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You are reading the sixth issue of the fully automated luxury communism newsletter.

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Every two weeks this newsletter brings links, snippets and interesting facts about technology from a left perspective. It hopes to spark a greater discussion among the left about the opportunities and threats that tech brings.



This week I will share my thoughts about Margrethe Vestager, EU Commissioner on competition policy who has levied heavy fined against US tech companies.

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What to think about tech-busting Vestager?

"I think it is one of the fundamentals, not only of the European Union but also of free trade, that competition is fair."

"More broadly, the Irish state finds itself on the frontline of a historic shift in international capitalism. Capital has attempted to resolve the crisis of global neoliberalism by intensifying its logic — cutting wages, eliminating social services and labor protections, selling public enterprises, shrinking public employment, and relying on export surpluses. These measures have proved ineffective, and some ruling elites are looking toward a more regulated capitalism. Following the argument of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, sections of the European business class have concluded that effective international tax cooperation must be secured to restore capitalist political legitimacy. This is why the pro-business European Commission, headed by a Danish centrist, has taken on Ireland and its tax haven"

Margrethe Vestager is the European Union's Commissioner in charge of competition policy. Not a very tech-y job title, but in recent years she has made a name for herself by levying hefty fines on (US) technology companies for anti-competitive practices.She ordered Apple to pay back 13 billion euros in back taxes for using Irish loopholes to dodge paying their taxes, she fined Facebook 110 million euros for their behaviour in the takeover of WhatsApp, she made Google pay 2,4 billion euros for using their search monopoly to favour their own services and investigated Amazon tax practices.Vestager often boils down her politics in sharp one-liners, like: "Europe is open for business, not for tax evasion."Vestager is, however, no radical. She is a Danish career politician from a liberal party (European liberal, as in representative government + free markets), in Danish politics she worked in austerity-imposing governments and repeatedly clashed with trade-unions.Yet, certainly for Americans, Vestager sounds quite radical. She takes on large (tech) multinationals when they engage in unsavoury business practices, and channels some of the anti-corporate energies traditionally associated with the left.Part of this can be tied to the principled liberalism she upholds. Liberalism, for all the opportunism of its adherents, fundamentally is a very radical ideology. Advocating representative democracy and civil liberties in times of Troika's and anti-refugee xenophobia could potentially be very radical. Similarly advocating for a free market can be very radical, precisely because it requires government intervention.For all their ideology of competition, private businesses don't actually like free markets since it cuts into their profits. They would rather occupy monopoly positions and engage in anti-competitive behaviour than have free markets most days of the week. Ironically free markets thus require state intervention to combat anti-competitive tendencies among businesses, and that is precisely the ideology Vestager upholds, or in her own words:Another part of it is that the European Union, or certain sections of the European elites, have realised that their harsh austerity and neoliberalism have undermined their own authority. Certain sections of the European elites would want to renew the European project with some, at least principled, liberalism after years of brutal attacks on their own citizens. Vestager, who is tipped off as a future President or Vice-President of the EU, could become the face of this attempted renewal going on within the European elites.A Jacobin piece by Terrence McDonough on Ireland states it like this:

Vestager might be an improvement of what came before. The job she does was previously held by Neelie Kroes, a Dutch liberal with close ties to the technology sector (she served on the advisory board of Uber and turned out to have a tax-dodging construction in the Bahamas) and Joaquín Almunia a Spanish social-democrat who was ironically even more inclined to compromise with big corporates than Kroes.



Yet Vestager also shows us the limits of a renewed elite politics. She might fine tech companies when they fail to uphold competition standards, but the end stage of her politics is simply the status-quo in which monopoly companies like Google are more ethical and friendly to competitors. That might be an advance over when they are unethical, yet hardly arouses much enthusiasm.



A true left-wing alternative could precisely arouse utopian energies for technology. It would not only regulate big corporates but would also promote alternative forms of ownership of the digital economy. It would see an ample role for state-owned, municipally-owned and cooperatively-owned digital services that are integrated with strongly funded universities and research institutes, all tied to mass movements like trade unions and women's movements. An entire complex that would be pushed to be as democratic as possible, and would liberate technological innovation for the betterment of population as a whole.

Links





I have some issues with this article, but it is interesting to look at coders more as regular workers and less as startup-chasing labour aristocrats. "But this Silicon Valley stereotype isn’t even geographically accurate. The Valley employs only 8 percent of the nation’s coders. All the other millions? They’re more like Devon, a programmer I met who helps maintain a ­security-software service in Portland, Oregon. He isn’t going to get fabulously rich, but his job is stable and rewarding: It’s 40 hours a week, well paid, and intellectually challenging. “My dad was a blue-­collar guy,” he tells me—and in many ways, Devon is too." The next big blue collar job is coding - WiredI have some issues with this article, but it is interesting to look at coders more as regular workers and less as startup-chasing labour aristocrats. The Face Value of Bitcoin: Proof of Work and the Labour Theory of Value - P2P Foundation

Really interesting article by Dmitry Kleiner applying the labour theory of value to Bitcoin. "While the libertarian capitalist theory is not useful in determining the value of Bitcoin, Marxist theory is. Bitcoin does not need to be backed or collateralized in any reserve of useful commodities, but instead in the labour time required to produce it. Proof of work." Ending the Amazon hunger games - Jacobin

Great piece by Meagan Day on the bidding war Amazon unleashed when it announced it would build a second headquarters, and would have U.S. cities compete in public for it. "LeRoy points out that 98.2 percent of large corporations’ cost structures are not local and state taxes. Cities can bend over backwards to make a difference in the 1.8 percent they can affect with tax incentives, but ultimately the decision will be made based on other factors. Companies can then use the charged atmosphere of a public competition to squeeze extra cash from contending cities, even though it won’t matter that much to the final decision. “The system has grown up in such a way that it enables them to get a bunch of free money to do what they would do anyway,” says LeRoy. “They’re playing it like a fiddle.” Waymo and Uber end trial with sudden $244 million settlement - Ars Technica

This settlement ends a, quite weird, trial between Google's Waymo and Uber over alleged violations of trade secrets used in self-driving cars. The lawsuit revolves around a poached engineer, and aired some quite weird details, oh yeah: the engineer, after being fired by Uber, set up a church dedicated to revering artificial intelligence. "Ars has learned that Uber has agreed to pay out 0.34 percent of Uber's equity, with a $72 billion valuation, resulting in a payout of over $244 million. That same source noted that had this settlement been a jury verdict, would have been fourth highest jury verdict for trade secret misappropriation reported in the last decade in United States." Bye This was the sixth issue of the fully automated luxury communism newsletter.



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Here are some links with interesting news from the past few weeks.