Gongol.com Archives: August 2018

August 7, 2018

Social media services need to treat bad behavior consistently

As Benjamin Franklin put it, "Pardoning the bad, is injuring the good." It's hard not to imagine that there's an appeal for a big tech-platform firm to get regulated as a public utility -- common carrier rules could apply, and someone else (the government) would be responsible for the hard choices. But, of course, the sweet smothering embrace of quasi-monopoly status tends to make the monopolist fat, sloppy, and lazy...and thus highly susceptible to massive disruption later on. There is a left-wing push for government regulation that fails to recognize the unintended consequences. And the trouble flows in other directions, too: With Google rumored to be seeking a way to provide a censored search engine in China, one must pause to reflect on whether classical-liberal values are strong enough to emerge spontaneously, anywhere, when given enough time (which they would) -- but what service does it do those values (or the people who hold them) to participate in their repression?

Elon Musk openly muses that he wants to take Tesla private

As Charles Koch has put it: "I'd counsel any entrepreneur to do everything possible to keep her company private, no matter how big it grows."

Florida may be exporting "voracious, omnivorous predatory lizards" to neighboring states

And yet still people have the temerity to ask why we put up with Iowa winters. The frost line is our Maginot Line, people!