GoF***You

It would seem, like Spotify, that another commercial organisation is under pressure. Unlike Spotify, however, this one has completely caved in. To be fair, Spotify has not remained completely neutral either, implying that it would tighten things up when it comes to all things against the CovidNarrative™.

We will likely never know what “behind the scenes” pressure gets applied by government to these organisations. I’d be willing to bet that Canada’s government machine has done a little more than just the “plea” Ottawa’s Mayor, Jim Watson, alludes to in his tweet.

What we’re seeing here is a kind of “money censorship”. Pressure is being applied so that you can only fund causes of which the government approves. The government is seeking to determine how YOU spend your money.

Ottowa’s police chief announced they’re going to be fully investigating everyone involved in the Truckers’ protest. They’re taking number plates, doing digital forensic examinations of the funds and where the funds are coming from, and so on.

We’ve all seen the devastation. Ottowa’s buildings are on fire, stores have been looted, hordes of lawless masked people are roaming the streets. But I think I may have my protests mixed up - I’d better check.

Certain protests are framed as “mostly peaceful”, whereas in the media you’ll see the Truckers’ protest being described as “mostly hateful” - not quite in those terms, admittedly, but that’s what they’re pushing you to think.

My politics, such as it ever was, has always had a “left wing” bent to it. I’ve always been a bit of an idealist, wanting all those good things like justice, fairness, help for the disadvantaged, giving people a leg up where needed, health services and education for all, independent of ability to pay, and so on. The older I got the more I realised that some of those good things can only happen if you actually have the money to pay for them - and ensuring that requires a little more than mere idealism.

These days I’ve no idea what the terms “left” and “right” even mean any more. It seems to me the division these days is more along authoritarian/libertarian and collectivism/individualism lines. So I use the terms left and right with a hope and a prayer knowing that, in truth, there’s no good binary with which to describe the shitshow.

These days, the left use the term “right” as a slur to mean heartless, selfish bastard not too far removed from Hitler.

The right use the term “left” as a slur to mean crazy ideologically possessed fruitloop too far removed from sanity.

It’s weird how political things have become, though, over a virus. The Science™ definitely seems to have a left wing bent these days. It’s rather odd that when the workers of the world (the Truckers) finally do unite, it is largely the “right” cheering them on, and the “left” demonizing them.

We saw this kind of thing with Brexit in the UK too. The left demonizing the working class (who were largely pro-Brexit) as knuckle-dragging racist idiots.

One of the strange things, for me, has been how many on the “left” jump in with pro-censorship arguments that essentially boil down to “corporations are not government and they should be free to decide things for themselves”. Presumably, the same people would decry the alleged terrible working conditions at companies like Amazon, wanting government to step in and limit Amazon’s freedom to make decisions in its own best commercial interest.

You will all, doubtless, be aware of the many warnings about the vaxx pass being the gateway drug to the much stronger drug of some kind of social-credit based governance. Many laugh this off as a kind of lunatic fringe conspiracy theory. Yet let’s stop to think about what’s happening, for a moment.

We’ve seen the Big Tech monopolies band together to present a unified view of the pandemic, and to vigorously de-platform those who stray too far from the Narrative™, or who become too popular doing so. We’ve heard of banks and payment institutions (like PayPal) removing the ability of certain individuals with ‘unacceptable’ views to access financial services. Now we have GoFundMe deciding which causes are worthy and which are not - even stating that if the donations are not reclaimed within a couple of weeks the remaining funds will be distributed to charities of their choice.

It’s like giving money to an organisation for helping the homeless, only to find that your money has gone to an organisation for refugees. Both may be worthy causes, they may not, but that’s not the point. Your freedom to choose what YOU spend your money on is being restricted here - not by government, but by a corporation. But that’s OK isn’t it? They’re a private company, and they can do what they want. After all, if you don’t like it you can just set up your own company!

Well maybe, but when that happens, the monopolies rush in to defend their monopoly. Parler being a good example. This was set up as an alternative to Twitter, but when it got too popular their ability to trade was quashed by Big Tech - the app was removed from the main places people go to get apps, and the big cloud servers would not host the fledgling company’s services.

What people are forgetting is that government and corporations are not wholly independent. In game theory most of the simple, and fun, well-known games like Prisoner’s Dilemma, or Chicken are examples of non-cooperative games. The players act as independent entities seeking to maximise their own payoff under the constraint that the other players are doing the same. This often drives things to an equilibrium position which can be sub-optimal for all players (the Prisoner’s Dilemma is the classic example of this).

When you add an element of cooperation into the mix the analysis changes. People frame things as if there was a clear, sharp, distinction between government and the private sector, but we know this isn’t the case. The collusion, the cooperation, has become much more apparent recently with the FDA in the US, a government body, essentially acting on behalf of Big Pharma in trying to get the vaccine trial data hidden for over half a century.

People might pooh-pooh the idea of something like a “social-credit” score system ever being applied here in our freedom-loving democracies - but it’s happening right under our very noses. It’s being normalised, bit by bit. Your freedom to express yourself is under threat and being chipped away. Your freedom to spend your own money as you see fit is being chipped away. Your freedom to work and trade is being chipped away unless you hold the Approved™ views, or unless you have the right chemicals injected into you (governments might rescind mandates, but they will allow a “back door” whereby private companies are allowed to continue with them).

And make no mistake about it - these are not just some “private sector” decisions taken wholly independent of government.

---