Donald Trump’s return to the White House is offering great news. One has to do with the accelerated way in which intellectuals from the social democratic camp (liberals in the United States) are recovering their sense of sight. For example, many of them had stopped seeing during the last four years that ‘crony capitalism’ or crony capitalism is disastrous and harmful to countries. These days, long essays are published telling how Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is related to the ‘robber barons’ who dominated the North American economy between the 19th and 20th centuries. And Lincoln and Eisenhower are quoted warning about the danger that corporations and ‘the military-industrial complex’ represent for the survival of democracy in America. This new ability to see is closely related to the fact that Musk, who has spent huge amounts of his assets supporting Trump’s election, he has managed to create the impression that Silicon Valley businessmen have abandoned the Democrats and gone over to the Republicans hoping for better treatment than what Joe Biden and Lina have given them. M. Khan, the attorney appointed to head the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has spent the last four years trying to bring them to their knees. Before, when they supported Obama or Biden, did the millionaires of Silicon Valley not seek to be friends of power or take over public spending? From what has been seen and written in the last four years, no. The same thing happens with the much-used ‘public-private collaboration’. For years, numerous economists have defended it as a softer, more market-friendly form of government intervention. Now, when Musk has proposed applying it to the relationship that his company SpaceX has with NASA, this form of cooperation is anathema. To me, with Trump and without him, it has always seemed like a camouflaged way of taking advantage of the public (Ábalos-Aldama case), where a few make money from what belongs to many. It is only acceptable in qualified cases and with enormous precautions. There is an extreme case of ocular bias, where recovering sight is of no use. We had it during the election campaign when Jeff Bezos, another ‘billionaire’ (if millionaire comes from million, ‘millardaire’ comes from billion, which is billion), exercising his authority as editor and owner of ‘The Washington Post’, decided that the newspaper would no longer tell readers who to vote for. Normally they recommended that they do it for the Democrats. Journalists, instead of celebrating the return to impartiality, have complained and attributed the decision to a conspiracy on the part of the owner. The same thing is happening in the ‘Los Angeles Times’ and the ‘San Diego Union-Tribune’, which belong to doctor Patrick Soon-Shiong. It must be the first case in which impartiality instead of a guarantee becomes a defect. [email protected]
#John #Müller
