It's weird in some ways to criticize Google while writing on their free blog (which could use some work, I'll tell you) but--ahem--I'm doing it on an iPad. So, take that. I spread my allegiance around among the tech mega-companies because I'm curious but also because I'd rather have my nuts squeezed sequentially by less well-leveraged entities than mashed-on all at once, to preserve some of what's left of my primal, masculine power.
Speaking of which, there's a known propensity among the techies to compensate with arrogance for feelings of inadequacy on earthier fronts and I wish they would get over it. Some of them--the Google guys?--seem to fundamentally mean well but have trouble understanding the lives of lesser beings. A trip to Burning Man, for example, is called a vacation and the festival is not--though I know y'all love it and certainly deserve some rest and relaxation (or stimulation, if it floats your yacht)--a model for much other than that, let alone for the new, emerging world culture spawned by the capabilities of your creations.
My fear is this, that technologies don't operate in a moral vacuum or spontaneously create good government and higher social organization on the fly as an accidental byproduct of being rooted in the mysteries of the godhead through natural law or its equivalent. That shit takes work. Certain Germans excelled everybody in technical prowess of a kind and still sank their own boats, metaphorically, and a bunch of others with them. Libertarianism is nothing but indiscipline, wishful thinking and a leap of faith with no rigorous, theoretical backing or empirical weight. And whatever happened to common sense about these matters?
Muskovites, and Elon himself, seem to understand this, maybe because of Elon's experiences in a time-bomb society (South Africa) at an earlier, impressionable age. Problems of larger-level, complex, organic systems with adaptive and sometimes irrational parts resist applications of analytical thinking and convergent methods. They are divergent as hell and only integrative, dynamic methods may work and the products of errors at this level can undo any amount of good effort in the engine rooms, at the expense of everyone. People have been proven adept at suicidal self-destruction and it ought to be kept in mind.
A weak government modeled on or under the thumb of businesses is the opposite of what we need. Any rational, mega-business will resist strong government because they want to print money--to remove themselves from competition and conditions of risk. The best and most successful of them have done it. They can buy any threatening entity before it gets big enough to challenge them and they can only be understood, functionally, as sub- or quasi-states. The government is supposed to protect the little guys. "Libertarianism" is a smoke screen, an attempt to put a lock on a status quo of privilege that works in their favor.
Someone has to look out for the bigger picture as only a responsible government can. We have to insist on strong and good government and keep businesses the hell out of it. Their influence and self-interested opinions have corrupted the discussion but we should love our government. Only it can protect our freedoms. Otherwise we can win the battles and lose the war. A company like Google can do everything right and conquer the world and still be undone by social or economic collapse. They have to understand that we don't need them they need us and that the government is our representative in this, not theirs.
They are capable enough of looking out for themselves.
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