Category Archives: markets

The Willy Sutton Objection

Posted on by
Reply

Facebook has joined with Epic Games in the latter’s lawsuit against Apple over how to charge—and who gets to make the charge—for apps installed on Apple’s iPhones. Facebook is doing so to further its feud with Apple over Apple’s decision to give iPhone users tools with which to protect their private information.

Facebook isn’t alone in the beef.

Apple has said starting early next year its iOS 14 operating system will give iPhone and iPad users the option to no longer share personal information that many developers rely on to tailor ads. When users open an app, they will see a message asking permission to track what other apps and websites they visit, their location, and other behaviors.
Apple’s plan has drawn criticism from a range of businesses and trade groups…saying that Apple’s plan was anticompetitive.

Because people moving to protect their private information from snooping and private enterprises moving to protect their products from being used as tools for the snooping is somehow anticompetitive.

It’s an objection that Willy Sutton would have loved: how anticompetitive of those banks to obstruct his business model?

Wrong Resolution

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that Huawei Technologies Co’s Deputy Chair and CFO Meng Wanzhou is facing US criminal wire and bank fraud charges related to her alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran, which she did on Huawei’s behalf. She’s in the middle of extradition proceedings in Canada en route to getting her here.

Now there’s a resolution in the works: DoJ officials are talking about a “deferred prosecution agreement,” in which Meng would admit her wrongdoing in those cases and then be allowed to return to the People’s Republic of China directly from Canada.

This is the wrong resolution. The case should be resolved by bringing her into the US and letting a trial court resolve the matter.

More EU Bad Faith

Posted on by
Reply

Finance operations, a key industry for Great Britain but not so much for the European Union, is being excluded from existing Brexit transition negotiations. That much is on the Brits as well as the EU, but the EU is abusing the mutual error.

In anticipation,

European regulators have demanded banks base certain operations currently conducted in London in the EU post-Brexit. … The EU last week committed to rules governing derivatives that will prevent London-based traders at EU banks from continuing business seamlessly after Brexit is completed on New Year’s Eve.

Derivatives trading is a significant fraction of the Brits’ financial industry, and the new rules prevent even London-based branches of EU banks from trading with UK-regulated firms unless those transactions occur in other jurisdictions recognized by both sides.

As Tim Cant, a London-based Partner at Ashurst Group, notes,

This is part of a wider strategy of moving finance into the EU[.]

It’s also part of the EU’s wider strategy of punishing Great Britain for its effrontery and of warning the more uppity remaining member nations to not even think about doing such a dastardly thing as leaving their Betters in Brussels.

Time to Buy

Posted on by
Reply

Ex-President Barack Obama (D), he of the open contempt for ordinary Americans, us bitter Bible- and gun-clinging denizens of flyover country (i.e., the vasty expanse of America that lies between the western coast and the northeastern coast), is at it again.

Former President Barack Obama, in his latest memoir, criticized Americans for liking “cheap gas and big cars” more than they care about “the environment”—even during a catastrophic event like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

And

…many American voters for decades had “bought into the idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better….”

That last is fully vindicated by the arrogant Know Better attitude of Obama and his ilk, who insist that Government is the only solution, and us petty voters need to sit down, shut up, and do what we’re told.

It’s true enough that business is imperfect and often screws up. However, even with that, it’s axiomatic that business always knows better than Government.

With Obama spouting off again, it looks like it’s time to go out and buy a Humvee and a muscle car or two.

Tech Company Protections

Posted on by
1

Tech companies, primarily Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet, get nearly blanket immunity from responsibility for the content that’s published on their outlets. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was instrumental to their initial success, gives them that broad immunity, based on those companies’ initial status as agnostic pipelines that merely provided a place for disparate commentary to be promulgated.

Protected monopolies (vis., pre-breakup Ma Bell) gave government-sanctioned special, protective, treatment to selected companies in order to facilitate their initial success. There came a time when that protection no longer was warranted, and the protection was eliminated.

So it is with Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet. Their special, protective, treatment is no longer warranted, and it needs to be withdrawn. Those companies are no longer agnostic pipelines; they’ve taken—increasingly over the last few years—the role of controlling (some might say censoring) the content they allow on their platforms. They block some content, limit access to other content, even delete content after promulgation. They’re no longer agnostic; they limit discussions to directions that satisfy their management teams’ approval. They’ve become publishers of content.

Tech companies acknowledge they need to improve their content moderation practices, but they deny negligence or political bias.

These tech companies cannot be trusted to “improve their content moderation practices,” not when they issue such openly ridiculous denials. Those denials demonstrate either those companies’ management teams’ dishonesty or those teams’ inability to recognize their own negligence or bias.

Indeed, the very existence of “content moderation practices” beyond that required by the FCC—which center on barring active incitements to violence—demonstrates the teams’ dishonesty or inability to recognize their own bias.