Sorry, but Clark County is populated mostly by people who prefer Democrats, including voting for Democrats 52% to 48% in the last election. You are misinformed, probably because they may not be quite as left-wing progressive as other nearby urban areas, although that doesn't make them a conservative bastion.
Well, since nobody in the UK was allowed to join the EU as presently constituted (as opposed to a much more limited precursor institution), it seems that it's a one vote for not being in it compared to 0 to be in it.
The problem with your comparison is that the real issue is needing a license to cut hair, not parenting. The license only exists as a way to reduce competition in hair cutting, transferring resources from people who need haircuts (most everyone) to people who jumped through the hair cutting hoops (a small group with a lot of interest in keeping licensing requirements going), with a sizeable dead-weight loss to the economy from the wasted resources involved in getting the license and in less efficient hair cutting occurring along the way. In some States, the requirements for braiding hair are higher than those for becoming an EMT. How much sense does that make?
As for parental licenses, allowing the government to have the power to determine who gets to reproduce and who doesn't is quite the totalitarian power grab. Sure you want to put that kind of additional power to run your life in the hands of either local corrupt officials, or federal authorities like Trump and Pelosi? How about we start with something smaller and less important, like licenses to be allowed to speak about political issues, first? (Note, for the record I am opposed to that as well.)
Not sure if you're disagreeing with me or not on the first part, but to clarify, whatever the difference between the cost of the automation and the cost of the person to do the same job is the increase in wealth created by the automation. As in the vast majority of cases, the automation wouldn't be put into place without some sort of substantial savings, the automation trend creates a substantial amount of wealth.
As a tiny example, if it used to cost a manufacturer $10 to make a set of dinnerware using human labor, but using an automated machine only costs $8 to produce the same dinnerware, then $2 of new wealth per dinnerware set is created. If previously the dinnerware set sold for $13 (to the store, or whoever is next in the supply chain), then that extra $2 will end up split between the manufacturer and the consumer. If there is competition in the dinnerware market, the first manufacturer to automate will capture some of that $2 for a while (paying off investors), but eventually all of the manufacturers will have automated in a similar fashion and their price will fall to $11 with almost the entire $2 extra ending up as a consumer surplus. The previous $10/set which went to a human is now $2 going to consumers and $8 going to the plate-making-machine company, their employees, their suppliers, those suppliers employees, investors, etc... (i.e it doesn't vanish, either). The extra $2 doesn't vanish, it ends up in many people's pockets, who now can either use it for consumption (increasing demand now) or save/invest it for future consumption (partially increasing demand now based on what was invested in needing to purchase something and partially increasing demand later based on the interest returned from the new wealth created by the investment).
(Disclaimer: This example uses a 1:1 result, which is unrealistic as a result, but in reality you have to figure way more people and consumer surpluses involved and sorted out by the marketplace involving both.) At the same time, the human involved now wants a new job. In the past, consumers weren't wealthy enough to hire people to arrange their dinnerware, but now with their newfound $2 per dinnerware set of consumer surplus, investment proceeds, etc... they can afford to hire someone to do that in addition to all the other stuff they're consuming, so the human involved becomes a dinnerware arranger, a job which never existed before. The human involved also gets that fraction of $2 in consumer surplus if they buy a dinnerware set for them-self, as well as another smaller fraction if their retirement account is invested in the dinnerware manufacturer, and of course the more automation happens, the more of those types of returns on it they receive. Or if enough new wealth is created by automation, they may choose to use their new surplus to be able to work less and maintain a similar living standard, because they value leisure more than the additional consumption they could have from doing more work (i.e. new wealth is sometimes translated to more demand for leisure vs. more demand for work, based on people's choices).
If you push that out to the conclusion where everything is 100% automated and we don't need anyone to work (every possible job is filled by automation like intelligent nano-machines consuming all to produce stuff), then at that stage we are so wealthy people can just consume the results of the automation and live a life of massive enjoyment with no need to work on anything except creative stuff for fun. That's called a good thing....
Right. The argument basically boils down to the economists saying, "This fallacy has been seen every time big gains from automation were in the works...." and the the other side saying, "But this time it will be different!"
I'd have more confidence in the second side if they ever demonstrated they actually understood why economists believe what they do about an issue in the field they spend their lives studying and made an argument which was actually on point for that discussion, rather than continuing to argue a point which has been debunked by empirical reality over and over again.
So if you are of the second side, please answer why "there won't be new jobs" is: 1. Likely (taking into account the increase in wealth from the efficiency gains of the expected level of automation to replace that many humans) and 2. A bad thing on net.
Then we can have a discussion at least on the real empirical questions.
Yep. Fortunately, increased efficiency from automation also results in increased overall wealth and an increase in wealth is an increase in the supply of "people willing to pay them to do it."
We currently pay lots of people to do jobs which would have been unthinkably ridiculous 100 years ago. Really, you need someone to choose what to wear for you? Yet the job now exists and is currently growing, based on automation via online clothing stores enabling people to supply their expertise to the masses.
People who used to do invoicing mostly didn't transition to programming. They transitioned to another job with comparable human capital requirements which wasn't previously getting done, in part because the wealth increase of the efficiency gains from computers doing invoicing allows those participating in the economy to spend that new wealth on new stuff the humans are supplying. As a result of technological advances (in many areas), you can buy food for $1 in less than 3 minutes which was previously unavailable except in exchange for multiple days wages in the past.
If there is an end state of automation+ai can do everything a human can do just as good and humans aren't needed to work on anything anymore, that end state looks like a paradise of massively increased wealth, where no one would need to work who didn't want to, exactly the opposite of the dystopian predictions of the modern Luddites.
You're analysis is completely missing the effect of the massive increases to overall wealth which would be a necessary result of automation improvements being worth replacing all those people's efforts. That increase in wealth increases the demand for consumption, moving the quantity supplied of consumption in goods and services currently too expensive at the margin into the realm of actually being provisioned.
i.e. we currently purchase so much fast food because we're wealthy enough to afford to buy it and it makes sense due to the value of our time being higher than a less assembly-line version of meal preparation at home.
Carriage companies didn't turn into automobile companies. Woodworkers didn't make the best car makers. Instead, bicycle companies turned into automobile companies and their suppliers. The Carriage companies literally went away, with only one (Studebaker) lasting for very long, before it also went out of business and the brand name (not the workers) was absorbed by a car company.
At one point, 70-80% of everyone was employed in agriculture, primarily as labors. Now 1% is. That's way more jobs "going away" than 25%, yet somehow those people made the transition to more valuable employment in less rural areas.
As for the 2017 study you cite, here's a quote from one of the study's authors, Daron Acemoglu:
The media, in this field as in many other areas of technical expertise, is attracted to extreme statements rather than focusing on a balanced discussion of what is known in the academic area. In the context of the future of work, this takes the form of statements claiming that new technologies will bring the end of work for humans. Nothing in the serious research in this area suggests that something like this is in the cards.
If you want to use that study to argue the Luddite case, you should go argue it with the author. I'm going to assume he knows the results of the study better than you or the sensationalist media does.
The actual Luddites went on a spree of violence and were either killed, or arrested and transported to Australia. The Luddite resistance only existed for a couple of years.
In terms of the general population, England's employment issues of the time were more related to lots of recently discharged soldiers and sailors (300K all at once) at the same time as a big population boom (50% increase between 1801 and 1831). By 1834, many factories in England were complaining about a shortage of available labor, although some of that was because it was illegal for the poor to move to a different parish where there might be work.
Agriculture used to employ 70-80% of the population, way more than the 25% being described here.. Then automation and technological progress came and people, including those with no skills but manual labor at the time, moved out of most rural areas to more beneficial jobs.
Ironically, you're complaining about capital investment and at the same time extolling the benefits of capital investment in manufacturing and automation to produce more during the world wars.
"We can learn from history for a change. We know technology unemployment is coming." is mistaken on several grounds, not the least of which is that historically, the best remedy for dealing with technological change has been to do the exact opposite of what most modern Luddites suggest, namely allow markets to adjust as quickly as possible to minimize any transitional problems. Instead, the typical suggestion is to come up with ways to prevent, delay or resist the needed adjustments to different production patterns.
Please don't read into what I said things which I didn't say. No need for strawmen.
There is literally no limit to the amount of work available for people to do. Once we've converted this solar system to our liking, we can move on to the rest of the universe. Then we can redo it all again. There are an infinite amount of possibilities for something useful for someone to do, which is all that work is.
New opportunities for work become practical as we gain more technology or figure out ways to accomplish existing work someone is doing more efficiently. Available work isn't some static number which is capped at the amount of work currently being done by someone. There's always something new which could be done to improve things and increase the overall wealth of humanity.
It turned out that bicycle manufacturers were much better equipped to make auto-related products. The carriage companies were essentially wood-based, with lots of carpenters making stuff. They all went away. Studebaker lasted the longest by actually somewhat successfully pivoting into automobiles, but even they were eventually absorbed with only the brand name remaining.
Virtually 100% of the carriage making industry has been lost. There were 13,000 of those businesses in 1890, now they're pretty much all defunct. There's almost nobody who hand spins thread for a living anymore, either. That used to employ vast numbers of people, mostly across the South.
Fortunately, there is literally no limit to the amount of work available for people to do, just a lack of people to be available to do it. Specific jobs have been being destroyed by automation for hundreds of years. Yes, the process has accelerated recently. Guess what, it hasn't had a noticeable effect on unemployment rates, rather it leads to increased wages over time as increased productivity as a result of more capital (automation) being able to be used by people to accomplish more.
No, this time won't be different. The luddite fallacy remains a fallacy.
Comcast isn't primarily an internet company, they're a cable company. Wouldn't expect internet rules to overwhelm the effect of their cable capital spending. I suppose it would be too much work to look at Internet companies overall, rather than choosing a single cable company.
You don't see the contradiction within your sentence?
If CPUC sets their maximum profit, then how can the problem be excessive profit? Wouldn't the State set "maximum" prevent them from exceeding it in the normal course of operations, unless your postulating that the State sets their profit level at "excessive".
Anyway, PG&E went bankrupt before based on the "price fix the end rates, but let wholesale rates fluctuate" methodology of the State. They're now going bankrupt again because of their losses related to the fires. How exactly in your mind does "going bankrupt" equate to "excessive profits"? You don't think the shareholders of PG&E would prefer to not have their stock become worthless? That's what happens in a bankruptcy if the assets aren't enough to cover the liabilities. You really think a few years of dividends are going to make up for the massive loss right now?
Unless of course hiring managers gave affirmative action-style preferences to female candidates. Then on average, the female candidates actually hired wouldn't be as good as their male counterparts, because lower quality female candidates could get hired right along with the better ones (which do exist).
I've been in the technology for 30+ years, across a dozen different giant, large and small employers. I've never seen any of them do anything in regards to hiring women except basically automatically hire any bare minimum qualified female applicant who showed up, because they all wanted more women in technology.
And yes, as a hiring manager myself, despite knowing the supposed wage gap is B.S., despite knowing studies show women generally get preferred hiring status, I'd probably still lean towards hiring a woman over a man if their resumes and interviews were equal, just to have them around the team.
In terms of operational profits, the California Public Utilities Commission sets the amount of profit each utility (including PG&E) can make. Their profit doesn't even depend on how much they sell or the cost to them of what they sell, it's a fixed number which the regulators decide on. You don't seem to comprehend how tightly controlled they are by the regulators.
So if you don't like them, just go use a different company.... oh wait, the CA government won't let you do that, either.
PG&E is exactly what an economist would tell you will happen when government sets a price ceiling and supply isn't allowed to be reduced to compensate. Instead of quantity supplied being reduced (because that's illegal), quality is reduced as much as possible (Same exact economic issue with rent control price ceilings creating slumlords). The whole thing is the State of California's fault, a predictable result of their laws and regulatory mismanagement.
But sure, blame the power company which isn't allowed to make any significant decisions (who to sell power to, for how much and how top roduce and sell it) that California effectively runs via regulation.
San Diego Gas and Electric has the exact same issue as PG&E, just to a lesser extent because they're smaller.
So his issue is that he doesn't like events like Trump being elected, i.e. " Recent history suggests that the threat to democracy is real." and his solution is to give Trump the power to break up online media companies and control the remains.
I'm not sure the logic is strong with this one....
In all seriousness, it's not enough to decide you disagree with the results of the market for something (in this case, news-style entertainment) to conclude that the government must therefore intervene. In addition, you also must demonstrate the government intervening would be an improvement of results and not make things worse. McNamee barely asserts the first part of that test and seems to assume away the second part, as there is no evidence he even considered it.
Slashdot Mirror
He got fired, of course.
The basic job requirement of a diplomat is to be able to be diplomatic. McCallum failed, there....
Sorry, but Clark County is populated mostly by people who prefer Democrats, including voting for Democrats 52% to 48% in the last election. You are misinformed, probably because they may not be quite as left-wing progressive as other nearby urban areas, although that doesn't make them a conservative bastion.
Sheesh... "allowed to vote to join"....
Well, since nobody in the UK was allowed to join the EU as presently constituted (as opposed to a much more limited precursor institution), it seems that it's a one vote for not being in it compared to 0 to be in it.
The problem with your comparison is that the real issue is needing a license to cut hair, not parenting. The license only exists as a way to reduce competition in hair cutting, transferring resources from people who need haircuts (most everyone) to people who jumped through the hair cutting hoops (a small group with a lot of interest in keeping licensing requirements going), with a sizeable dead-weight loss to the economy from the wasted resources involved in getting the license and in less efficient hair cutting occurring along the way. In some States, the requirements for braiding hair are higher than those for becoming an EMT. How much sense does that make?
As for parental licenses, allowing the government to have the power to determine who gets to reproduce and who doesn't is quite the totalitarian power grab. Sure you want to put that kind of additional power to run your life in the hands of either local corrupt officials, or federal authorities like Trump and Pelosi? How about we start with something smaller and less important, like licenses to be allowed to speak about political issues, first? (Note, for the record I am opposed to that as well.)
Not sure if you're disagreeing with me or not on the first part, but to clarify, whatever the difference between the cost of the automation and the cost of the person to do the same job is the increase in wealth created by the automation. As in the vast majority of cases, the automation wouldn't be put into place without some sort of substantial savings, the automation trend creates a substantial amount of wealth.
As a tiny example, if it used to cost a manufacturer $10 to make a set of dinnerware using human labor, but using an automated machine only costs $8 to produce the same dinnerware, then $2 of new wealth per dinnerware set is created. If previously the dinnerware set sold for $13 (to the store, or whoever is next in the supply chain), then that extra $2 will end up split between the manufacturer and the consumer. If there is competition in the dinnerware market, the first manufacturer to automate will capture some of that $2 for a while (paying off investors), but eventually all of the manufacturers will have automated in a similar fashion and their price will fall to $11 with almost the entire $2 extra ending up as a consumer surplus. The previous $10/set which went to a human is now $2 going to consumers and $8 going to the plate-making-machine company, their employees, their suppliers, those suppliers employees, investors, etc... (i.e it doesn't vanish, either). The extra $2 doesn't vanish, it ends up in many people's pockets, who now can either use it for consumption (increasing demand now) or save/invest it for future consumption (partially increasing demand now based on what was invested in needing to purchase something and partially increasing demand later based on the interest returned from the new wealth created by the investment).
(Disclaimer: This example uses a 1:1 result, which is unrealistic as a result, but in reality you have to figure way more people and consumer surpluses involved and sorted out by the marketplace involving both.) At the same time, the human involved now wants a new job. In the past, consumers weren't wealthy enough to hire people to arrange their dinnerware, but now with their newfound $2 per dinnerware set of consumer surplus, investment proceeds, etc... they can afford to hire someone to do that in addition to all the other stuff they're consuming, so the human involved becomes a dinnerware arranger, a job which never existed before. The human involved also gets that fraction of $2 in consumer surplus if they buy a dinnerware set for them-self, as well as another smaller fraction if their retirement account is invested in the dinnerware manufacturer, and of course the more automation happens, the more of those types of returns on it they receive. Or if enough new wealth is created by automation, they may choose to use their new surplus to be able to work less and maintain a similar living standard, because they value leisure more than the additional consumption they could have from doing more work (i.e. new wealth is sometimes translated to more demand for leisure vs. more demand for work, based on people's choices).
If you push that out to the conclusion where everything is 100% automated and we don't need anyone to work (every possible job is filled by automation like intelligent nano-machines consuming all to produce stuff), then at that stage we are so wealthy people can just consume the results of the automation and live a life of massive enjoyment with no need to work on anything except creative stuff for fun. That's called a good thing....
Right. The argument basically boils down to the economists saying, "This fallacy has been seen every time big gains from automation were in the works...." and the the other side saying, "But this time it will be different!"
I'd have more confidence in the second side if they ever demonstrated they actually understood why economists believe what they do about an issue in the field they spend their lives studying and made an argument which was actually on point for that discussion, rather than continuing to argue a point which has been debunked by empirical reality over and over again.
So if you are of the second side, please answer why "there won't be new jobs" is:
1. Likely (taking into account the increase in wealth from the efficiency gains of the expected level of automation to replace that many humans)
and
2. A bad thing on net.
Then we can have a discussion at least on the real empirical questions.
Yes, I've heard of entropy. I anticipate employment in the project to access alternate universes and creating new universes to be booming... someday.
Yep. Fortunately, increased efficiency from automation also results in increased overall wealth and an increase in wealth is an increase in the supply of "people willing to pay them to do it."
We currently pay lots of people to do jobs which would have been unthinkably ridiculous 100 years ago. Really, you need someone to choose what to wear for you? Yet the job now exists and is currently growing, based on automation via online clothing stores enabling people to supply their expertise to the masses.
People who used to do invoicing mostly didn't transition to programming. They transitioned to another job with comparable human capital requirements which wasn't previously getting done, in part because the wealth increase of the efficiency gains from computers doing invoicing allows those participating in the economy to spend that new wealth on new stuff the humans are supplying. As a result of technological advances (in many areas), you can buy food for $1 in less than 3 minutes which was previously unavailable except in exchange for multiple days wages in the past.
If there is an end state of automation+ai can do everything a human can do just as good and humans aren't needed to work on anything anymore, that end state looks like a paradise of massively increased wealth, where no one would need to work who didn't want to, exactly the opposite of the dystopian predictions of the modern Luddites.
You're analysis is completely missing the effect of the massive increases to overall wealth which would be a necessary result of automation improvements being worth replacing all those people's efforts. That increase in wealth increases the demand for consumption, moving the quantity supplied of consumption in goods and services currently too expensive at the margin into the realm of actually being provisioned.
i.e. we currently purchase so much fast food because we're wealthy enough to afford to buy it and it makes sense due to the value of our time being higher than a less assembly-line version of meal preparation at home.
Carriage companies didn't turn into automobile companies. Woodworkers didn't make the best car makers. Instead, bicycle companies turned into automobile companies and their suppliers. The Carriage companies literally went away, with only one (Studebaker) lasting for very long, before it also went out of business and the brand name (not the workers) was absorbed by a car company.
At one point, 70-80% of everyone was employed in agriculture, primarily as labors. Now 1% is. That's way more jobs "going away" than 25%, yet somehow those people made the transition to more valuable employment in less rural areas.
As for the 2017 study you cite, here's a quote from one of the study's authors, Daron Acemoglu:
If you want to use that study to argue the Luddite case, you should go argue it with the author. I'm going to assume he knows the results of the study better than you or the sensationalist media does.
The actual Luddites went on a spree of violence and were either killed, or arrested and transported to Australia. The Luddite resistance only existed for a couple of years.
In terms of the general population, England's employment issues of the time were more related to lots of recently discharged soldiers and sailors (300K all at once) at the same time as a big population boom (50% increase between 1801 and 1831). By 1834, many factories in England were complaining about a shortage of available labor, although some of that was because it was illegal for the poor to move to a different parish where there might be work.
Agriculture used to employ 70-80% of the population, way more than the 25% being described here.. Then automation and technological progress came and people, including those with no skills but manual labor at the time, moved out of most rural areas to more beneficial jobs.
Ironically, you're complaining about capital investment and at the same time extolling the benefits of capital investment in manufacturing and automation to produce more during the world wars.
"We can learn from history for a change. We know technology unemployment is coming." is mistaken on several grounds, not the least of which is that historically, the best remedy for dealing with technological change has been to do the exact opposite of what most modern Luddites suggest, namely allow markets to adjust as quickly as possible to minimize any transitional problems. Instead, the typical suggestion is to come up with ways to prevent, delay or resist the needed adjustments to different production patterns.
Please don't read into what I said things which I didn't say. No need for strawmen.
There is literally no limit to the amount of work available for people to do. Once we've converted this solar system to our liking, we can move on to the rest of the universe. Then we can redo it all again. There are an infinite amount of possibilities for something useful for someone to do, which is all that work is.
New opportunities for work become practical as we gain more technology or figure out ways to accomplish existing work someone is doing more efficiently. Available work isn't some static number which is capped at the amount of work currently being done by someone. There's always something new which could be done to improve things and increase the overall wealth of humanity.
It turned out that bicycle manufacturers were much better equipped to make auto-related products. The carriage companies were essentially wood-based, with lots of carpenters making stuff. They all went away. Studebaker lasted the longest by actually somewhat successfully pivoting into automobiles, but even they were eventually absorbed with only the brand name remaining.
Virtually 100% of the carriage making industry has been lost. There were 13,000 of those businesses in 1890, now they're pretty much all defunct. There's almost nobody who hand spins thread for a living anymore, either. That used to employ vast numbers of people, mostly across the South.
Fortunately, there is literally no limit to the amount of work available for people to do, just a lack of people to be available to do it. Specific jobs have been being destroyed by automation for hundreds of years. Yes, the process has accelerated recently. Guess what, it hasn't had a noticeable effect on unemployment rates, rather it leads to increased wages over time as increased productivity as a result of more capital (automation) being able to be used by people to accomplish more.
No, this time won't be different. The luddite fallacy remains a fallacy.
Comcast isn't primarily an internet company, they're a cable company. Wouldn't expect internet rules to overwhelm the effect of their cable capital spending. I suppose it would be too much work to look at Internet companies overall, rather than choosing a single cable company.
The CPUC is who I was blaming for the whole mess in the first place....
Yep, nobody will have ever heard of her and what she did now. Certainly not the entire news reading world...
You don't see the contradiction within your sentence?
If CPUC sets their maximum profit, then how can the problem be excessive profit? Wouldn't the State set "maximum" prevent them from exceeding it in the normal course of operations, unless your postulating that the State sets their profit level at "excessive".
Anyway, PG&E went bankrupt before based on the "price fix the end rates, but let wholesale rates fluctuate" methodology of the State. They're now going bankrupt again because of their losses related to the fires. How exactly in your mind does "going bankrupt" equate to "excessive profits"? You don't think the shareholders of PG&E would prefer to not have their stock become worthless? That's what happens in a bankruptcy if the assets aren't enough to cover the liabilities. You really think a few years of dividends are going to make up for the massive loss right now?
Let me introduce you to a phrase Mark Twain made popular. It's pretty old, as is the knowledge contained in books like this.
Unless of course hiring managers gave affirmative action-style preferences to female candidates. Then on average, the female candidates actually hired wouldn't be as good as their male counterparts, because lower quality female candidates could get hired right along with the better ones (which do exist).
How likely is it that a company which has their executives openly publish blog posts like this, who spend a bunch of money every year promoting Oracle Women’s Leadership’s, who have special programs to highlight, reward and praise their female staff isn't also giving preferences trying to hire as many women as they possibly can.
I've been in the technology for 30+ years, across a dozen different giant, large and small employers. I've never seen any of them do anything in regards to hiring women except basically automatically hire any bare minimum qualified female applicant who showed up, because they all wanted more women in technology.
And yes, as a hiring manager myself, despite knowing the supposed wage gap is B.S., despite knowing studies show women generally get preferred hiring status, I'd probably still lean towards hiring a woman over a man if their resumes and interviews were equal, just to have them around the team.
In terms of operational profits, the California Public Utilities Commission sets the amount of profit each utility (including PG&E) can make. Their profit doesn't even depend on how much they sell or the cost to them of what they sell, it's a fixed number which the regulators decide on. You don't seem to comprehend how tightly controlled they are by the regulators.
So if you don't like them, just go use a different company.... oh wait, the CA government won't let you do that, either.
PG&E is exactly what an economist would tell you will happen when government sets a price ceiling and supply isn't allowed to be reduced to compensate. Instead of quantity supplied being reduced (because that's illegal), quality is reduced as much as possible (Same exact economic issue with rent control price ceilings creating slumlords). The whole thing is the State of California's fault, a predictable result of their laws and regulatory mismanagement.
But sure, blame the power company which isn't allowed to make any significant decisions (who to sell power to, for how much and how top roduce and sell it) that California effectively runs via regulation.
San Diego Gas and Electric has the exact same issue as PG&E, just to a lesser extent because they're smaller.
So his issue is that he doesn't like events like Trump being elected, i.e. " Recent history suggests that the threat to democracy is real." and his solution is to give Trump the power to break up online media companies and control the remains.
I'm not sure the logic is strong with this one....
In all seriousness, it's not enough to decide you disagree with the results of the market for something (in this case, news-style entertainment) to conclude that the government must therefore intervene. In addition, you also must demonstrate the government intervening would be an improvement of results and not make things worse. McNamee barely asserts the first part of that test and seems to assume away the second part, as there is no evidence he even considered it.