Auctions

Activists are constantly complaining about censorship and canceling. I’ve never been excited about those topics because I recognize that censorship is the default. Censorship is another name for editing. Publishers always choose what to publish.

I realized much earlier that canceling is rarely what it appears. An executive who is fired for “political” reasons is usually fired for personal reasons. “Politics” is an acceptable cover story.

The real problem in recent years is NOT censoring the extremes. I can find the extreme views easily. Non-extreme views are much harder to find. An advocate who questions or ignores the more extreme assumptions of the Agent Provocateurs on his own side will get no clicks, so his output will be disfavored by the algorithm.

Social algorithms ALWAYS favor the pure hard orthodoxy of Team A and Team B. Click-based algorithms mechanize the process, but it was a natural part of newspapers for hundreds of years.

More broadly, stock markets and bitcoin and “elections” and “debates” are based on an AUCTION between the fake orthodoxies of Team A and Team B. The “opposing” orthodoxies sound different, but nothing ever comes of the different-sounding views. Both teams are ALWAYS working toward the same end, which is ALWAYS enriching the rich and killing the poor.

The New Deal tried to disfavor and weaken the power of auctions, in the stock market and in media. Securities laws required stock traders to avoid the easy profit of imaginary bubbles, and the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to avoid the easy profit of partisan fake “arguments”.

Both restrictions were repealed in the ’80s, and both sets of fake bidders resumed their monstrous fakery immediately.