Sunday, 3 September 2017
Why have rights if workers fear using them?
Low-wage employees rarely claim what they’re entitled to for fear of being branded troublemakers by their boss
Barbara Ellen in The Guardian
It may be time to quash the myth, once and for all, that the only reason that low-wage workers don’t exercise their employment rights is because they don’t know about them. Perhaps even when they do, they fear that to exercise them would risk them being branded troublemakers and penalised. It’s also possible that employers know about this fear and cynically exploit it.
A TUC study has found that many low-paid workers (people with combined household incomes of £28,000 or less) are being “disciplined” for taking childcare-related time off. Forty-two per cent of parents felt they’d been stigmatised and punished for asking for more flexible hours, with some worrying that they would be given worse shifts or even lose their jobs, and 29% were dipping into annual leave when their children fell ill.
The report said that many of the low-waged seemed unaware that they had a legal right to 18 weeks’ unpaid parental leave if they’d held their jobs for a year, though these rights did not apply to everybody and could be impractical for those on zero-hour contracts (where shifts could change on an employer’s whim). What’s more, the rights became “meaningless” if workers felt that utilising them could lead to them being branded provocative, unreliable and, ultimately, unemployable.
Perhaps it’s time there was a new kind of narrative from the world of work and children, one that goes beyond even the unfolding shambles of the government’s election nursery care promises. Generally, it’s all about women being forced off the “fast track” on to the “mummy track” once they become parents or cyclical outbursts about how the macho nature of work culture isn’t conducive to parenthood or the holy grail of work/life balance.
Then there’s the saga of “parents versus non-parents”. There are tales of office-based sniping about parents arriving for work late, and leaving early, with parents feeling stressed, resented and misunderstood, and non-parents feeling that parents get far too much special consideration for their little darlings’ bouts of tonsillitis.
While all of these points remain valid, the TUC findings show a different world, one where the very notion of “work-life” balance would be considered a tasteless joke and where a working parent’s struggles doesn’t just mean a few covert snotty looks from the marketing team when they leave early for the school nativity play. It sometimes means the choice between using your holiday to look after your children when they’re ill or risking irritating employers and ending up on some unofficial shit list.
This situation appears to be multifaceted. Many low-wage workers in insecure positions don’t have the legal right to ask for more flexible hours (as well as lacking many other legal protections). Those who have rights may not be aware of them. And those who are aware of their rights may be afraid to use them, understandably so.
All of which leads to another issue, one flagged up by the TUC report, which undoubtedly affects every move a low-wage parent worker makes – that employers definitely know their workers’ rights.
However, they also know that they have the upper hand in this ugly era of sanctioned worker exploitation. And so even if a lone voice does dare to raise itself, it could be effectively muzzled and silenced, just with the unspoken threat of the worker being stigmatised, penalised, even losing the job altogether.
There it is: not just the problem, but the disgrace, the human rights calamity of low-wage, insecure British work culture in the 21st century. What use are employment rights when there’s a thriving culture of workers being systematically intimidated into disregarding them?
Barbara Ellen in The Guardian
It may be time to quash the myth, once and for all, that the only reason that low-wage workers don’t exercise their employment rights is because they don’t know about them. Perhaps even when they do, they fear that to exercise them would risk them being branded troublemakers and penalised. It’s also possible that employers know about this fear and cynically exploit it.
A TUC study has found that many low-paid workers (people with combined household incomes of £28,000 or less) are being “disciplined” for taking childcare-related time off. Forty-two per cent of parents felt they’d been stigmatised and punished for asking for more flexible hours, with some worrying that they would be given worse shifts or even lose their jobs, and 29% were dipping into annual leave when their children fell ill.
The report said that many of the low-waged seemed unaware that they had a legal right to 18 weeks’ unpaid parental leave if they’d held their jobs for a year, though these rights did not apply to everybody and could be impractical for those on zero-hour contracts (where shifts could change on an employer’s whim). What’s more, the rights became “meaningless” if workers felt that utilising them could lead to them being branded provocative, unreliable and, ultimately, unemployable.
Perhaps it’s time there was a new kind of narrative from the world of work and children, one that goes beyond even the unfolding shambles of the government’s election nursery care promises. Generally, it’s all about women being forced off the “fast track” on to the “mummy track” once they become parents or cyclical outbursts about how the macho nature of work culture isn’t conducive to parenthood or the holy grail of work/life balance.
Then there’s the saga of “parents versus non-parents”. There are tales of office-based sniping about parents arriving for work late, and leaving early, with parents feeling stressed, resented and misunderstood, and non-parents feeling that parents get far too much special consideration for their little darlings’ bouts of tonsillitis.
While all of these points remain valid, the TUC findings show a different world, one where the very notion of “work-life” balance would be considered a tasteless joke and where a working parent’s struggles doesn’t just mean a few covert snotty looks from the marketing team when they leave early for the school nativity play. It sometimes means the choice between using your holiday to look after your children when they’re ill or risking irritating employers and ending up on some unofficial shit list.
This situation appears to be multifaceted. Many low-wage workers in insecure positions don’t have the legal right to ask for more flexible hours (as well as lacking many other legal protections). Those who have rights may not be aware of them. And those who are aware of their rights may be afraid to use them, understandably so.
All of which leads to another issue, one flagged up by the TUC report, which undoubtedly affects every move a low-wage parent worker makes – that employers definitely know their workers’ rights.
However, they also know that they have the upper hand in this ugly era of sanctioned worker exploitation. And so even if a lone voice does dare to raise itself, it could be effectively muzzled and silenced, just with the unspoken threat of the worker being stigmatised, penalised, even losing the job altogether.
There it is: not just the problem, but the disgrace, the human rights calamity of low-wage, insecure British work culture in the 21st century. What use are employment rights when there’s a thriving culture of workers being systematically intimidated into disregarding them?
Silicon Valley has been humbled. But its schemes are as dangerous as ever
Sex scandals, rows over terrorism, fears for its impact on social policy: the backlash against Big Tech has begun. Where will it end?
Evgeny Morozov in The Guardian
Just a decade ago, Silicon Valley pitched itself as a savvy ambassador of a newer, cooler, more humane kind of capitalism. It quickly became the darling of the elite, of the international media, and of that mythical, omniscient tribe: the “digital natives”. While an occasional critic – always easy to dismiss as a neo-Luddite – did voice concerns about their disregard for privacy or their geeky, almost autistic aloofness, public opinion was firmly on the side of technology firms.
Silicon Valley was the best that America had to offer; tech companies frequently occupied – and still do – top spots on lists of the world’s most admired brands. And there was much to admire: a highly dynamic, innovative industry, Silicon Valley has found a way to convert scrolls, likes and clicks into lofty political ideals, helping to export freedom, democracy and human rights to the Middle East and north Africa. Who knew that the only thing thwarting the global democratic revolution was capitalism’s inability to capture and monetise the eyeballs of strangers?
How things have changed. An industry once hailed for fuelling the Arab spring is today repeatedly accused of abetting Islamic State. An industry that prides itself on diversity and tolerance is now regularly in the news for cases of sexual harassment as well as the controversial views of its employees on matters such as gender equality. An industry that built its reputation on offering us free things and services is now regularly assailed for making other things – housing, above all– more expensive.
The Silicon Valley backlash is on. These days, one can hardly open a major newspaper – including such communist rags as the Financial Times and the Economist – without stumbling on passionate calls that demand curbs on the power of what is now frequently called “Big Tech”, from reclassifying digital platforms as utility companies to even nationalising them.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s big secret – that the data produced by users of digital platforms often has economic value exceeding the value of the services rendered – is now also out in the open. Free social networking sounds like a good idea – but do you really want to surrender your privacy so that Mark Zuckerberg can run a foundation to rid the world of the problems that his company helps to perpetuate? Not everyone is so sure any longer. The Teflon industry is Teflon no more: the dirt thrown at it finally sticks – and this fact is lost on nobody.
Much of the brouhaha has caught Silicon Valley by surprise. Its ideas – disruption as a service, radical transparency as a way of being, an entire economy of gigs and shares – still dominate our culture. However, its global intellectual hegemony is built on shaky foundations: it stands on the post-political can-do allure of TED talks much more than in wonky thinktank reports and lobbying memorandums.
This is not to say that technology firms do not dabble in lobbying – here Alphabet is on a par with Goldman Sachs – nor to imply that they don’t steer academic research. In fact, on many tech policy issues it’s now difficult to find unbiased academics who have not received some Big Tech funding. Those who go against the grain find themselves in a rather precarious situation, as was recently shown by the fate of the Open Markets project at New America, an influential thinktank in Washington: its strong anti-monopoly stance appears to have angered New America’s chairman and major donor, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet. As a result, it was spun off from the thinktank.
Nonetheless, Big Tech’s political influence is not at the level of Wall Street or Big Oil. It’s hard to argue that Alphabet wields as much power over global technology policy as the likes of Goldman Sachs do over global financial and economic policy. For now, influential politicians – such as José Manuel Barroso, the former president of the European Commission – prefer to continue their careers at Goldman Sachs, not at Alphabet; it is also the former, not the latter, that fills vacant senior posts in Washington.
This will surely change. It’s obvious that the cheerful and utopian chatterboxes who make up TED talks no longer contribute much to boosting the legitimacy of the tech sector; fortunately, there’s a finite supply of bullshit on this planet. Big digital platforms will thus seek to acquire more policy leverage, following the playbook honed by the tobacco, oil and financial firms.
There are, however, two additional factors worth considering in order to understand where the current backlash against Big Tech might lead. First of all, short of a major privacy disaster, digital platforms will continue to be the world’s most admired and trusted brands – not least because they contrast so favourably with your average telecoms company or your average airline (say what you will of their rapaciousness, but tech firms don’t generally drag their customers off their flights).
And it is technology firms – American companies but also Chinese – that create the false impression that the global economy has recovered and everything is back to normal. Since January, the valuations of just four firms – Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft – have grown by an amount greater than the entire GDP of oil-rich Norway. Who would want to see this bubble burst? Nobody; in fact, those in power would rather see it grow some more.
The culture power of Silicon Valley can be gleaned from the simple fact that no sensible politician dares to go to Wall Street for photo ops; everyone goes to Palo Alto to unveil their latest pro-innovation policy. Emmanuel Macron wants to turn France into a startup, not a hedge fund. There’s no other narrative in town that makes centrist, neoliberal policies look palatable and inevitable at the same time; politicians, however angry they might sound about Silicon Valley’s monopoly power, do not really have an alternative project. It’s not just Macron: from Italy’s Matteo Renzi to Canada’s Justin Trudeau, all mainstream politicians who have claimed to offer a clever break with the past also offer an implicit pact with Big Tech – or, at least, its ideas – in the future.
Second, Silicon Valley, being the home of venture capital, is good at spotting global trends early on. Its cleverest minds had sensed the backlash brewing before the rest of us. They also made the right call in deciding that wonky memos and thinktank reports won’t quell our discontent, and that many other problems – from growing inequality to the general unease about globalisation – will eventually be blamed on an industry that did little to cause them.
Silicon Valley’s brightest minds realised they needed bold proposals – a guaranteed basic income, a tax on robots, experiments with fully privatised cities to be run by technology companies outside of government jurisdiction – that will sow doubt in the minds of those who might have otherwise opted for conventional anti-monopoly legislation. If technology firms can play a constructive role in funding our basic income, if Alphabet or Amazon can run Detroit or New York with the same efficiency that they run their platforms, if Microsoft can infer signs of cancer from our search queries: should we really be putting obstacles in their way?
In the boldness and vagueness of its plans to save capitalism, Silicon Valley might out-TED the TED talks. There are many reasons why such attempts won’t succeed in their grand mission even if they would make these firms a lot of money in the short term and help delay public anger by another decade. The main reason is simple: how could one possibly expect a bunch of rent-extracting enterprises with business models that are reminiscent of feudalism to resuscitate global capitalism and to establish a new New Deal that would constrain the greed of capitalists, many of whom also happen to be the investors behind these firms?
Data might seem infinite but there’s no reason to believe that the enormous profits made from it would simply smooth over the many contradictions of the current economic system. A self-proclaimed caretaker of global capitalism, Silicon Valley is much more likely to end up as its undertaker.
Evgeny Morozov in The Guardian
Just a decade ago, Silicon Valley pitched itself as a savvy ambassador of a newer, cooler, more humane kind of capitalism. It quickly became the darling of the elite, of the international media, and of that mythical, omniscient tribe: the “digital natives”. While an occasional critic – always easy to dismiss as a neo-Luddite – did voice concerns about their disregard for privacy or their geeky, almost autistic aloofness, public opinion was firmly on the side of technology firms.
Silicon Valley was the best that America had to offer; tech companies frequently occupied – and still do – top spots on lists of the world’s most admired brands. And there was much to admire: a highly dynamic, innovative industry, Silicon Valley has found a way to convert scrolls, likes and clicks into lofty political ideals, helping to export freedom, democracy and human rights to the Middle East and north Africa. Who knew that the only thing thwarting the global democratic revolution was capitalism’s inability to capture and monetise the eyeballs of strangers?
How things have changed. An industry once hailed for fuelling the Arab spring is today repeatedly accused of abetting Islamic State. An industry that prides itself on diversity and tolerance is now regularly in the news for cases of sexual harassment as well as the controversial views of its employees on matters such as gender equality. An industry that built its reputation on offering us free things and services is now regularly assailed for making other things – housing, above all– more expensive.
The Silicon Valley backlash is on. These days, one can hardly open a major newspaper – including such communist rags as the Financial Times and the Economist – without stumbling on passionate calls that demand curbs on the power of what is now frequently called “Big Tech”, from reclassifying digital platforms as utility companies to even nationalising them.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s big secret – that the data produced by users of digital platforms often has economic value exceeding the value of the services rendered – is now also out in the open. Free social networking sounds like a good idea – but do you really want to surrender your privacy so that Mark Zuckerberg can run a foundation to rid the world of the problems that his company helps to perpetuate? Not everyone is so sure any longer. The Teflon industry is Teflon no more: the dirt thrown at it finally sticks – and this fact is lost on nobody.
Much of the brouhaha has caught Silicon Valley by surprise. Its ideas – disruption as a service, radical transparency as a way of being, an entire economy of gigs and shares – still dominate our culture. However, its global intellectual hegemony is built on shaky foundations: it stands on the post-political can-do allure of TED talks much more than in wonky thinktank reports and lobbying memorandums.
This is not to say that technology firms do not dabble in lobbying – here Alphabet is on a par with Goldman Sachs – nor to imply that they don’t steer academic research. In fact, on many tech policy issues it’s now difficult to find unbiased academics who have not received some Big Tech funding. Those who go against the grain find themselves in a rather precarious situation, as was recently shown by the fate of the Open Markets project at New America, an influential thinktank in Washington: its strong anti-monopoly stance appears to have angered New America’s chairman and major donor, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet. As a result, it was spun off from the thinktank.
Nonetheless, Big Tech’s political influence is not at the level of Wall Street or Big Oil. It’s hard to argue that Alphabet wields as much power over global technology policy as the likes of Goldman Sachs do over global financial and economic policy. For now, influential politicians – such as José Manuel Barroso, the former president of the European Commission – prefer to continue their careers at Goldman Sachs, not at Alphabet; it is also the former, not the latter, that fills vacant senior posts in Washington.
This will surely change. It’s obvious that the cheerful and utopian chatterboxes who make up TED talks no longer contribute much to boosting the legitimacy of the tech sector; fortunately, there’s a finite supply of bullshit on this planet. Big digital platforms will thus seek to acquire more policy leverage, following the playbook honed by the tobacco, oil and financial firms.
There are, however, two additional factors worth considering in order to understand where the current backlash against Big Tech might lead. First of all, short of a major privacy disaster, digital platforms will continue to be the world’s most admired and trusted brands – not least because they contrast so favourably with your average telecoms company or your average airline (say what you will of their rapaciousness, but tech firms don’t generally drag their customers off their flights).
And it is technology firms – American companies but also Chinese – that create the false impression that the global economy has recovered and everything is back to normal. Since January, the valuations of just four firms – Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft – have grown by an amount greater than the entire GDP of oil-rich Norway. Who would want to see this bubble burst? Nobody; in fact, those in power would rather see it grow some more.
The culture power of Silicon Valley can be gleaned from the simple fact that no sensible politician dares to go to Wall Street for photo ops; everyone goes to Palo Alto to unveil their latest pro-innovation policy. Emmanuel Macron wants to turn France into a startup, not a hedge fund. There’s no other narrative in town that makes centrist, neoliberal policies look palatable and inevitable at the same time; politicians, however angry they might sound about Silicon Valley’s monopoly power, do not really have an alternative project. It’s not just Macron: from Italy’s Matteo Renzi to Canada’s Justin Trudeau, all mainstream politicians who have claimed to offer a clever break with the past also offer an implicit pact with Big Tech – or, at least, its ideas – in the future.
Second, Silicon Valley, being the home of venture capital, is good at spotting global trends early on. Its cleverest minds had sensed the backlash brewing before the rest of us. They also made the right call in deciding that wonky memos and thinktank reports won’t quell our discontent, and that many other problems – from growing inequality to the general unease about globalisation – will eventually be blamed on an industry that did little to cause them.
Silicon Valley’s brightest minds realised they needed bold proposals – a guaranteed basic income, a tax on robots, experiments with fully privatised cities to be run by technology companies outside of government jurisdiction – that will sow doubt in the minds of those who might have otherwise opted for conventional anti-monopoly legislation. If technology firms can play a constructive role in funding our basic income, if Alphabet or Amazon can run Detroit or New York with the same efficiency that they run their platforms, if Microsoft can infer signs of cancer from our search queries: should we really be putting obstacles in their way?
In the boldness and vagueness of its plans to save capitalism, Silicon Valley might out-TED the TED talks. There are many reasons why such attempts won’t succeed in their grand mission even if they would make these firms a lot of money in the short term and help delay public anger by another decade. The main reason is simple: how could one possibly expect a bunch of rent-extracting enterprises with business models that are reminiscent of feudalism to resuscitate global capitalism and to establish a new New Deal that would constrain the greed of capitalists, many of whom also happen to be the investors behind these firms?
Data might seem infinite but there’s no reason to believe that the enormous profits made from it would simply smooth over the many contradictions of the current economic system. A self-proclaimed caretaker of global capitalism, Silicon Valley is much more likely to end up as its undertaker.
Saturday, 2 September 2017
Holy men — theirs and ours
Pervez Hoodbhoy in The Dawn
INDIA and Pakistan have more influential holy men per square mile than anyone has ever counted. Some are just rich, others both powerful and rich. Once upon a time their followers were only the poor, superstitious and illiterate. But after the massive resurgence of religion in both countries this base has expanded to include politicians, film and cricket stars, and college-educated people who speak English and drive posh cars.
It is rare for an Indian holy man to bite the dust but one just did. The self-styled messenger of God, Ram Rahim Singh of Dera Sacha Sauda was convicted of two rapes by an Indian court. He is also accused of 52 other rapes, two murders, and storing 400 pairs of testicles in his refrigerators cut from 400 devotees on the promise of getting them nirvana. An avid Modi supporter, Singh travelled in entourages of 100-plus cars and claims 50-60 million followers. Vote-hungry politicians have touched his feet and done deals. After his conviction his crazed followers rioted, convinced of a conspiracy against their God. So far 38 people have died, hundreds injured, cars and public buildings set on fire.
But although Singh is one of India’s bigger holy men he is still small, dispensable fry. The really powerful ones are those who have learned the value of using religion in national politics. Today India is living out the extremist Hindutva ideology of Golwalkar and Savarkar with a head of government who is unabashedly committed to Hindu supremacy. This holy man’s clear and evident role in the communal riots of Gujarat in 2002 had led to his being banned from entering the US in 2005. However, no Indian court could find any wrongdoing committed by the then chief minister, now prime minister.
Pakistan’s holy men also come in two sorts. The pir resembles the Hindu and Sikh spiritual guru in some respects. He hands out amulets, prescriptions, and blessings — usually for a hefty price — to credulous mureeds (followers). Pirs allegedly have magical healing powers. For example, Benazir Bhutto was a mureed of the prescient Pir Pinjar, a man who claimed to cure terminally ill patients by spraying water on them with a garden hose. Her husband, ex-president Asif Ali Zardari, had a black goat sacrificed daily on the advice of his pir. But educated Muslims increasingly spurn such practices and the pir is losing out.
The second kind of Pakistani holy man — the mullah — has had a very different trajectory. Once a poor and largely harmless cleric, he was the butt of many a joke. Sought only for funerals and Friday prayers, he eked out an existence by teaching the Quran to children. Allama Iqbal heaped scorn upon him: Teri namaz main baqi jalal hai na jamal (The prayers you lead are empty of grace and grandeur), Teri azaan main nahin meri sehr ka payam (Your azan is cold and uninspiring).
But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 changed the mullah’s fortunes. Indispensable to the US-Pakistan-Saudi grand jihad alliance, this once pathetic figure could now be seen driven around in a SUV, commanding a militia, or screaming through multiple turbo-charged loudspeakers. Some eventually became successful land-grabbers, wheeler-dealers, and shady entrepreneurs. Few Pakistanis will fail to recognise the identities of Maulana Diesel, Maulana Whiskey, and Mullah Disco.
Serious conflict between mullah and state came after 9/11. Gen Musharraf’s apparent surrender to America enraged the mullah, who resolved to seize control of the Pakistani state. Ensconced in the heart of Pakistan’s capital, armed vigilante groups from Islamabad’s Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa took over a government building, in January 2007. They kidnapped ordinary citizens and policemen, and repeated the demands of tribal militants fighting the Pakistan Army. From their FM station they broadcast a message: “We have weapons, grenades and we are expert in manufacturing bombs. We are not afraid of death.” Islamabad turned into a war zone and, by the time the insurrection was finally crushed, 150-200 lives had been lost.
Pakistani courts have failed to convict our holy men (as well as women). For example, Maulana Aziz and Umme Hassan (his wife, who headed Jamia Hafsa) were exonerated of any wrongdoing and are today going about their normal business. The court had ruled that possession of heavy weaponry by the accused could not be proven. It dismissed TV footage that showed Aziz’s students with gas masks firing Kalashnikovs. Weapons seized by the army and placed in a police armoury disappeared mysteriously. Although 10 of Pakistan’s crack SSG commandos died in the crackdown, the army — known for quick action in Balochistan — also did not pursue the case.
Why have Indians and Pakistanis become so tolerant — nay, supportive — of holy men, whether of the spiritual or political kind? Why are those who aspire to power so successful in using religion to motivate their electorates? After all, this is the 21st century, not the 12th.
The culprit could be modernity. Technology has created enormous psychological distress by doing away with traditional ways of living and bringing in a new, uncertain and ever-changing world. Older forms of associations such as the extended family and village community, together with their values, are disappearing. Cramped living conditions, pollution, ugliness all around, and job insecurities are a fact of life for most urban dwellers.
There is enormous nostalgia for the time when the world was supposedly perfect. This is why people looking for simple answers to today’s complex questions eagerly buy the wares peddled by holy men. Just as Hindutva encourages Indian Hindus to dream of the ‘authentic’ India, Muslim clerics tell their followers to dream of reclaiming Islam’s ancient glories.
But this is clutching at a straw. It gets far worse when religion is infused into politics. This produces a highly toxic, explosive mix as large masses of people blindly and unquestioningly follow holy men. Instead of dividing people still further, whether inside or outside national boundaries, South Asian states should aspire towards becoming a part of cosmopolitan world society removed from the prejudices of religion, caste and race.
On Tory attempts to Activate British youth
Skepta will make a video on a skateboard park with his crew, singing ‘I’d do anything to please her, my Theresa, got a smile like Mona Lisa, as strong as Julius Caesar, as long as DUP get money to appease her’
Mark Steel in The Independent
This is a wonderful development: a youth group has spontaneously erupted to support the Conservatives, and calls itself Activate. It’s surprising this has taken so long, as you often hear young people in nightclub queues saying: “Listen up blud, a man Hammond getting bare fiscal growth yu get me, him one sick chancellor bruv.”
The plan must be for Chris Grayling to appear on Radio 1, interviewed about Brexit by Jameela Jamil, who says: “Wow, your riff with the Danes about butter tariffs was like totally AWESOME.”
At their conference, Conservative members will be told to wander into random locations chanting “Oooo Andrea Leadsom”, as this will result in young people joining in until it’s a Christmas number one featuring Stormzy in a duet with Amber Rudd.
Skepta will make a video on a skateboard park with his crew, singing: “I’d do anything to please her, my Theresa, got a smile like Mona Lisa, as strong as Julius Caesar, as long as DUP get money to appease her.”
Or the Conservatives may concede that the grime scene has committed itself to Labour, so they’ll have to co-opt a different style of youth music – such as thrash metal.
Then at fundraising garden fetes, the local Conservative MP can announce: “Thank you so much to Thomas and Frances Diddlesbury for such generous use of their grounds as ever, and for Lady Spiglington who surpassed herself this year with her delightful vol-au-vents and exquisite cranberry salad, and now I’m sure you’ll all join me in welcoming our special guest band to see us through the evening – let’s hear it for ‘Skull-crushing Death’.”
Then the singer will inform the crowd: “This first song is about the need for a tough stance on Brexit – sing along with the chorus that goes ‘They’re gonna crush your bones, crush your bones nnnnnygggggghaaaa vrrrrrr the European single market will lead us to Satan Satan Satan Luxembourg is run by Satan’.”
It’s typically astute that the spontaneous young Conservatives chose Activate as the name of their group, proving their sharp sense of youth culture, because like Momentum, this has the crucial quality of being three syllables.
They probably had lengthy discussions on which three-syllable word to choose, from a shortlist that included Caliphate, Urinate, Camper van, Rwanda and Wheelie-bin.
The next stage will be for Activate to collect millions of followers on Twitter, posting pithy youthful Tory tweets such as: “OMG! David Davis negotiation Gr8 massive love bro”, and “Bring back da hunt dem fox get merked proper lol.”
Because what the Conservatives have worked out, is that Jeremy Corbyn succeeded in appealing to millions of young people because he put stuff on Twitter.
No one was bothered about what he said on Twitter; it could be abolish tuition fees, or quadruple them – but the main thing is he said it on Twitter.
Then lots of young people said, “Oh look, like wow that old dude is on Twitter and shit”, and started singing his name.
So the Conservatives just have to copy the Corbyn image and they’ll win back the youth vote. Michael Fallon will grow a beard, and when he’s asked about Trident, he’ll say, “Talking of massive weapons, look at this beauty” – and display a prize-winning radish from his allotment.
This is why they’re promoting Jacob Rees-Mogg. Corbyn may be naïve enough to think he won popularity amongst the young by opposing zero-hour contracts, but the real reason was that young people are won over by anyone who seems a bit quirky.
So if Mogg doesn’t work, they’ll pick a leader from the people who go out on the first heats of Britain’s Got Talent, choosing someone who dresses as an ostrich and eats bees.
The Conservatives have a problem in trying to create an organisation that copies Momentum. It’s that Momentum didn’t just enrage the Tories – it also infuriated most Labour MPs, by backing someone who had spent his life on the edge of the Labour Party (usually in opposition to the leadership).
So it’s handy that they claim Activate has sprung up spontaneously, in a vast surge of natural youthful enthusiasm for working without a contract and having nowhere to live.
Amongst this energised adolescence is Activate’s National Chairman, Gary Markwell, who has suddenly decided to pull together these young forces who are crying out to be led.
He’s a reflection of how this is a grassroots movement, because up until now Gary has had no connection whatsoever with the hierarchy of the Conservative Party – except for being a campaign manager for Theresa May and Boris Johnson for ten years.
Now he’s suddenly decided to spontaneously set up Activate, in the same way that Nigel Farage might announce: “It’s never occurred to me before, but I think I might start campaigning to leave the EU.”
They’ve made an excellent start, because the way to win young people over, according to any faint study of the nation’s youth, must be to prove the Conservatives are the party of compassion and spirit and youthful energy.
So a Whatsapp group, described as a “precursor” to Activate, has been revealed to have had a fascinating discussion about the issue of “chavs”. An event in a working-class area is described as: “A fine opportunity to observe homo chav. And gas them all.”
It’s then suggested they could have medical experiments performed on them, to see how “they’re good at producing despite living rough”, and “substituted for animals for testing” and on and on.
That should do it. The Tories are already on 17 per cent of the under-24 vote, and Activate should guarantee it goes a long way down from there.
Mark Steel in The Independent
This is a wonderful development: a youth group has spontaneously erupted to support the Conservatives, and calls itself Activate. It’s surprising this has taken so long, as you often hear young people in nightclub queues saying: “Listen up blud, a man Hammond getting bare fiscal growth yu get me, him one sick chancellor bruv.”
The plan must be for Chris Grayling to appear on Radio 1, interviewed about Brexit by Jameela Jamil, who says: “Wow, your riff with the Danes about butter tariffs was like totally AWESOME.”
At their conference, Conservative members will be told to wander into random locations chanting “Oooo Andrea Leadsom”, as this will result in young people joining in until it’s a Christmas number one featuring Stormzy in a duet with Amber Rudd.
Skepta will make a video on a skateboard park with his crew, singing: “I’d do anything to please her, my Theresa, got a smile like Mona Lisa, as strong as Julius Caesar, as long as DUP get money to appease her.”
Or the Conservatives may concede that the grime scene has committed itself to Labour, so they’ll have to co-opt a different style of youth music – such as thrash metal.
Then at fundraising garden fetes, the local Conservative MP can announce: “Thank you so much to Thomas and Frances Diddlesbury for such generous use of their grounds as ever, and for Lady Spiglington who surpassed herself this year with her delightful vol-au-vents and exquisite cranberry salad, and now I’m sure you’ll all join me in welcoming our special guest band to see us through the evening – let’s hear it for ‘Skull-crushing Death’.”
Then the singer will inform the crowd: “This first song is about the need for a tough stance on Brexit – sing along with the chorus that goes ‘They’re gonna crush your bones, crush your bones nnnnnygggggghaaaa vrrrrrr the European single market will lead us to Satan Satan Satan Luxembourg is run by Satan’.”
It’s typically astute that the spontaneous young Conservatives chose Activate as the name of their group, proving their sharp sense of youth culture, because like Momentum, this has the crucial quality of being three syllables.
They probably had lengthy discussions on which three-syllable word to choose, from a shortlist that included Caliphate, Urinate, Camper van, Rwanda and Wheelie-bin.
The next stage will be for Activate to collect millions of followers on Twitter, posting pithy youthful Tory tweets such as: “OMG! David Davis negotiation Gr8 massive love bro”, and “Bring back da hunt dem fox get merked proper lol.”
Because what the Conservatives have worked out, is that Jeremy Corbyn succeeded in appealing to millions of young people because he put stuff on Twitter.
No one was bothered about what he said on Twitter; it could be abolish tuition fees, or quadruple them – but the main thing is he said it on Twitter.
Then lots of young people said, “Oh look, like wow that old dude is on Twitter and shit”, and started singing his name.
So the Conservatives just have to copy the Corbyn image and they’ll win back the youth vote. Michael Fallon will grow a beard, and when he’s asked about Trident, he’ll say, “Talking of massive weapons, look at this beauty” – and display a prize-winning radish from his allotment.
This is why they’re promoting Jacob Rees-Mogg. Corbyn may be naïve enough to think he won popularity amongst the young by opposing zero-hour contracts, but the real reason was that young people are won over by anyone who seems a bit quirky.
So if Mogg doesn’t work, they’ll pick a leader from the people who go out on the first heats of Britain’s Got Talent, choosing someone who dresses as an ostrich and eats bees.
The Conservatives have a problem in trying to create an organisation that copies Momentum. It’s that Momentum didn’t just enrage the Tories – it also infuriated most Labour MPs, by backing someone who had spent his life on the edge of the Labour Party (usually in opposition to the leadership).
So it’s handy that they claim Activate has sprung up spontaneously, in a vast surge of natural youthful enthusiasm for working without a contract and having nowhere to live.
Amongst this energised adolescence is Activate’s National Chairman, Gary Markwell, who has suddenly decided to pull together these young forces who are crying out to be led.
He’s a reflection of how this is a grassroots movement, because up until now Gary has had no connection whatsoever with the hierarchy of the Conservative Party – except for being a campaign manager for Theresa May and Boris Johnson for ten years.
Now he’s suddenly decided to spontaneously set up Activate, in the same way that Nigel Farage might announce: “It’s never occurred to me before, but I think I might start campaigning to leave the EU.”
They’ve made an excellent start, because the way to win young people over, according to any faint study of the nation’s youth, must be to prove the Conservatives are the party of compassion and spirit and youthful energy.
So a Whatsapp group, described as a “precursor” to Activate, has been revealed to have had a fascinating discussion about the issue of “chavs”. An event in a working-class area is described as: “A fine opportunity to observe homo chav. And gas them all.”
It’s then suggested they could have medical experiments performed on them, to see how “they’re good at producing despite living rough”, and “substituted for animals for testing” and on and on.
That should do it. The Tories are already on 17 per cent of the under-24 vote, and Activate should guarantee it goes a long way down from there.
Friday, 1 September 2017
Demonetisation has totally failed to curb black money
Editorial in The Hindu
On November 8, 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced to the nation that ₹500 and ₹1,000 currency notes would cease to be legal tender from midnight, he was unequivocal in asserting that the measure was aimed at breaking “the grip of corruption and black money”. Explaining how the shock move would work, he said: “The... notes hoarded by anti-national and anti-social elements will become just worthless pieces of paper.” The premise then was that a sizeable part of the ₹15.44 lakh crore of the two high-value banknotes would remain in the hands of the holders and would not be tendered back into the banking system due to fear of punitive government action. There were hints that the windfall gains made from the scrapped currency notes that couldn’t be deposited in banks, estimated at anything between ₹3 lakh crore to ₹5 lakh crore, would be deployed for larger purposes — social welfare schemes and infrastructure projects, for example. This would be effected with the Reserve Bank of India, which bears the liability to honour the value of the country’s currency, paying as dividend to the government the majority, if not all, of its extinguished liabilities. But with the RBI’s annual report, released on August 30, showing that as much as 98.96% of the demonetised currency had returned to the central bank as of June 30, the gains in the form of cancelled liability from the note ban have been piffling.
For the Finance Minister to now claim that the “confiscation of money” had not been an objective, and for his Ministry to say that the government “had expected all the SBNs [specified bank notes] to come back to the banking system to become effectively usable currency,” is disingenuous. If that were indeed the case, the rationale behind the various stop-go announcements that followed in the wake of the November 8 decision are hard to fathom. For instance, the RBI circular setting a ₹5,000 limit on deposits of withdrawn notes unless done under the government’s amnesty scheme, tendered for the first time or explained otherwise was clearly a measure intended to dissuade bank customers from returning the demonetised currency. True, demonetisation has had some beneficial spin-offs such as arguably fostering greater compliance with the tax laws and reducing the economy’s reliance on cash through increased adoption of digital payments. But such gains could have been achieved by other and less self-defeating ways. As things stand, it is unclear how many of those who have laundered their black money will be punished. Despite the large amounts that were deposited in banks post-demonetisation, it is doubtful whether the Income Tax authorities have the necessary resources to track down and penalise the corrupt. All in all, the costs of demonetisation, which has resulted in robbing the country of its economic momentum, are far greater than the benefits it has bestowed.
On November 8, 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced to the nation that ₹500 and ₹1,000 currency notes would cease to be legal tender from midnight, he was unequivocal in asserting that the measure was aimed at breaking “the grip of corruption and black money”. Explaining how the shock move would work, he said: “The... notes hoarded by anti-national and anti-social elements will become just worthless pieces of paper.” The premise then was that a sizeable part of the ₹15.44 lakh crore of the two high-value banknotes would remain in the hands of the holders and would not be tendered back into the banking system due to fear of punitive government action. There were hints that the windfall gains made from the scrapped currency notes that couldn’t be deposited in banks, estimated at anything between ₹3 lakh crore to ₹5 lakh crore, would be deployed for larger purposes — social welfare schemes and infrastructure projects, for example. This would be effected with the Reserve Bank of India, which bears the liability to honour the value of the country’s currency, paying as dividend to the government the majority, if not all, of its extinguished liabilities. But with the RBI’s annual report, released on August 30, showing that as much as 98.96% of the demonetised currency had returned to the central bank as of June 30, the gains in the form of cancelled liability from the note ban have been piffling.
For the Finance Minister to now claim that the “confiscation of money” had not been an objective, and for his Ministry to say that the government “had expected all the SBNs [specified bank notes] to come back to the banking system to become effectively usable currency,” is disingenuous. If that were indeed the case, the rationale behind the various stop-go announcements that followed in the wake of the November 8 decision are hard to fathom. For instance, the RBI circular setting a ₹5,000 limit on deposits of withdrawn notes unless done under the government’s amnesty scheme, tendered for the first time or explained otherwise was clearly a measure intended to dissuade bank customers from returning the demonetised currency. True, demonetisation has had some beneficial spin-offs such as arguably fostering greater compliance with the tax laws and reducing the economy’s reliance on cash through increased adoption of digital payments. But such gains could have been achieved by other and less self-defeating ways. As things stand, it is unclear how many of those who have laundered their black money will be punished. Despite the large amounts that were deposited in banks post-demonetisation, it is doubtful whether the Income Tax authorities have the necessary resources to track down and penalise the corrupt. All in all, the costs of demonetisation, which has resulted in robbing the country of its economic momentum, are far greater than the benefits it has bestowed.
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
We need to nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon. Here’s why
A crisis is looming. These monopoly platforms hoovering up our data have no competition: they’re too big to serve the public interest
Nick Srnicek in The Guardian
For the briefest moment in March 2014, Facebook’s dominance looked under threat. Ello, amid much hype, presented itself as the non-corporate alternative to Facebook. According to the manifesto accompanying its public launch, Ello would never sell your data to third parties, rely on advertising to fund its service, or require you to use your real name.
The hype fizzled out as Facebook continued to expand. Yet Ello’s rapid rise and fall is symptomatic of our contemporary digital world and the monopoly-style power accruing to the 21st century’s new “platform” companies, such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. Their business model lets them siphon off revenues and data at an incredible pace, and consolidate themselves as the new masters of the economy. Monday brought another giant leap as Amazon raised the prospect of an international grocery price war by slashing prices on its first day in charge of the organic retailer Whole Foods.
The platform – an infrastructure that connects two or more groups and enables them to interact – is crucial to these companies’ power. None of them focuses on making things in the way that traditional companies once did. Instead, Facebook connects users, advertisers, and developers; Uber, riders and drivers; Amazon, buyers and sellers.
Reaching a critical mass of users is what makes these businesses successful: the more users, the more useful to users – and the more entrenched – they become. Ello’s rapid downfall occurred because it never reached the critical mass of users required to prompt an exodus from Facebook – whose dominance means that even if you’re frustrated by its advertising and tracking of your data, it’s still likely to be your first choice because that’s where everyone is, and that’s the point of a social network. Likewise with Uber: it makes sense for riders and drivers to use the app that connects them with the biggest number of people, regardless of the sexism of Travis Kalanick, the former chief executive, or the ugly ways in which it controls drivers, or the failures of the company to report serious sexual assaults by its drivers.
Network effects generate momentum that not only helps these platforms survive controversy, but makes it incredibly difficult for insurgents to replace them.
As a result, we have witnessed the rise of increasingly formidable platform monopolies. Google, Facebook and Amazon are the most important in the west. (China has its own tech ecosystem.) Google controls search, Facebook rules social media, and Amazon leads in e-commerce. And they are now exerting their power over non-platform companies – a tension likely to be exacerbated in the coming decades. Look at the state of journalism: Google and Facebook rake in record ad revenues through sophisticated algorithms; newspapers and magazines see advertisers flee, mass layoffs, the shuttering of expensive investigative journalism, and the collapse of major print titles like the Independent. A similar phenomenon is happening in retail, with Amazon’s dominance undermining old department stores.
These companies’ power over our reliance on data adds a further twist. Data is quickly becoming the 21st-century version of oil – a resource essential to the entire global economy, and the focus of intense struggle to control it. Platforms, as spaces in which two or more groups interact, provide what is in effect an oil rig for data. Every interaction on a platform becomes another data point that can be captured and fed into an algorithm. In this sense, platforms are the only business model built for a data-centric economy.
More and more companies are coming to realise this. We often think of platforms as a tech-sector phenomenon, but the truth is that they are becoming ubiquitous across the economy. Uber is the most prominent example, turning the staid business of taxis into a trendy platform business. Siemens and GE, two powerhouses of the 20th century, are fighting it out to develop a cloud-based system for manufacturing. Monsanto and John Deere, two established agricultural companies, are trying to figure out how to incorporate platforms into farming and food production.
And this poses problems. At the heart of platform capitalism is a drive to extract more data in order to survive. One way is to get people to stay on your platform longer. Facebook is a master at using all sorts of behavioural techniques to foster addictions to its service: how many of us scroll absentmindedly through Facebook, barely aware of it?
Another way is to expand the apparatus of extraction. This helps to explain why Google, ostensibly a search engine company, is moving into the consumer internet of things (Home/Nest), self-driving cars (Waymo), virtual reality (Daydream/Cardboard), and all sorts of other personal services. Each of these is another rich source of data for the company, and another point of leverage over their competitors.
Others have simply bought up smaller companies: Facebook has swallowed Instagram ($1bn), WhatsApp ($19bn), and Oculus ($2bn), while investing in drone-based internet, e-commerce and payment services. It has even developed a tool that warns when a start-up is becoming popular and a possible threat. Google itself is among the most prolific acquirers of new companies, at some stages purchasing a new venture every week. The picture that emerges is of increasingly sprawling empires designed to vacuum up as much data as possible.
But here we get to the real endgame: artificial intelligence (or, less glamorously, machine learning). Some enjoy speculating about wild futures involving a Terminator-style Skynet, but the more realistic challenges of AI are far closer. In the past few years, every major platform company has turned its focus to investing in this field. As the head of corporate development at Google recently said, “We’re definitely AI first.”
Tinkering with minor regulations while AI companies amass power won’t do
All the dynamics of platforms are amplified once AI enters the equation: the insatiable appetite for data, and the winner-takes-all momentum of network effects. And there is a virtuous cycle here: more data means better machine learning, which means better services and more users, which means more data. Currently Google is using AI to improve its targeted advertising, and Amazon is using AI to improve its highly profitable cloud computing business. As one AI company takes a significant lead over competitors, these dynamics are likely to propel it to an increasingly powerful position.
What’s the answer? We’ve only begun to grasp the problem, but in the past, natural monopolies like utilities and railways that enjoy huge economies of scale and serve the common good have been prime candidates for public ownership. The solution to our newfangled monopoly problem lies in this sort of age-old fix, updated for our digital age. It would mean taking back control over the internet and our digital infrastructure, instead of allowing them to be run in the pursuit of profit and power. Tinkering with minor regulations while AI firms amass power won’t do. If we don’t take over today’s platform monopolies, we risk letting them own and control the basic infrastructure of 21st-century society.
Nick Srnicek in The Guardian
For the briefest moment in March 2014, Facebook’s dominance looked under threat. Ello, amid much hype, presented itself as the non-corporate alternative to Facebook. According to the manifesto accompanying its public launch, Ello would never sell your data to third parties, rely on advertising to fund its service, or require you to use your real name.
The hype fizzled out as Facebook continued to expand. Yet Ello’s rapid rise and fall is symptomatic of our contemporary digital world and the monopoly-style power accruing to the 21st century’s new “platform” companies, such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. Their business model lets them siphon off revenues and data at an incredible pace, and consolidate themselves as the new masters of the economy. Monday brought another giant leap as Amazon raised the prospect of an international grocery price war by slashing prices on its first day in charge of the organic retailer Whole Foods.
The platform – an infrastructure that connects two or more groups and enables them to interact – is crucial to these companies’ power. None of them focuses on making things in the way that traditional companies once did. Instead, Facebook connects users, advertisers, and developers; Uber, riders and drivers; Amazon, buyers and sellers.
Reaching a critical mass of users is what makes these businesses successful: the more users, the more useful to users – and the more entrenched – they become. Ello’s rapid downfall occurred because it never reached the critical mass of users required to prompt an exodus from Facebook – whose dominance means that even if you’re frustrated by its advertising and tracking of your data, it’s still likely to be your first choice because that’s where everyone is, and that’s the point of a social network. Likewise with Uber: it makes sense for riders and drivers to use the app that connects them with the biggest number of people, regardless of the sexism of Travis Kalanick, the former chief executive, or the ugly ways in which it controls drivers, or the failures of the company to report serious sexual assaults by its drivers.
Network effects generate momentum that not only helps these platforms survive controversy, but makes it incredibly difficult for insurgents to replace them.
As a result, we have witnessed the rise of increasingly formidable platform monopolies. Google, Facebook and Amazon are the most important in the west. (China has its own tech ecosystem.) Google controls search, Facebook rules social media, and Amazon leads in e-commerce. And they are now exerting their power over non-platform companies – a tension likely to be exacerbated in the coming decades. Look at the state of journalism: Google and Facebook rake in record ad revenues through sophisticated algorithms; newspapers and magazines see advertisers flee, mass layoffs, the shuttering of expensive investigative journalism, and the collapse of major print titles like the Independent. A similar phenomenon is happening in retail, with Amazon’s dominance undermining old department stores.
These companies’ power over our reliance on data adds a further twist. Data is quickly becoming the 21st-century version of oil – a resource essential to the entire global economy, and the focus of intense struggle to control it. Platforms, as spaces in which two or more groups interact, provide what is in effect an oil rig for data. Every interaction on a platform becomes another data point that can be captured and fed into an algorithm. In this sense, platforms are the only business model built for a data-centric economy.
More and more companies are coming to realise this. We often think of platforms as a tech-sector phenomenon, but the truth is that they are becoming ubiquitous across the economy. Uber is the most prominent example, turning the staid business of taxis into a trendy platform business. Siemens and GE, two powerhouses of the 20th century, are fighting it out to develop a cloud-based system for manufacturing. Monsanto and John Deere, two established agricultural companies, are trying to figure out how to incorporate platforms into farming and food production.
And this poses problems. At the heart of platform capitalism is a drive to extract more data in order to survive. One way is to get people to stay on your platform longer. Facebook is a master at using all sorts of behavioural techniques to foster addictions to its service: how many of us scroll absentmindedly through Facebook, barely aware of it?
Another way is to expand the apparatus of extraction. This helps to explain why Google, ostensibly a search engine company, is moving into the consumer internet of things (Home/Nest), self-driving cars (Waymo), virtual reality (Daydream/Cardboard), and all sorts of other personal services. Each of these is another rich source of data for the company, and another point of leverage over their competitors.
Others have simply bought up smaller companies: Facebook has swallowed Instagram ($1bn), WhatsApp ($19bn), and Oculus ($2bn), while investing in drone-based internet, e-commerce and payment services. It has even developed a tool that warns when a start-up is becoming popular and a possible threat. Google itself is among the most prolific acquirers of new companies, at some stages purchasing a new venture every week. The picture that emerges is of increasingly sprawling empires designed to vacuum up as much data as possible.
But here we get to the real endgame: artificial intelligence (or, less glamorously, machine learning). Some enjoy speculating about wild futures involving a Terminator-style Skynet, but the more realistic challenges of AI are far closer. In the past few years, every major platform company has turned its focus to investing in this field. As the head of corporate development at Google recently said, “We’re definitely AI first.”
Tinkering with minor regulations while AI companies amass power won’t do
All the dynamics of platforms are amplified once AI enters the equation: the insatiable appetite for data, and the winner-takes-all momentum of network effects. And there is a virtuous cycle here: more data means better machine learning, which means better services and more users, which means more data. Currently Google is using AI to improve its targeted advertising, and Amazon is using AI to improve its highly profitable cloud computing business. As one AI company takes a significant lead over competitors, these dynamics are likely to propel it to an increasingly powerful position.
What’s the answer? We’ve only begun to grasp the problem, but in the past, natural monopolies like utilities and railways that enjoy huge economies of scale and serve the common good have been prime candidates for public ownership. The solution to our newfangled monopoly problem lies in this sort of age-old fix, updated for our digital age. It would mean taking back control over the internet and our digital infrastructure, instead of allowing them to be run in the pursuit of profit and power. Tinkering with minor regulations while AI firms amass power won’t do. If we don’t take over today’s platform monopolies, we risk letting them own and control the basic infrastructure of 21st-century society.
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