#86 AARON JUDGE
REASONS FOR RECORDS EXISTING SEEMS OBVIOUS NOW TO EVERYONE WATCHING
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
D
ifferent types of records marking human achievement have been created over time. The phonographic record was the first object to be used to capture sound. This accomplishment being first in an endeavor is just one form of record often within another record.
This first record began the process of mass sharing of audio. People were no longer required to gather in a concert hall to listen to music if they had this record. Of course, live performances continued to exist but before sound was inscribed onto vinyl, being physically present for a performance was the only way for the longest time.
How they get the sound onto the black vinyl disk still seems to be as big a mystery as the technical aspects of sharing media through the social media platforms over WIFI.
The first to do something may not be a record but instead a marker of the beginning of the human endeavor. The first of anything may just be the first of many repeat performances.
The first to climb a mountain is different because that person will always be the first and the difficulty in completing the task remains the same, until of course they began taking oxygen tanks to be able to breathe easier and exert less.
But then of course the records split into those who attempt the task unassisted and those who rely on the oxygen tanks.
I doubt though that many people remember the first player to hit a home run in a professional baseball game.
Certain mountain climbers are so competitive that when first is no longer available a new category of firsts is created such as being the first to climb the same mountain twice.
And so, someone must begin to keep a record of all the climbers and all the successful attempts. Keeping an organic record of the records can become a bit of a sideshow.
Sports personalities like to keep records so they have something to talk about as players in the locker room, and then as television personalities during the game and then also one would assume in retirement sitting around the geriatrics ward watching the baseball game on television.
National Hockey League player Wayne Gretzky had so many records he had to move to California to live with the other celebrities. Gretzky was so great and became so famous with all those records that choosing to wear Gretzky’s number in any sport began to carry a heavy burden, partly because Wayne protects ‘99’ as his brand still ever present in commercials and other endorsements.
Sports heroes and frequently heroes of every kind have a mentor like Gretzky did, idolizing and being mentored by his hero, Gordie Howe. Howe wore the number ‘9’ on his jersey with his greatest record being his recuring appearances many years after he should have long retired.
The pressure to follow in another record breaker’s path is so much so that when you see another player wearing the same jersey numbers as a sports legend, the reflex action is to say, ‘yeah, right.’
PAUL NEWMAN BROKE THE GREATEST PRISON RECORD
Just as an aside, one of the greatest prison records of all time is held by actor Paul Newman in the film Cool Hand Luke (1967) when he ate 50 hardboiled eggs in one sitting.
One of the most impressive records marking human achievement is ascending the 8 tallest mountain peaks in the world all in one lifetime, likely inspired in some deep metaphysical way by the awareness of the tallest skyscrapers in the world.
People tend to just want to get along in their day while certain other people have to get to the end of the 24 hours faster than anyone else and, by the way, with the best end result.
Inspirational figures can compel achievement. Record holders cherish their fame and are not necessarily willing to see that record broken anytime too soon. But everything short of the record is usually just fine, and may even provide a bit of satisfaction to the reigning record holder and his supporters, as well as to the up-and-comers’ naysayers.
The title holders to the greatest records are probably the most generous with their coaching of other up-and-coming athletes since the records are so insurmountable that the mathematical probability of that particular person breaking the record is a ‘don’t even bother’.
Gretzky broke so many hockey records in Edmonton that the wannabees and the just ‘that will never happen’ naysayers may have chased him out of town.
Wannabee record breakers may receive more negative energy from hundreds of enemies to outweigh the positive energy received from thousands of fans.
That mentality in opposition to record holders used to be quite common with competing players attempting to physically injure their fiercest competitor, like the Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan United States Olympic figure skating team fiasco that undoubtably goes on in many different levels commensurate with the level of competition. Tykes untie shoelaces.
Olympics skaters have to defend against the use of police batons striking their landing knee, just as national hockey league scoring legends once had to be mindful of opposing players striking their knees. This ‘injure the superstar’ approach to defending records was so common in professional sports that many teams drafted bodyguards to protect their scorers on ice.
The sports leagues had to change the way the rules against physical contact were enforced to reduce career ending injuries amongst the best of the sports elite.
Competition often drives innovation, such as the three, four or is that five now billionaires engaging in the private space race. Blue Origin and Virgin Atlantic do the pop-culture exploits in near orbit while SpaceX endeavors for more of a junket hopping Moon landing.
That consequential inspirational motivation to follow becomes just one selfless reason to break records and be the first. On the surface the endeavor seems self-centered and narcissistic but individual achievement sets benchmarks for others to follow, eventually bringing more and more people along to follow a higher standard of excellence even if no chance exists to be the first or be the best or do the most of an endeavor.
The world recently experienced the historical excitement of the home run derby at the absolute end of the Major League Baseball regular season, just prior to the playoffs and the World Series. After 162 games, a second season begins with the best teams and the most elite players competing to participate in a 7 game series finale always held in October.
Baseball starts in the cool damp Spring and moves gingerly through the Summer heat into the start of the bitter Winter cold.
Major League Baseball player Aaron Judge had a heavy burden initially because the single season home run record in the American League (Division of the Major League) is substantial and also because just by chasing the record he began the process of joining those baseball legends, such as Babe Ruth, Mickie Mantel, and Johnny Bench, so revered in the sport as to have permanent places in the collective consciousness from generation to generation.
GRETZKY BROKE SO MANY RECORDS HE HAD TO MOVE TO CALIFORNIA TO LIVE WITH THE OTHER CELEBRITIES
Why did Aaron Judge chase the single season home run record in the first place?
The previous American League record of 61 home runs set in 1961 was made by Roger Maris 61 years ago. (Wayne Gretzky held 61 professional hockey league records on the day of his retirement.) Maris had beaten Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homeruns that Ruth had set in 1927.
Judge may have felt that the numbers were beginning to align themselves in the ether, like the stars and planets lining up to pull the ocean tide one way and pinch the frost to settle overnight in a certain other way.
The prospect of witnessing the moment was so great that the opposing team’s fans helped make the alignment happen in Texas where Maris died in 1985.
People thrive on luck and superstitions. And everything else came together for Judge as well, including tapping into the greatness of his athletic skills and the electricity of the moment with tens of thousands of fans on their feet cheering him on as he stood at the home plate hitting his 62nd home run of the season during one of the bitter last games of a long regular season.
By the 59th home run of the season, other people besides baseball fanatics began to follow Judge from around the world. Yankees manager Aaron Boone would even make faces in front of the growing international crowd by cupping his hands behind both ears and pretending to signal for a video replay of umpire calls on the field, when really, he was making faces at the opposing pitcher for his decision not to pitch to Judge, and to walk him instead. Boone may have been indicating that that approach by the pitcher might be too ‘Mickey Mouse’ for big league baseball.
The insolence of the pitchers only fueled the fever, though. And in the end, the strategy of shaming opposing pitchers into throwing into the strike zone paid off.
I signed up for an MLB account, which gave me access to one free streaming baseball game per day. MLB wisely chose a Yankee game as Judge moved from the 50s into the 60s. When Judge was stuck at 61 home runs, I was able to watch a game on my iPhone at a pub that was showing a baseball game on television, but not the only important baseball game on that day that mattered. I connected to the guest WIFI for a few innings on the streaming MLB site.
To complicate matters, the Yankees began playing double headers in Texas during the work week, which meant that one game played during the workday, and that the game played in the evening may have become moot by the time I got home.
I was able to watch a few at bats of one day game in a library on my MacBook Air. Of course, I used the library’s free WIFI to connect to the streaming MLB site.
A further complication was always that Judge batted first in the Yankee order so you could not really arrive late to watch the game no matter where you were because of the great risk of missing the record being broken in the first inning, especially when the Yankees were at the top of the order and taking the first pitch of the game on the road.
Aaron Judge (62), Roger Maris (61) and Babe Ruth (60) still seem strange read together but that combination of names and numbers is the way the names and numbers will likely be spoken for quite some time to come.
Judge was the League’s Rookie of the Year in his first season with the New York Yankees in 2017, ending the year with 52 home runs at the age of 25. Five years later Judge is expected to become one of the greatest players in the game, ever, with this single season greatness.
Like Gretzky did when scoring hockey goals, Judge makes the task of hitting home runs seem near effortless.
Aaron Judge wears the number ‘99’ on his Yankee Jersey. And Judge wears the jersey like he intends to break records every season for another 14 years, which becomes a very compelling prospect for sports fans, and just about everyone else.
TITANS FOLLOW RECKLESS REGULATED CHAOS TOWARD UNIMAGINABLE FORTUNE
OTC50 #80 April 1, 2022
UNITED STATES COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT of 1996 (CDA)
S 230 Protection for Private Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material
230 (b) It is the policy of the United States
(1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media;
(2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation;
(3) to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services;
(4) to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children’s access to objectionable or inappropriate online material; and
(5) to ensure vigorous enforcement of Federal criminal laws to deter and punish trafficking in obscenity, stalking, and harassment by means of a computer
( c ) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material
(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker, No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
(2) Civil Liability. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of
(A) Any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) Any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical mean to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1) [subparagraph (A)]
(d) Obligations of interactive computer service.
(e ) no effect on other laws
(1) S 223 or s 231 Chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) or 110 (sexual exploitation of children
C
ensorship occurs on many levels, but the most dangerous censorship may be that which occurs in secret by the operators of the big digital era information machines.
The search engine Google, like many global corporations, has a public face with a private motive beyond the realm of accountability, which too often than not operate on belated apologies based on inconvenient errors and omissions.
The public face sells the company’s on-line dominance of the Internet with a mantra promoting an open ended free speech that benefits democracy. But privately everything the information gatekeeper does has a financial aspect that is compelled forward by that old capitalist motif of get rich quick, regardless of the consequences.
Spill toxic chemicals in the Red River to make the automobile of today. Generate electricity from nuclear power to run the bread maker. ‘Eat up, and worry about the radioactive waste on another day.
Capitalism and democracy go well together when held in balance by competition and government regulations. But oligarchs and monopolies simultaneously skew the end results of the economy and governance, regardless of the publicly stated intentions, because market domination creates absolute power, and absolute power tends to want to control and manipulate, long after getting rich beyond anyone’s dreams.
That element that makes Google so appealing to search engine users also makes Google so dangerous to democracy, because with over half of the world’s Internet traffic, the Internet chat room is not big enough for any criticism. Punishment can be swift with just the slightest tick required by the eTech titan to change the outcome for a business venture, a freedom writer and a user interfacing with family and friends.
The eTech entrepreneurs pitching a new start up from their 16 gig laptops have a bit of inside adventure in store for them, along with all the risks and unexpected twists and turns that normally occur when trying to survive financially the road trip of a lifetime through the digital universe.
The business model adapted across on-line platforms begs for reckless abandonment, beginning with the early stages of developmental theory requiring the start up to be stationed inside the garage for the first start up test kitchen. The risky start up business venture accumulates more momentum toward every successive station all along the growth cycle with eTech continually propelled forward by an exponential need for speed to out distance a budding competitor.
At the same time, the eTech engine has an insatiable appetite for cash that must be met along the growth curve. Cash flow pays the daily operating expenses, but cash also pays for the expansion of digital architecture into new markets, a system of business operation that must be continually upgraded. Then there must also be cash to payback the investors, which is generated from increased share prices that rise or fall directly in relation to quarterly revenue announcements.
An eTechnology company may still increase the share value with increasingly higher revenue forecasts even if the balance sheets show a continuous loss of money. That ethical and moral conundrum promoting the shares of a net zero gain company permeates much of Wall Street, with shares ultimately being sold on a supply and demand basis.
The eTechnology business model mirrors the government budget of deficit financing. Governments run large annual budgetary deficits to meet the needs of the democratic political machine. This fiscal nonsense survives only because the actual value of the debt becomes muted by growth and inflation.
Turning off the stamping machines at the national mint will cause too much short term trauma for any re-election bid. Washington politicians cannot run for reelection with a slogan of: “This is going to hurt.”
Growth is key to democratic capitalism and the politicians that persuade the public to buy into the system with their hard earned tax dollars.
The eTech Titans run the same formula a bit more recklessly because of the inability to print money and leverage company debt against gold reserves and national resources and the unlimited ability to raise revenue from individual citizens through taxes.
For start-ups like Tesla, and the early investors into electric vehicle production like Elon Musk, cold hard cash is everything essential.
Tesla rummaged known interested venture capital parties for another $100,000 in development money for the first EV roadster prototype. Everything at Tesla ran on a long shoestring budget with many elite players invested in the company by poviding downpayments towards the yet sight unseen electric vehicles.
E-tech business becomes a bit of a crap shoot, Los Vegas style, with a good idea requiring a working product model to attract more investors whose cash is used to compel further development in the same, if not a different and better product, kind of like nursing and coddling the idea with small investments until the product is developed sufficiently for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of company shares.
The IPO pays off early investors for their loyalty, but the stock offering also capitalizes the company with cash reserves to pay daily operating expenses and fund future growth. The IPO is everything with everyone scrambling to survive until that watershed moment in the financing of new eTech development.
The success or failure of the IPO becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Interest in shares creates more cash flow, allowing the company to reload the cash drawers and expand the possibilities of the test models already in development.
Initially, Tesla had such little cash that the company was not able to machine the electric vehicle parts themselves for the initial prototype. Instead, Tesla commodified a chassis from a competing manufacturer of high end sports cars, after carefully testing commodification out on various chassis already in use by gas engine competitors.
Tesla needed a chassis that could accommodate the giant battery fuel cell that was itself a commodification of existing laptop battery products.
Tesla repeated the same commodification process in the initial stages of the development of the Tesla Model S. The Tesla Roadster was always meant to be a limited special edition for the elite, while the Tesla Model S was intended to become the first mass produced Tesla electric vehicle.
There is nothing sinister about this approach to motor vehicle development, since many automotive parts are outsourced by the biggest automakers. But the manner in which the public was sold the idea of a mass market electric vehicle is a form of censorship.
Commodification is a bit of a lie that gets continually repeated and retested throughout the eTech world.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange believes that the new world of truth is composed of several layers of censorship with tidy errors and omissions on the public record, while much of the miss telling in private being rather purposeful.
The gravamen begins with self-censorship, eTechnology companies refusing to publish, and writers refusing to write, because doing so would result in immediate and direct economic pushback.
The new age eTechnology roadster was initially an amalgam of bits and pieces of existing gas engine vehicles with the Tesla contribution being an electric power train fueled by hundreds of laptop batteries.
Similarly, the most successful user generated on-line content is that which has been commodified from other sources. In a way, an on-line post may be most appealing as a pastiche of facts that creates unique meta data for search engines and newsfeeds.
Facebook users who commodify content do better in the newsfeeds than the authors of the original content because of the meta data the search engines latch on to like closing the hatch on a computer generated submarine before submerging into the digital universe.
The publishing world has become writer focused in the digital age with publishers losing their monopoly on the printed word.
The United States Congress changed the nature of censorship by redefining publishing for the on-line world. Those big eTech companies are absolved of any liability in third party publishing through the double speak contained in the United States Communication Decency Act of 1996 (CDA).
Like every other law, every wrinkle in the new publishing definition has been exploited, so that decency means protecting publishers of indecency from liability. Information platforms like Facebook, which are clearly publishers like the old-school book makers in digital form, is actually not a publisher, but a provider for third party publishers.
The courts believe that even if the billion dollar eTech firm is aware of a hate crime, the CEO’s and employees, waiting to cash out large company share portfolios, cannot be held accountable even if the hate speech has been brought to their attention.
This omnibus government protection allows large global corporations to cross over into publishing with immunity even when remanufacturing a lie into the truth to change political elections.
The virtues of free speech in promoting tolerance, equality and justice are lost in a lie, in published hate speech, and when aiding and abetting crime that diminishes human dignity.
Meta Platforms Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, Instagram, What’s App) has total immunity across social media sites because of all the chaos in publishing the legislation has created.
Netflix is also a publishing platform, just as Facebook is, except that the rate of publishing on Netflix is at a slower more controlled pace. Netflix picks and chooses titles to stream, and then pays a licensing fee to the production companies.
Facebook has less initial control, but Zuckerberg can swiftly remove posts and delete pages on discovering content he finds unworthy of the free speech and free press protections so embedded in the United States Constitution.
Google and Amazon are competing publishing companies. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stopped paying Google the billion dollar annual advertising fee for Amazon products to show up in search engine results, because he was paying to be censored. Google put Amazon in a paying competition with other online retailers with paid Amazon ads appearing beside other paid ads in Google search for the same products. And if you don’t pay, you don’t show up in search results, or at the least you get slotted in a spot not worth any meaning.
As Amazon developed a product line and the global reach to sell those products, the company competed with Google for search engine results. People could go directly to Amazon to use their product search engine, or they could use Google search to find the same products sold at Amazon and a number of different online retailers.
Google is so manipulative and controlling when it comes to forcing payment for advertising, but when the anti-sex trade lobby asks the big giant eTech company to remove sites promoting the pornification of young women and children, someone just has to mention section 230 of the the CDA.
Amazon took the billion dollars away from Google and used the cash to develop their own site’s search engine.
The eCommerce revolution has created a lot of chaos out of which the big eTech firms have created international monopolies with annual revenue of $70+ billion.
This state of lawlessness censors out ethics and the fate of people over the profit motive, leaving undefined revolution and fanaticism to spur growth in capitalist democracies.
The European Union has recently passed the Digital Markets Act which will allow the marketplace to whittle away at the monopolies. Google and Apple are now required to allow other eTechnology developers to access their platforms.
These American monopolies are information gatekeepers. The public version is free and democratic in the name of free speech, but the inside private operations of digital information are controlling, manipulative and driven by the profit motive – not much different than print publishing.
The judiciary are being lied to by Big Tech in that judges have been told that old school publishing controls are impractical with the millions of bits of information published onto platforms each day by millions of users.
But Zuckerberg and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin maintain control within the user initiated chaos as long as the price point is beneficial to them.
Companies like Amazon and Apple have stayed away from social media publishing, but the companies remain publishers as distributers of third party content, such as streaming music and movies. Commerce is the driving force of eTechnology companies, not freedom, free speech or democracy.
Assange founded Wikileaks in the name of freedom, free speech and good government. But Assange quickly discovered that web pages referencing Wikileaks were being censored by Google. And unbeknownst to the public, Google CEOs had close ties to United States President Barack Obama’s Administration whose Titanic foe Wikileaks held them accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Post 9/11 Middle East Wars.
Online life is a bit like living in a casino with a lot of chaos all around, and only fleeting random luck at the tables. The net result is individual censorship and an ever diminishing freedom and democracy – particularly because of the double speak at the slots, I mean search engines.
Google has the ability to prioritize web search results to promote their own business interests. These monopolies are not victims of overwhelming user interfaces that should be protected from liability by s 230 of the CDA, so much as they are publishers picking and choosing how their business operates to maximize billion dollar annual profits.
The big lie by big tech and the US Congress is that search engines are public commons when in reality nothing is free, although everything is public.
The Google lie about platform neutrality causes a gaslighting of users trapped inside the chaos created by algorithmic unfairness. Google publishes without rules or without respect for the rules by hiding behind the idea of them being information gatekeepers, while culling human sentimentality.
Former US National Security Agency operative Edward Snowden states that technological innovation outpaces all moral and ethical boundaries. The intent is to foster the development of the eCommerce marketplace and the digital universe, but the effect has been an “uncontrolled monster” more commonly known in the secret intelligence field as the ‘Frankenstein Effect.’
UCLA Professor Safiya Umoja Noble found that there had been a direct mapping of old social barriers and stigma into the new media architecture.
Computer code, controlling, manipulating and categorizing information, is a language full of meaning. These algorithms are written by Silicon Valley techs more often than not educated in the American university system where students learn to share the same biased world view as the dominant elite controlling the classrooms and writing the textbooks.
Noble found that marginalized people are exponentially harmed by Google. And that far from spreading the words of freedom and equality, Google promulgates racial and gender barriers already firmly entrenched in the social system.
In this same way, the big digital electronic machines, controlling the on-line universe with artificial intelligence, still have a consciousness as a creation of human discretion originally formed within the collective.
A publicly benevolent eTech company may in realty be so imbued in self-interest, driven by the profit motive in particular, and perhaps also by delusions of social engineering a better democratic society without actually having been elected to political office, that it is privately malevolent, and at the very least, not as advertised.
Regulated into deregulation by the US Congress, the semantic meaning of publishing was redefined, with the old definition that included distribution of content being erased and reinvented, perhaps commodified in the greater spirit of the digital information age.
Big Tech companies like Amazon, Disney, Apple and Netflix limit their publishing interests to distribution, whereas social media platforms massage third party content in a manner that undefines publishing.
Assange describes censorship as the intention to mask the truth in layers of misdirection and unintelligible meaning. This lawlessness in the presentation of the digital word creates a lot of chaos.
And this particular brand of chaos benefits the status quo and the Washington establishment by creating a buffer from substantive systemic change that sacrifices the truth of the present in a kind of careless disregard for right and wrong.
Justice has been nonchalantly set aside.
If people think they can print anything, certain people actually will print anything. This barrage of lies and insults censors by burying the truth and the earnest pursuit of tolerance, equality and justice.
The unintended chaos is not so unintended, because racial and gender subjugation is profitable to the white, male dominant corporate class structure, according to Noble.
This neoliberal capitalistic, social ideology persists among the elites running corporate economies and influencing the judiciary who in turn implement the regulation of unregulation in the digital age.
Big eTech corporations are billion dollar information monopolies that reach far and wide beyond any political borders.
Noble states that egregious and racist content becomes highly profitable because that content attracts the interest of the dominant classes within the majority rule.
Instead of search engines becoming the great equalizers of our times, the information gatekeepers are hegemonic devices.
Even if the artificial intelligence running the big online machines have not purposefully been programmed to be racist or sexist or to sell images of young black girls for pornification, those are the search engine results, according to Noble.
That method of overlooking outcome permeates the new economy, fueled by cash flow and venture capital, with a lot of speculation permeating everything inside and outside the economy.
Tesla and SpaceX just began producing products before they had been properly developed. Musk even Tweeted that he didn’t mind so much if he had to watch his spacecrafts blow up on the launch pad a few times, after the spacecraft in development blew up three times in a row, before getting it right. Musk then sold a home based flame thrower as an accessory to his celebrity status.
‘It’s okay though because everything has worked out.’
In the early years, after commodifying a chassis and automotive parts, Tesla had to sell their unique electronic power trains and solar energy systems in a horizontal market to other competing manufacturers so as to generate sufficient cash flow for the next phase of unregulated economic growth.
To avert becoming relegated to a continued existence as a parts supplier, Tesla sold a 10% stake in the company to Daimler Chrysler for $50 million. The Obama Administration also provided financial grants to Tesla.
The importance of keeping pace with change and being the first to market was so breathtaking that Musk spent considerable time deficit financing the production of electric vehicle as the company continued to move forward by innovating.
The economic pressures are similar in other industries as well, because of a general business model tethered to Wall Street financial interests.
Netflix started out as a mail order movie DVD rental company in direct competition with Blockbuster retail stores in 1997. In essence, Netflix cofounders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph moved to do for the movie business, in an $8 billion movie rental industry, what Amazon and Jeff Bezos had done for book selling and general retail.
Netflix relied on the First Sale/Second Use Doctrine developed out of the 1908 United States Copyright Law and a 1981 US Supreme Court ruling that granted the right to resell or rent the movie DVDS that they owned.
But even with $100,000 in rentals the first month, Netflix had to stall the eventually bankruptcy of the company until technology changed VHS to DVD and more people bought more DVD players as the price of the machines dropped.
The dilemma seems trite now with digital movies and streaming platforms finding common ground in the public marketplace, but Hastings could not really compete with Blockbuster because of the cost of shipping bulky VHS tapes and the high price of VHS home machines that limited the pool of potential customers.
Technology changed everything with a cheaper DVD machine below $200 finding a way into almost every household and the thinner profile of DVD’s that could be shipped in the regular mail all within the framework of a price point that beat Blockbuster retail stores without too much profit loss with each customer transaction.
Netflix survived the corporate battle for movie rentals by generated sufficient cash flow to adapt the business model with the changing technology, while Blockbuster was too slow to transition from retail stores, and then chose the low end of eTechnology that could not process the eventual on-line demand.
Netflix in the meantime positioned itself as the ‘it’ movie rental company while the platforms changed from renting physical copies to selling subscriptions for streaming digital movies on-line.
Like a quickening, by the time Netflix moved from renting DVDs through the United States Postal Service to streaming movies online, Blockbuster had fallen too far behind with the wrong choice of technology and too much debt to be refinanced.
The players have to be fast to survive.
When the film distribution industry changed irrevocably to on-line streaming, Disney lost hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees the production company would normally earn from broadcast stations for Disney programming. CEO Bob Iger realized soon enough that he had to transition the entertainment company to a new era of distribution.
Amazon too had to quickly grow into other global markets before upstarts got their market share first with their stolen idea. Bezos business sense was to create the eCommerce platform by selling books, but then to add more products as quickly as the market and the online technology would allow.
The economic ethics are so precarious that when Amazon failed to establish an on-line presence in India in 2004, Amazon’s former employees, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, started their own brand of online retailing specific to the market in India, called Flipkart, just three years later. To keep going, Flipkart sold a stake in the company to Wallmart, a direct competitor of Amazon, for $16 billion in 2018.
Similarly, Alibaba beat out Amazon in China by undercutting the commission on sales to 2-3 per cent, substantially down from the 10-15 per cent Amazon charged. Alibaba also had an inside track with the Chinese authorities, while Bezos struggled with that outsider label.
The anti-direct foreign investment rules brought into play in India in 2013 underlined the need for Big eTech to know the inside passage controlled by government and the inner circles.
The monopoly held by Flipkart and Amazon amounted to 80 per cent of the on-line retail market, eventually leading to new anti-trust rules and foreign ownership laws in India.
Amazon had still lost $1 billion a year in India. So Bezos purchasing the Washington Post Newspaper for $250 million was like giving to charity. Bezos turned the newspaper company around from a $10 million loser in 2015, to a $100 million profit winner over the next three years by going on-line. But the Amazon expansion into India and China was awash with billion dollar losses.
When Amazon turned south for growth, Walmart and MercadoLibre had already established a presence in Mexico for the $7.1 billion eCommerce marketplace.
Mistakes are made along the way, the pace of change is so quick, while loyalty is bought with company shares. A multi-billion dollar fortune attracts a lot of friends.
Netflix initially offered free movie rentals as part of a marketing campaign, but the coupons were printed without a unique numbering system so Netflix could not keep track of who had how many, and customers could simply use another coupon instead of paying for the next rental, as the company had hoped the promotion to unfold.
Tesla initially bought the batteries from Asia and flew in the roadster chassis from the UK, then assembled and installed the battery pack in California. The robotic assembly line initially produced flawed prototypes that were sold to waiting customers with waning patience.
And instead of placing the deposits in escrow, Tesla used the funds for cash flow while Musk personally guaranteed the deposits from his personal fortune acquired from the sale of PayPal.
Musk depended on the elite customers for the roadster being loyal and not demanding their deposits back as Tesla struggled with missed production deadlines. Tesla also increased the cost of the roadsters already on order to make up for cash short falls in development. The price was increased for a car that still did not exist.
Musk was literally scrambling for cash and know how to beat the Big 6 automakers to being the first company to mass manufacture electric vehicles. Even when production began, the lack of loyalty on the production line caused a number of manufacturing defects that would slow Tesla growth.
Amazon marched on through the storm with the trouble light motto of innovating themselves out of the chaos.
All the more concerning, eTech companies not only run roughshod through production missteps but the companies change the engineering of communities like Redmond, Washington, and the Mission District in San Francisco, California by bringing into the community employees with higher than average income levels who then spend more and live higher, thereby driving up the cost of living for people living in the community for other reasons.
Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff asserts that a corporation is just a set of rules and just a code in the digital universe, while the corporation has no mind for people priorities and the future.
Technology had gradually replaced the human element in the means of production and eTech is finishing the job by disassociating people from production. Consumer loyalty has instead shifted to the brand and the billionaire entrepreneurs behind the celebrity culture.
What do electric vehicles, streaming movies, on-line retailers, social media platforms, and information gatekeepers have in common?
Digital passages through the virtual universe are controlled with planned chaos.
So where do you want to go and how do you expect to get there?
Forward, in that direction everyone seems to want to be heading through the maddening crowd of the unconnected trying to get connected.
But moving forward with such speed and acceleration has become reckless and unmanageable. What income disparity that existed before the digital commerce giant wave still exists, but 10 and 20 fold more luxurious and more depraved with a tiny percentage finding celebrity existence in mansions and on yachts, while more homeless find failure and loneliness on the streets.
Algorithms of Oppression, How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, by Safiya Umoja Noble, New York, New York University Press, 2018. Cypherpunks, Freedom and the Future of the Internet, Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum , Andy Muller-Maguhn and Jeremy Zimmerman, New York, O/R Books, 2012. Google Leaks: A Whistleblower’s Expose of Big Tech Censorship, by Zach Vorhies and Kent Heckenlively, JD, New York, Skyhorse Publishing, 2021. NETFLIX: The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs, by Gina Keating, New York, Penguin, 2012. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, by Brad Stone, New York, Little Brown and Company, 2013. Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became The Enemy of Prosperity, by Douglas Rushkoff, New York, Portfolio/Penguin, 2016. Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, by Marshall McLuhan, London, The MIT Press, 1996.
