Been There. Done That.

One of the few benefits of getting older is that you have a longer perspective on things. My old man used to lecture me with the same argument as he tried to instill upon me the value of experience.

It was pure chance that I happened to pick up Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" back in 1974. It was chock full of ideas that I had never been exposed to before that time. And that got me started on a path that would probably have been very different from the one I took.

Then a year or two later I heard about the Libertarian Party on a talk show. A friend who had also read Rand called me up, all excited, and told me to turn on CHML. He told me the guests were talking about the same stuff as we were.

From there I ended up joining the party and going to a few meetings. No more than four or five people usually showed up. At one of those meetings a guy gave me a pamphlet for FEE (Foundation for Economic Education) and I mailed in the attached card for a free monthly digest.

Right off the bat it was clear that the information and perspectives contained in the FEE digest were COMPLETELY different than anything I had learned in school or that was available in mainstream media, or even in the public library. And forget about the McMaster University bookstore - it was almost wall to wall Marxism or its derivatives.

I read it for years until the price went from $0 to $50 US for a subscription. By then I had discovered other sources of information and ideas of interest to libertarians including Reason Magazine, Liberty, and a few others.

I had to *actively work* to obtain the kinds of ideas and information that were relevant to me.

Huh!

Of all of my friends and acquaintances over that time, I was the only one who was *actively working* on this alternative viewpoint.

The difference between what I was learning and what was being spewed forth from the established media was stark. For twenty-five or so years I had to put up with the following conversation,

Them: "What are your politics?"

Me: "I'm a libertarian."

Them:

1 - "Liber what?"

or

2 - with a big smile, "Oh, a liberal!"

I knew they were not to blame. How could they know?

I was almost offended.

Then the internet showed up and all of that changed very quickly.

Until now.

In his report, James Corbett says, "my children are going to grow up in a world where they are going to have to *actively work* to get this information."

I know EXACTLY what that means,

because,

Been there. Done that.

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THE INFORMATION WAR IS OVER AND WE HAVE LOST. CHANGE MY MIND.

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"GO BACK" HATE HOAX GOES HILARIOUSLY WRONG

Is Internet Censorship Really about Ideology? Or just money?

I think Styx may be right. This may be more about the money than it is about political opinion.

Going by my own experience, I remember how liberating it was when I first connected to the web and specifically, the realization that the print and broadcast media could no longer control the flow of information.

Within weeks of first accessing the web using my 2400 baud modem and the Lynx browser, I started learning HTML and writing my (formerly) letters to the editor directly to the web. My Hamilton-Wentworth Freenet account, as I remember it, came with about 1 Mb of web storage space. I no longer had to pray that some "editor," I.E. corporate censor, would condescend to allow my humble freedom of speech to be actualized by (actually) being published.

And millions of other people had the same idea. A new age of info-freedom was born. What a great ride it has been for a quarter of a century. Freedom!

But as with all good things, it was not to last.

The legacy media began to suffer. They were going the way of the buggy whip. I imagine that for the next twenty-five years legacy media executives were frantically scratching their heads wondering how the hell they were going to put this genie back in the bottle and retain their former privileges as the gatekeepers to the flow of information and opinion. And thus, the flow of the dollars. Or maybe not.

Enter Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, and others whose stunning success created exactly the information chokepoint corporate media could exploit to re-establish its dominance. Whether this was a brilliant pre-planned Pied Piper strategy from the start is something I don't know, but once these entities were firmly entrenched the path forward for media cartels became stunningly clear. For them, it was a wish come true.

These last couple of years have not been happy ones for those of us in the laissez-faire capitalism camp. It starts to look like the Marxists were right all along. The problem, as they like to drone on and on about capitalism, is that it always tends toward monopoly and it certainly looks like this is what has happened in the info-market.

But let's not rush to judgment. Until these concentrated media powers succeed in capturing sleazy politicians, like the Trudeau Liberals, (notice I refrained from the use of expletives here) to employ government power to prohibit and otherwise squeeze out competitors, this story isn't quite over yet. There are still other platforms available, like BitChute and Gab for us info-refugees to emigrate to and establish new settlements.

And when they get conquered and taken over by the capitalist media imperialists, we shall have to colonize some other area of cyberspace. And, unlike landmass, cyberspace is virtually infinite.

It won't be easy but I, for one, have no intention of withdrawing from this fight.

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Update: July 15, 2019

Matt Drudge's 'Future' Is Now Realized, And That Has Legacy Media Enraged.

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THE TRUMP SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT HAS THE LEGACY MEDIA SCRAMBLING

https://www.bitchute.com/video/RXsqKRSQRsQ/

Even the leftt are feeling it.

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REBEL EFFECT: THEY'RE WAKING UP TO CANADIAN CENSORSHIP | EZRA LEVANT

Paper Drink Box Water Bottle Sort of Things

This man is a pathological liar. Notice how he doesn't skip a beat when lying about what HE does to cut down on plastics. The truth is, he has personally done nothing.