Amazon, Tesla and Meta among top companies undermining democracy

Extremely malicious and baiting article. But my favorite terrible take is that Amazon's "retail website has been used by hate groups to raise money and sell products". Guys, did you know that you can buy conservative books on Amazon?/s The implication being that Amazon not banning wrongthink from their marketplace is somehow "undermining democracy".

Also:

> The Vanguard Group was included in the report due to its role in financing some of the world’s most anti-democratic corporations.

Okay, if we are going to go by this logic, the top holder of hedge funds are union pensions. So presumably unions should be included in the report on being anti-democratic by the same criteria.

There’s not a single discussion going on in American politics at the federal level that is not some version of the US circling the drain (I’m American). The bright spots (state/local level) are very limited (psychedelic therapies research comes to mind).

Abroad there are some bright spots, though Americans will sparsely here of them:

1 Taiwan’s civic tech - using software to aid in crowdsourcing democratic options and discussion

2 Amsterdam’s circular economy project - investing in comprehensive analysis and rule-making focusing on reducing waste of all kinds - construction, pollution, consumables etc

I’ve looked at these last two personally, here’s a short list of similar projects (from chatgpt) if you’re interested

Barcelona Superblocks

New Zealand Wellbeing budget

Estonia’s e-governance

South Korea Smart City initiatives

Finland’s basic income experiment

Portugal’s participatory budgeting

Also El Salvador’s interests in Crypto is … interesting though too early to tell if this will be of real benefit to citizens at scale.

Historically all great “empires” have all fallen, and the US is right on pace for academics who study these things - our descent has begun. However there is one thing that’s different now. The speed of tech development will begin to outpace all other human forces that shape our civilization.

Taiwan is the leader in using tech for enhancing democratic participation. Can’t stress enough how valuable that might be if used correctly.

And of course, AI should accelerate the bioengineering, geoengineering, and perhaps some type of financial/economic engineering that could pull us from the brink.

I’m hoping that an AI future may make us happier and more sovereign, but the momentum towards a corporate techno feudalistic dark age, where government, citizens, and institutions are all bought and paid for by private mega corps, is growing.

Since "undermining democracy" is a rather vacuous charge I'll correct the headline. It is actually about sponsoring (far) right politicians and lobbying and said arguments from a report from International Trade Union Confederation.

The main way tech companies undermine democracy is by manipulating and censoring online speech. These platforms are the most influential ones today, and if some speech is not allowed on them or made less visible, it might as well not exist. Free speech is foundational to democracies, and the fact that this civil liberty is basically outsourced and controlled by private platforms is a serious issue.

As for this article - it makes claims that these companies are funding “far right” movements based on a report from a trade union organization, but it is not clear what exactly is “right” at all, let alone “far right”. Sure, pro union policies are more aligned with the left but trying to paint Amazon or Google as being “anti abortion” is utterly laughable and undermines the credibility of the linked report and articles. These are companies whose employees and leaders are almost entirely left-leaning and are known for having pervasive progressive political culture. And for the record, lobbying and corporate influence are issues across the whole spectrum.

What a joke. Nothing but "union busting" this, "anti-climate" that, and "far right" that (where "far right" = "anything to the right of Marx"). No mentions of the destruction wrought by left and far left policies, including climate change fear mongering and the destruction wrought by "green" policies.

All written by a union group. Tells you everything you need to know.

True enough. Also true is that there's fuck-all we can do to fix it.