Last week’s post was very long and theoretical. This week’s is very short and comes straight out of the news. The subject, however, is the same: can libertarianism and the free market coexist with post-war American democracy?
FIRST, YOU’VE BEEN CANCELLED!
Jeff Bezos announced a major change to the opinion pages of the Washington Post. Here is the letter in full (emphasis added in bold):
I shared this note with the
Washington Post team this morning:
I’m writing to let you know
about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing
every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too
of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published
by others.
There was a time when a
newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a
service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion
section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for
America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And
a big part of America’s success has been freedom
in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it
minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and
prosperity.
I offered David Shipley [left above], whom I greatly
admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if
the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful
consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it
won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision.
We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are
right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the
current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill
that void.
Jeff
SECOND, CRYPTO WILL BE LIGHTLY (IF AT ALL) REGULATED.
Mark Uyeda [above] , Acting Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, decided to drop enforcement actions against two cryptocurrency companies. You can read the complete press release on the SEC website.
As Reuter's explains, the
SEC’s authority to regulate digital assets depends on whether they meet the definition
of a security (emphasis added in bold):
As outlined in a U.S. Supreme Court
case, a key test for whether an investment product is a security is whether
people are investing in a common
enterprise with the expectation of profit.
Uyeda claims the SEC dropped the enforcement action to
give the Crypto Task Force created the day after the Inauguration time to
develop “a new regulatory scheme.” CFO
Dive reports that:
The move to name Uyeda
as acting Chairman follows after Trump enjoyed strong
support from cryptocurrency businesses and advocates in the runup to his
election and inauguration, with the president pledging to create a
national reserve of Bitcoin on the campaign trail….
Others have criticized the choice by
the president and first lady to launch a crypto “meme” coin days before Trump’s
inauguration — arguing both that the decision undermines the industry’s
credibility and that it represents
a clear conflict of interest, with the president both setting crypto policy
and benefiting from the coin’s success,…
The Trumps’ meme coins made them tens of billions of crypto
wealth (on paper). That alone tells me that
the Crypto Task Force is motivated to find a way to define digital assets as
something other than a security that can be regulated by the SEC—or any other
agency.
FINALLY, CALLING ALL VENTURE CAPITALISTS!
Vice President Vance will deliver the keynote address at a tech summit organized by the venture capital firm Andreeson Horowitz, “underscoring the Trump administration’s focus on AI and advanced computing,” as reported by Axios (emphasis added in bold):
Vance, a former venture capitalist, has helped
draw Silicon Valley closer to the nation's capital [WOW! How’s that for a double entendre by Axios!?] than ever before.
He's a laissez-faire evangelist for
American tech dominance. "Excessive
regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative
industry," Vance warned Europeans in a speech earlier this month.
So, if you didn’t make it all the way through last
week’s post, here you have it in three quick examples from last week’s news. American capitalism is being transformed into a
lightly (if at all) regulated economy centered on financial investments in digital technologies. That’s neoliberal fintech capitalism, and it
doesn’t work at all with social democracy.
We’ve been warned.
Keep it real!
Marilyn
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