“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Ronald Reagan famously referred to the previous words as the most terrifying ones in the English language.
What’s sad in the here and now is that Republicans have increasingly become the Nanny State nailbiters that Reagan once warned us about. More and more it’s the Republicans who are “from the government” and “here to help.” Which is too bad.
We’re seeing this most notably right now with the GOP freakout over TikTok. Republicans used to cheer entrepreneurial endeavor whereby a company with vision meets the needs of the people more expertly than established commercial enterprises, and the latter surely describes TikTok. At a time when way-too-many Democrat and Republican politicians have naively fallen for the historically laughable notion that AmazonAMZN, Facebook, and GoogleGOOG represent the frontier of technology on the way to dominance that carries with it a forever quality, TikTok has emerged to show why the future of business rarely resembles the past.
In the case of TikTok, the average user spends 96 minutes per day on the app, which is five times the average time spent on Snapchat, and double the time spent by users of Facebook and Instagram. Please remember the previous statistics, and please especially remember them with all the handwringing engaged in by politicians and pundits about the alleged “market power” of Facebook et al top of mind. In commerce, nothing is forever, and the least forever is the team picture at the proverbial top of any dynamic industry. Once snapped, the photo quickly becomes dated.
So while commerce is constantly evolving as the new replace the old, politicians are constrained by the known. Unable to fathom a future different from the present, dominance in the here and now quickly becomes a target. This is especially true when the dominant company has origins in China. If China-based, any corporation must be owned and operated by government if politicians and their pundit enablers are to be believed. Which is why mildly sapient readers should be immediately skeptical. See above if not sufficiently skeptical.
The simple truth is that if TikTok or any other Chinese giant were owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or if it answered to the CCP, then we would never have heard of it. And we wouldn’t have heard of it because it wouldn’t be popular. Think about it.
Governments are yet again captivated by what’s known, while entrepreneurs get starry-eyed about what isn’t yet known. That’s why they’re entrepreneurs. They aim to upend the existing commercial order, which explains why government can’t ever play investor. That which sees the present as the future can’t possibly innovate. And politicians most definitely see the present as the future as evidenced by their present and past fear of Amazon, Facebook and Google, along with their fear in the here and now about TikTok. Ever focused on the present, politicians are unwittingly looking into the past.
This is worth keeping in mind as 15 Republican state attorneys general demand that AppleAAPL and Google strip TikTok of a content rating that classifies it as appropriate for teens. Apparently videos on TikTok contain “adult content,” and because they allegedly do, Republicans have arrogated to themselves a protective role over our teens. After all, “children are the future,” or something trite like that. On its face the act screams of government overreach. Really, whatever happened to the GOP belief in limited government, and government existing to protect our rights instead of infringing on them? Even if TikTok does have prurient qualities, aren’t Republicans about personal responsibility?
From there, anyone who has spent any time on the internet is well aware that if viewing “adult content” is the goal, TikTok would be the last place anyone would spend time. So obvious is the previous point that it’s most certainly a waste of words to type it out. But at a time when paranoid-about-China Republicans are more and more searching for a purpose as our minders, words need to be wasted. Over and over again.
They do simply because Republicans are increasingly revealing themselves as deranged on the matter of China. While state control of businesses has always and everywhere rendered those controlled inconsequential in the proverbial arena, and while state control of markets more broadly has always and everywhere resulted in decline for the markets controlled, there’s something about China that brings out not just big government control freakiness among Republicans, but also the belief that when big, authoritarian government rears its ugly head elsewhere, it must be met by big, authoritarian government here.
Wrong on all counts. If China is what Republicans say it is, then we have nothing to fear. And if it’s not what Republicans say it is as evidenced by the success of TikTok, we similarly have nothing to fear.
