. States may still carve out the districts, but they must obey federally passed guidelines as to how they may do so. Redistricting is not that different from voting rights. There are federal voting rights laws. 

The fundamental primary in America is fundamentally rigged. It is said a few tens of thousands of people in the country decide who the two major candidates will be in each election at every level through the money primary. Before China gobbled up Hong Kong, Beijing was offering something similar to the massive movement in the city. You say you want direct elections. You can have it. As long as we decide who the two candidates will be. That was a sham offer. But that is what the money primary in America is. 

No taxation without representation. Legalize everybody who is in America. 

Allow voting on mobile phones. Take voting to 90% or more. 

The US Supreme Court needs two more judges. 

Capitalism has three components: human capital, physical capital, and financial capital. Human capital is the most important of the three. But America does not act like it. No wonder it is losing its edge. In this knowledge economy, ignoring investments in human capital is hardly a choice. Education offerings need to be delinked from property taxes. 

Capitalism is free markets. The American economy is not a free-market economy. Pretty much all sectors have minor and major pockets of monopolies. Tech is basically four or five companies. Freedom has to be introduced into the markets so there is fair competition. Without that there will not be the needed innovation. 

Capitalism is secure property rights. The data collected around an individual is the property of that individual. That fact needs to be established nationally and globally and, in the 5G era and the era of tens of thousands of satellites beaming down the internet, that just might pay for a Universal Basic Income. Every individual sits on an oil well when data is oil. But companies steal that data. There can be an arrangement that up to a billion-dollar valuation, companies may monetize and need not pay, but beyond that it is 70% to the individual and 30% to the company. 

Democratic Capitalism https://t.co/hE38ktd9Od #unitedstates #KamalaHarris #Biden @AOC @RepAOC @BernieSanders @RoKhanna @paragkhanna @AndrewYang @drckraut @binay_panjiyar @upendrayadavjee @brb1954 @HisilaPost

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 29, 2021

The Social Dilemma

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The Social Dilemma’ Review: Unplug and Run This documentary from Jeff Orlowski explores how addiction and privacy breaches are features, not bugs, of social media platforms. ......... That social media can be addictive and creepy isn’t a revelation to anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like. But in Jeff Orlowski’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,” conscientious defectors from these companies explain that the perniciousness of social networking platforms is a feature, not a bug. .......... the manipulation of human behavior for profit is coded into these companies with Machiavellian precision: Infinite scrolling and push notifications keep users constantly engaged; personalized recommendations use data not just to predict but also to influence our actions, turning users into easy prey for advertisers and propagandists. ........ men and (a few) women who helped build social media and now fear the effects of their creations on users’ mental health and the foundations of democracy. They deliver their cautionary testimonies with the force of a start-up pitch, employing crisp aphorisms and pithy analogies. ......... Russia didn’t hack Facebook; it simply used the platform. ........ fictional scenes of a suburban family suffering the consequences of social-media addiction. There are silent dinners, a pubescent daughter (Sophia Hammons) with self-image issues and a teenage son (Skyler Gisondo) who’s radicalized by YouTube recommendations promoting a vague ideology. ............ the movie’s interlocutors pin an increase in mental illness on social media usage yet don’t acknowledge factors like a rise in economic insecurity. .......... many suggest that with the right changes, we can salvage the good of social media without the bad ......... two distinct targets of critique: the technology that causes destructive behaviors and the culture of unchecked capitalism that produces it. ......... the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology ....... The movie is streaming on Netflix, where it’ll become another node in the service’s data-based algorithm.

I think there is a solution. And the solution is to treat all data gathered around an individual to be the property of that individual. Companies may monetize that data, but the individual keeps the big chunk of the earning. The establishment of proper property rights might also be the antidote to the culture mindless data collecting. The data can fund the UBI, or Universal Basic Income, I think. 

One step could be the formation of a T100, the top 100 tech companies in the world by market cap. That T100 would voluntarily establish the data rights. It might be a 70-30 split in favor of the individual. 

‘The Social Dilemma’ Review: Unplug and Run https://t.co/DC20L0xfvx via @_JMontgomery @AndrewYang

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) October 1, 2020

Join us for an all-star panel on data privacy hosted by @AndrewYang himself! Sign up here: https://t.co/d5viesmFui pic.twitter.com/93DjOkvEBs

— Jess 🧢🦄 (@_JMontgomery) September 28, 2020

Join us to talk about the movie on Fri Oct. 2! Then check out an all-star privacy panel on Oct. 4, and a day of action on Oct. 6. Sign up here: https://t.co/MnUCfWP2fR pic.twitter.com/Slk1CnSmMF

— Jess 🧢🦄 (@_JMontgomery) September 28, 2020

 ‘The Social Dilemma’ Will Freak You Out—But There’s More to the Story    Dramatic political polarization. Rising anxiety and depression. An uptick in teen suicide rates. Misinformation that spreads like wildfire. The common denominator of all these phenomena is that they’re fueled in part by our seemingly innocuous participation in digital social networking. But how can simple acts like sharing photos and articles, reading the news, and connecting with friends have such destructive consequences? ............... the way social media gets people “hooked” by exploiting the brain’s dopamine response and using machine learning algorithms to serve up the customized content most likely to keep each person scrolling/watching/clicking. ........  “Every single action you take is carefully monitored and recorded,” says Jeff Siebert, a former exec at Twitter. The intelligence gleaned from those actions is then used in conjunction with our own psychological weaknesses to get us to watch more videos, share more content, see more ads, and continue driving Big Tech’s money-making engine. .............  For the first few years of social media’s existence, we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Now it’s on a nosedive to the other end of the spectrum—we’re condemning it and focusing on its ills and unintended consequences. The next phase is to find some kind of balance, most likely through adjustments in design and, possibly, regulation. .......... The issue with social media is that it’s going to be a lot trickier to fix than, say, adding seatbelts and air bags to cars. The sheer size and reach of these tools, and the way in which they overlap with issues of freedom of speech and privacy—not to mention how they’ve changed the way humans interact—means it will likely take a lot of trial and error to come out with tools that feel good for us to use without being addicting, give us only true, unbiased information in a way that’s engaging without preying on our emotions, and allow us to share content and experiences while preventing misinformation and hate speech. ................ “While we’ve all been looking out for the moment when AI would overwhelm human strengths—when would we get the Singularity, when would AI take our jobs, when would it be smarter than humans—we missed this much much earlier point when technology didn’t overwhelm human strengths, but it undermined human weaknesses.”