I have left to chance today’s writing. From a pack of playing cards my plan is to write a paragraph on this theme until and do so until I choose an Ace, at which time I will stop. So you can follow I will give each paragraph the name of the chosen card. Here goes.
2 Diamonds
Amazon promotes the customers with the best review count. The number of reviews an Amazon account seller shows is not a matter of chance. Amazon measures the products sold agains the number of independent buyers choosing the product. If, as a seller, you sell 100 items you cannot get 200 reviews to boost your chances of selling more because Amazon applies a metric to stop that. But, though the auspices of a wireless show, I heard it is possible to game their system. I think it is so great I will tell you what I heard. Suppose you are selling face masks. Each buyer can send in a review. If you sell 10 to one buyer Amazon allows only one review. However, if you decide to give away products, as a marketing expense, and you give 100 masks to 100 random people Amazon will allow your account to receive 100 reviews and you will move up their list of preferred sellers.
5 Spades
If you haven’t guessed I am writing this essay to highlight data collection. Data is a product big business will aggregate and sell to its advantage. That is why Facebook has successfully ruined the financial model of print media. Print media only survived on “the rivers of gold” of classified advertisements they attracted while ever print succeeded. Facebook, and others, broke that model because when you chose to look at one of their advertisements they use that information to show you a host of other things you might like to complement your first choice. The seller advertises with Facebook because instead of your interest being random, it is specifically addressed to you. Facebook was able to prove the success of its data mining and ruin the businesses unable to compete with its standard.
4 Diamonds
Would you spend $2 billion and expect an improvement? Our State of Victoria did and it got no benefit. I know this only because of reading about it. Our State has been mute. We were told if our electric meters were changed from being read manually each month by a person, a Meter Reader – a person Employed to walk from house to house and record our electricity usage we would have greater control over our electricity bills. Electricity would be cheaper. In reality the electricity companies now bill us without the cost of paying humans to collect the information. Our bills have gone up because they can accurately measure when we switch on appliances and charge us More because all our neighbours want electricity at the same time we want it.
10 Clubs
It is written into legislation companies cannot use information that identifies the individual. In reality that should be a comfort to us but is it? Power companies know when we are out and if we are home they have a very good idea of the appliances we are using and the number of people in the home. We are assured Vector the company that provided our smart meters is audited by the Australian Electricity Market Operator (AEMO) and it is audited especially for misuse of the data (so that is alright then). Would this be a good time to tell you Vector is a subsidiary of Amazon? No? I guessed not.
6 Diamonds
I would like to make it clear I don’t have a specific beef with Amazon but I read I should. As far as I am aware I have not bought anything from Amazon or that other giant, Google. I don’t own a Google Home. I don’t even use Google. (I prefer DuckDuckGo). Oh hang! This is on WordPress- a Google company. I do have a smart TV and this enables me to use Netflix. I am an Apple user but my camera, microphone, and Siri are switched off. I think these are the only appliances I have connected to the internet of things (IOT). The advice is to use a VPN and do all you can to hang on to your privacy in 2020 to save becoming victim to a botnet. Whatever that is.
9 Hearts.
“The energy industry is really going through this digital transformation,” said Nick Walton, Amazon Web Service’s managing director for commercial sector in New Zealand.”
Amazon? Yes Amazon they who own Vector (that will not share personal data) is collating information from its subsidiary for good (not mine – their) use. Should I be alarmed? According to French philosopher Bernard Stiegler (who died 05/08/2020) we should have know to be alarmed for a long time. This man who lost himself to a higher levels of understanding while exercising, swimming along in water, had been telling us for years capitalism has reached an awful level of soullessness.
“We are not in the third capitalism; we are in a crisis of capitalism, a very bad one, which necessitates the invention of a new capitalism. I don’t believe that there has always been a “cognitive capitalism”.
In this new capitalism the worker has become a unit to be exploited. Amazon certainly demonstrates the worst of this.
5 Hearts.
(How long have I got before this gamble implodes). Philosophers have warned us about the dangers of this digital age yet we plough on as if there was nothing to worry about. The pandemic has barely begun and the loudest voices are the voices of big business. They want us all to go back to work. Some will die. Perhaps many will die, but without producing things to be consumed – the economy will die, according to those with the loudest voice. I think the economy is dead to us anyway. We are no better off than the peasants of the 17th century. Big business is no better than the robber barons of old. We are mere pawns, units of production, to it (business must be an it – it has no soul, or as Stiegler wrote, no spirit). So much for 6 hearts. I hope for better things.
Jack of Spades.
The French economist Thomas Piketty notes it is false to cling to hope that billionaires create jobs. Even by the most casual of tests there is no evidence they do. The triple down economy neoconservatives promote is false. Yet in 2020 our government is planning to stimulate the economy by giving tax concessions to big business and tax cuts to tax payers. The Prime Minister earns somewhere under $600,000. He will trouser a bonus tax cut of over $11,000. The average worker earns under $60,000 and he, who must spend his cash to survive, will get about $690.
Thomas Piketty says billionaires must be taxed out of existence yet it is our government’s plan to relieve them of the little they contribute to society.
6 Clubs
How do you tax billionaires out of existence. I am not a tax lawyer but before they disappear there is a lot of money to be made by those who are. I have read about people who pay their tax accountant $2m to avoid paying any tax, (I do not log as a reference everything I read so I cannot verify my statements any better than, “some bloke said”. However I believe them to be true, just as I believe it to be true we are on the verge of a new paradigm between the worker and the employer. I hope I am right. I hope this new understanding is achieved without bloodshed. (As in a revolution, or a horrible death toll from the pandemic). If this does not come about I anticipate we will see a new class of self employed business people who are unwilling to be exploited by labour hire companies. We will need a new model of government too especially if we are to rid the world of billionaires. None, I see, has the stomach, or the ideology, to make such a move.
Ace of Hearts. Fin.
This paragraph was written after the event. For clarity I have written elsewhere billionaires and monopoly companies have destroyed the balance of capital across the globe. I reckon we should resort to the policies that led to the breakup of monopolies after WW11. Japanese monopolies were forcibly broken apart. Now it is time governments, across the globe, should do the same. Taxing billionaires out of existence may not work but sharemarkets must have the ability to force companies to limit the controlling ownership to businesses therefore limiting the size of an individual’s ownership in any company to, say 5%.
What do you think?
If you have a mind to check my analysis I refer you to read
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-07/amazon-will-soon-see-inside-millions-of-aussie-homes/12582776
https://www.parrhesiajournal.org/
If as if my words are inconclusive. Here is YouTube clip to hammer home security https://youtu.be/NZwiCcM9_7g
9 Hearts spoke of capitalism and 6 Clubs billionaires. Are they generous? Is this article on the ball? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/how-philanthropy-benefits-the-super-rich?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Inshore Cassandra 