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New CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Even Worse Than SOPA
An anonymous reader writes "As congressmen in Washington consider how to handle the ongoing issue of cyberattacks, some legislators have lent their support to a new act that, if passed, would let the government pry into the personal correspondence of anyone of their choosing. This is SOPA being passed in smaller chunks... 'H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short) has vague definitions that could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties.'"
You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.
Just a matter of time. Enjoy it while it lasts.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"This is SOPA being passed in smaller chunks."
So long as all law is made solely to restrict people and _never_to recagnize rights or prevent abuses such as this, it will just be attempt after attempt until a given law passes. It is absolutely inevitable.
Congress must enact law that supercedes any prior or later law indicating that personal communications CANNOT be intercepted with anything short of a court order. This, for the various things that are trying to be passed now. Only when they have to fight for the revokation of these protective laws before they can bribe their desired laws into affect will we be in any way safe.
But it'll never happen.
On one hand I want to scream at your horrible cynicism and condemn your point of view. On the other hand I think you're completely correct.
Laws like this are the defacto end of cloud computing if you have an obligation to protect your data.
Or rather.. and end to it in the USA.
Next up; crypto is for terrorists and child pornographers!
..don't panic
1- get 10,000 people together. 2- they agree to vote as a block. 3- tell congress critter pass this law and you get the votes. money isn't the only way to win, you can get the same results with voting blocks.
The oligarchies of the world do a fair job of controlling media, but they can't control blogs or twitter. They need governments to make sure they can do this for them.
I think we're on the edge of a change in how modern democracies work. They can't continue on their current form. They never really did a good job of representing the people anyway, it's just that since the proliferation of the internet, everyone is much more aware of this fact.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3523:
Note that the bill simply allows the national intelligence community to provide classified threat information to ISP's. There is no provision in the bill for the ISP's to provide any information back to the government.
Now, it is co-sponsered by that idiot bachmann, but that doesn't make it ipso facto bad.
..is eternal vigilance. Did you think they were just pretty words?
Fascinating: The government is going to deal with those experiencing fear of loss of privacy & general disgust at the government's actions by granting itself more power, so it can invade the privacy of and engage in various ethnically-questionable / morally-casual actions towards those experiencing fear of loss of privacy & general disgust at the government's actions, so that it can manage their fear & disgust at its actions.
Gentlemen, I believe we have reached 'equilibrium.'
I am John Hurt.
There's an amendment for that already, the fourth. The problem is that requiring constitutionality of legislation doesn't mean anything if the judiciary doesn't defend it, and when it comes to this the courts are totally fucking useless.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties
Personally, I think the government (and maybe some private parties too) should be disrupted. No, I didn't read the article (ha!)
"What are you doing here, Elijah?"
Do unto them as they....
&c.
The word 'vague' in this alone scares me. There was a super-ridiculous kerfluffle in livejournal.com years ago, which is historically noted as 'Strikethrough 2007' to those who were affected by it. One complaint from a religious-based family group, concerned with Harry Potter being portrayed in "precarious positions" both in fanfiction and artwork, sent a ripple-effect through the site. It went from deleting a few users without warning (causing a strikethrough in their username) to a basic witch-hunt, with hundreds of users--some paid accounts, or even those who footed the bill for expensive permanent accounts--being deleted, when most didn't have anything but 'harry potter' and 'fanfiction' listed in their profile's interests section. Very few involved the younger crowd at Hogwarts in sexualized-artwork. Simply implying that you were interested in Potter-based communities (even some not related to the Potter-universe itself) within the site fueled enough panic from the livejournal staff.
Funniest part was, it was done while The Boss Of Them was out for the weekend. When he returned, he gave massive apologies and reinstated users unfairly deleted. Still, the "event" lingers in the back of everyone's mind five years later.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Guys, let's stop thinking like Surrender Monkeys when it comes to SOPA and the government. Congressmen are just politicians and almost without exception very stupid people. They make knee-jerk decisions based on how many drinks lobbyists bought them at the bar the night before. But they are most definitely very susceptible to the prospect of pitchfork-waving crowds, eager to nail their hides to the barn door.
Look at what happened with the last SOPA showdown. The backlash was so severe and massive that Congress was practically pissing itself to run away from that bill. We, by their standards, melted their phone lines and crashed their Blackberries.
Last time we had Google and Wikipedia and other high-traffic sites leading the charge, but we can't count on them doing it again next time or to not make a deal with Hollywood/the RIAA.
We can create the perception of a groundswell preemptively. We can give them a taste of their own medicine preemptively, the very same medicine they would foist on us. If they want to subject us to crap like this, let's hijack their individual Blackberries and let them feel what it's like to have this done to them by anonymous strangers.
Honestly when I read sentiments like, "Oh well, the government is going to screw us no matter what we do so let's give up now," it reminds me of that scene from Swingers
For pete's sake, people, we're the people who run the central nervous system of the world. How is it that we psych ourselves out over stuff like this? We should be able to mold the government like putty. And it would help that every time we send them a message we put a common tagline like "Free America!" so that they understand it's a spontaneous expression from the electorate that they're fucking up and better straighten up and fly right.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
When legislation like this crops up again, after we, the people have already said "No" emphatically, then the legislators supporting this particular shit show need to be immediately, physically and forcibly removed from any and all offices. Period. There is no interest in national security here, this is merely an attempt to grasp at straws. Seeing this kind of crap being birthed from the loins of political prostitutes (even though they're basically the same thing) honestly makes me ashamed to admit that I live in the United States.
I'm sure that our forefathers would say the exact same thing. Anyone who genuinely believes that this trainwreck of an idea is a good thing either needs to have their head examined or is being paid by a corporation and/or consortium. Fucking goddamn, this pisses me off.
All copyrights, patents, and trademarks are used for these days is for Big Business as weapons to skewer and brain-bash people they don't like, be it competition, criticism, or anyone else that doesn't subscribe to whatever dogma is mandated by the company's bottom line. It seems that the fastest way to ruin is to piss off a corporation.
The stunt that UMG pulled against the Mega Upload video is proof of that, as is the Geohot and Scrolls lawsuits. Both of which by the way were won by big companies with a lot of weight to throw around squashing the little guys with their legal muscles and intimidating them into giving up without a fight.
Considering that TBP is getting sponsors in record numbers (no pun intended) for its ad banner program I think it's quite clear by now that only abusive companies really have any interest in strengthening IP laws.
I will not say this article is incorrect, but we are only given one link and I will find another source before simply beleiving the info in the given link. The link is to RT and, like many media sources, I have found some of their past articles to be questionable in either bias or the level of understanding the authors have in the actual subject matter. It is always a good thing to question sources and motives when it comes to media.
Regardless, this is still something I should research.
I keep seeing people protesting with huge signs with the words 'Freedom' and 'Liberty' on them. I mean, who buys that BS anymore anyway? There's no such thing as freedom, and 'liberty' in what sense? You can't be completely free and still expect society to be safe, I mean, what about the freedom to kill? The freedom to feed oneself at the expense of another creature or someone else? Hopefully someday we'll have a third party, the Realist party. Until society can handle to not believe in noble lies, we're doomed to mediocrity. On a side note, I thought of a great analogy to show what's wrong with capitalism today. The original expression: If you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you'll feed him for life. The capitalist version: If you sell a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, or give a man a fish, you'll go out of business.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Why would anyone throw their vote away voting for Ron Paul?
Why would you throw your vote away voting for anyone else?
I'm not from the States, so don't know much about the candidates, but even though he might have some silly beliefs regarding certain things (but then all of your candidates essentially have to be Christian), he at least seems to want less government control.
See, this is what happens when we allow corporations to have a 'voice' in politics by spending money on campaign contributions. A law which was suppressed by overwhelming public opposition (SOPA) can creep back into the system because there are some (arguably powerful) corporations in favor of it.
I support (along with a lot of other people) amending the constitution to get rid of this kind of loophole. I think the Move To Amend people got the right idea.
With an amendment like that in place maybe we'd actually see candidates pandering to their constituents instead of whatever corporate interests contributed the most to their campaign fund.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Disconnect Washington D.C. from the net? Shut down ALL telecommunications in D.C.? The blackout was a simple peaceful protest.
ENCRYPT ALL THE THINGS!11!!1!!
http://encrypteverything.ca/index.php/Main_Page
They can beat your key out of you, but it becomes more difficult to spy on you without your knowledge.
...vote for people who have morals and ethics...
I wish! In which election has this been possible?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The problem with Ron Paul, like most libertarians, is that he wants less government control over everyone. In reality, although all men are created equal, not all men end up with equal amounts of power. Those with the most power require the most checks on that power to prevent abuse.
Right now, there are two groups with lots of power: corporate leaders and government officials. If you deregulate businesses, you reduce the amount of government power, while increasing the amount of corporate power. This is not a net gain or a net loss; whether the people with the most power are governments or corporations is immaterial because in the long run, the net effect is the same. You'll still have the same disparity between the power held by an average citizen and whoever has the most power, which means that many (most?) of those who have power will abuse it, and there won't be anything meaningful that the average citizen can do about it when they do.
What makes proper government hard is that the people who most desire power are invariably the ones who are least qualified to wield it, and thus the ones from whom government must protect us the most. This is difficult not only because those sorts of people have a tendency to weasel their way into positions of power within governments, but also because it is very hard to write rules that maximally affect people with power and minimally affect people without it.
The best that can be hoped for is a government that gets it right most of the time, which pretty much requires high taxes on people with lots of money to reduce their ability to grow that money without bounds, treating capital gains (at least above a certain dollar figure) as ordinary income, an outright ban on political contributions made by groups of people who are not acting as individuals (whether that group be a corporation, a union, a PAC, or any other organization), and a few dozen other major fixes that are far enough removed from this discussion that I won't bother mentioning them here.
Note that most of these things are precisely the opposite of what Ron Paul wants. He wants to eliminate the income tax and capital gains taxes, which means that all revenue would be through regressive taxes that further increase the disparity between the rich and the poor, and thus the power difference. His voting record shows that he supports PACs and rejects nearly all manner of campaign finance reform (disclosure rules for donations by lobbyists, limits on soft money ads, etc.). And so on.
In short, Ron Paul is really just another side of the same coin as the Democrats and the Republicans. That's not what we need. What we need is to throw away the rusty old coin entirely and bring in people with fresh ideas.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Does anyone really believe today that any information that one posts to the internet is confidential?
It seems to me that internet privacy has been an oxymoron since the earliest days. Why do you think we have technologies like PGP and VPN?
Does this bill really change anything?
So.
What can we do which is bigger than the blackout?
I don't want to believe we don't stand a chance. We have to keep fighting.
Start by signing the petitions on EFF and avaaz.org sites. Then spread the word.
Also, you may want to consider setting up a Tor bridge using Amazon free tier (if you can't afford to pay $30 a month to sponsor a more permanent one)... just in case.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The problem with Ron Paul, like most libertarians, is that he wants less government control over everyone. In reality, although all men are created equal, not all men end up with equal amounts of power. Those with the most power require the most checks on that power to prevent abuse.
The world doesn't work anything like you think it does....
What you need to tell our representatives is that this would make a modern day Watergate legal. You need to point out how it could affect them.
Given the current theater of candidates, Paul is the fresh idea. He's not young, but he's different enough that a big voting block would scare other candidates and local lawmakers into attentiveness (to the constituency rather than lobbying interests).
Why are the "99%" crowd (is that still around) so obsessed with money?
I don't care if companies become rich, or people earn lots of money - that's not the problem. The problem is when these people influence government - who in turn makes the rules for the population.
I'd rather have a flat tax, than all the system at the moment:
"Voters - We need to think about the environment. That is why we're giving subsidies to green industry." (By green industry they mean their friends who'll build windfarms in silly places with coal backups, and get paid for it.)
"Voters - Intellectual property rights are an important building block of America, and protect innovation." (Letting media lobbyists right the rules, in exchange for much needed publicity.)
"Voters - We need to go to war in a foreign land to protect our Freedom." (And their good mates will be getting the contract.)
"Voters - We need to protect the economy." (Prints more money, essentially taking it from every American, and gives it to banks which have already ripped people off - largely because the government made it difficult for banks to say no to a stupidly unaffordable mortgage.)
At the moment many rich celebrities don't pay tax as they have a couple of trees on their property so get farm rebates. Businesses declare 0 income and pay no tax. A flat tax is preferential to this. Money isn't important - power is. That's what we need to wrestle back off the corporations.
The way to fix this is to stop the government controlling this type of thing, and then, no matter how much money a company earns, they won't be able to write the rules. Now I'm not saying no government control - it's important - but not as much as we've allowed at the moment.
From the sounds of things RP is the only one talking about this. Everyone else just waves their red or blue flag, thanks God, and does more of the same.
That would be far more effort than it's worth. Trust me, we are bankrupting ourself fast enough that about all you'd get for your effort is the lawyer fee.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
If just the people here were reading the proposed legislation, tearing it to pieces in the same way we are speculating about it many of the objectionable parts would be removed. Many politicians don't read the legislation they vote on.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
but I'm not talking about a standard political movement. And I'm also not talking about the average person. Over the years we've all seen that it's nearly impossible to get the "average person" to give a crap about anything, unless it be the statement, "Satan is about to return to Earth and eat your children. Do you support or oppose this fact?"
No, I'm talking about geeks. I am talking to the people who read Slashdot, because it is a self-selected community of people who care more about freedom and common sense than the average.
I have taken the "organizational" approach you describe in the past. It is a fool's errand. You always attract the whiniest members of society who avidly work to undermine your organization unless it feeds their own, very personal dysfunctions. And it does not matter how clearly you articulate your intentions to work for general issues--they will always try to get everything to be about their own niche dementias.
Change does not come from mass movements. Change comes from a very few highly motivated, highly skilled people who are able to act effectively and subsequently explain things to the "average person" in such a way that they can blandly acquiesce. That's it.
That's why I post this sort of sentiment on /., and not on, say, Digg, because the latter would be a total waste of my time.
Geeks, such as are still found on /., do have the ability to take the reins of the world and guide it to a better place. I urge them to do so, and not to give in the Surrender Monkey thinking.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
your sentiment, but not its suggested implementation. 60's style mass movements have been rendered irrelevant by today's authorities, because they refuse to acknowledge them or allow them to be covered by the media. Thus, 3.5 million people can show up to protest the invasion of Iraq in New York alone, and the rest of the country can be barely aware of it because the media does not cover it.
But action does make a ton of sense, if focused effectively. I claim that giving elected officials a personalized version of citizen activism does far more to change their behavior than mass action. That renders them more, not less, susceptible to the actions of informed citizens such as populate /.
Elected officials still think they get to visit laws and rules upon the populace to which they are personally immune. They think they get to take dumps on the public and still go home to their mansions at the end of the day. If we teach them that in fact the citizens know where they live, and will stop at nothing to make *them* live the reality they would force upon the rest of us, that even the sociopaths who comprise our government at all levels will get the message.
*That* will produce change. The other, mass movements, will not.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Copyright infringement is just another excuse to drum up more industry. 'Cyber' security / anti-terror - it's all the same to me; not to mention the other industries that benefit off the scraps.. such as IP law. The government are paranoid about it's citizens; the money that flows from the pockets of it's citizens go into the pockets of corporations that implement solutions - two birds with one stone; the US, and even the UK to an extent, are waist deep in lobbyist bullshit after all. This, to me, is the tell tale signs of an emerging far right system of governance. It's not the government we are fighting - it's the system of extreme capital and greed - where does it stop? There are two paths, major changes at an ideological level or continue fighting the good fight. The war on drugs was never won and never will be. Digital proliferation is a whole different ballgame - they will not be fighting criminals but ghosts. One sure way to neutralise a possible impending digital distopian future is through obfuscation - you don't have to hide if enough false positives are produced to set their heads spinning. Worms of the future may not steal your financial data but, instead, send 'the man' out searching for an endless stream false positives and legal dead ends - have them fighting their own system. :>
The idea that the people are the government is exactly the sort of brainwashing that serves their purposes well. No matter what they do. No matter what laws they pass that beat us down and violate our most basic rights as sentient beings. They can enslave us. They can imprison us. They can take everything we value. Our very lives. And all we will do is moan about how it is our own fault because "we are the government".
I am not the government. I don't support them in any way. I don't support the laws they pass. I didn't vote for any of the people in power. I have absolutely no responsibility for what they are doing.
In the end a civil war is the only thing that will save this country, but people will have to be willing to kill and to die and to see blood off innocent people running in the streets. For children to be obliterated before they've even had a chance to live. For all the ugliness that comes with war. Especially war against a much stronger adversary. One with nearly limitless funds and all the power of modern technology. To face an army terrifying enough to take on the greatest of the worlds governments. One that could face down China or Russia or even Japan or Germany or the UK. What can a disorganized army of volunteers do against a force as mighty as that?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I don't think it is individual men who tend to have such power. Yes, money is power in a way. With enough money someone could even finance his own private army of millions of soldiers and overthrow the government itself. But that sort of thing is rare and is just the price for individual liberty.
Remember that, without the help of the government, corporations have far less power. If our government were not so corrupt then perhaps corporations might have been somewhat useful. Although I don't believe shirking responsibility and making society pay dearly for a free insurance policy was ever a good thing.
Limited liability corporations that are treated as individuals themselves are a blight on society. They are too powerful. They are the only legal entities that can approach the power of even a small government. For that reason alone they should be feared and controlled if at all possible.
I consider myself a Libertarian, but I believe that limited liability corporations should be outlawed. That's right. They should be illegal. Treated as a kind of conspiracy or a form of organized crime. No sort of limited liability should be offered by the government. That is the beginning, the root of fascism. Once government tyranny is stopped, large concentrations of power as found with megacorporations should be dealt with in some way.
In fact this process of vigilance for concentrated forms of power such as corporations is one of the better justifications for having at least a small government. Having said all that, historically governments have nearly always been the source of repression and tyranny. The sort of SciFi dystopian future where corporations have the real, direct power of governments and have their own private police forces that subjugate the populace to their will has so far been limited to fiction. That's not to say that it is not possible and that it should not be feared, but at the moment the opponent with the knife to our throats is a corrupt government. In an ideal world politicians would not accept bribes and their votes could not be purchased for any price. Obviously that is not the world we live in however, and the corporations responsible for buying these laws have to be held responsible as well. There are people at those corporations who should be hanging from lamp posts along with the politicians agreeing to take away our freedoms.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Comrade Members, like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom--if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this convention sat for ten years before reporting--but I would be frightened if you took less than a year.
Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional . . . for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments. For example, I note in one draft report a proposal for setting up a commission to divide Luna into congressional districts and to reapportion them from time to time according to population.
This is the traditional way; therefore it should be suspect, considered guilty until proved innocent. Perhaps you feel that this is the only way. May I suggest others? Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him. Constituencies might be formed by dividing people by occupation. . . or by age. . . or even alphabetically. Or they might not be divided, every member elected at large---and do not object that this would make it impossible for any man not widely known throughout Luna to be elected; that might be the best possible thing for Luna.
You might even consider installing the candidates who receive the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don't reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous--think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.
But if representative government turns out to be your intention there still may be ways to achieve it better than the territorial district. For example you each represent about ten thousand human beings, perhaps seven thousand of voting age--and some of you were elected by slim majorities. Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out--many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels--correctly!--that it has been disenfranchised.
But, whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!
I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent--the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority . . . while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
But in writing your constitution let me invite attention the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative! Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies . . . no interference however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation. . . no involuntary taxation. Comrades, if you were to spend five years in a study of history while thinking of more and more things that your government should promise never to do and then let your constitution be nothing but those negatives, I would not fear the o
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Citizens of the United States harken to this message. Are you sick of the methods, agendas, and results of Republicans and Democrats? Are you tired of the candidates with the most money consistantly winning the elections? Do you always feel that you are voting for the lesser of two evils? Now is the time to do your civic duty. Now is the time to reset the government. Here is how we turn the U.S. around in 2012.
1) Vote them ALL out of office. This includes members of the House of Representatives, Senate (if applicable), and President. Even local elected officials would not be immune.
2) Don't vote for ANY Democrat or Republican in 2012. Choose anyone else, or abstain if no other option exists.
3) Keep a record of your assigned voting number and votes (to contest "anomolies").
4) Pass this message around to everyone (but foil spambots). Cut and paste content. List yourself in the "To" field and recipients in the "BCC" field.
We only have to unite around this cause ONCE - in November 2012. All we need to do is stick together and send a clear message to Washington D.C.
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang seperately" -Benjamin Franklin
The insightfulness of your comment eludes me.
How about this for irony: people like you want me to be tolerant of your opinion; I explicitly tolerate it by stating that it should be legal and allowed; but you are intolerant of my opinion--you want me to not only tolerate yours but endorse it--you want freedom from my interference, but you want to control my opinion. How's that for hypocrisy.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
No, influencing government is only a small part of the problem. The bigger problem with allowing any entity (human or corporate) to accumulate too much money is that it can exert excessive control over the free market. For example, a company making electronics that becomes a monopoly in a particular industry could ostensibly pre-purchase inventory at the capacity of every part manufacturer, thus essentially squashing the ability of any new competitor to enter the market. A major retailer with major bulk purchasing power could crush any new competitors by undercutting them, then raise prices again. And so on.
At some point, you become rich enough to eliminate competition. Once that happens, the invisible hand of the free market ceases to function. Not only are customers no longer free to buy the product from someone else, but your employees may no longer have the ability to easily get a job in the field without moving a large distance. And when you decide to consolidate your plants and move them all to Mexico or China or whatever, those employees are screwed because your competitors no longer exist. The U.S. has lost so many manufacturing jobs in large part because we allowed a small number of corporations to grow arbitrarily large instead of insisting that each of those plants be operated as a separate business.
At least when it comes to corporations, the public interest is almost always better served by a larger number of medium-sized companies than by a smaller number of large companies. It stands to reason that this is the case for individuals as well, though an individual is more likely to manipulate the stock market than the components market. Either way, the same basic principle applies.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.