This was so incredibly moving to me that I had to transcribe it. Lina Khan masterfully puts into words what I’ve been trying to communicate for a long time. Government is just one area where we must worry about the concentration of power and the looming threat of autocracy or autocrat-like power. The knowledge that we need to guard against the rise of “economic autocrats” has existed in this country for over 100 years. I feel there are parallels to our field. We are merely on a lower level in terms of the money at stake.
It still pains me to believe our issues are too small for the FTC to care about and too big for the state agencies to want to look at. But I acknowledge the good work it’s trying to do after decades of minimal antitrust enforcement.
I provide a plain text version below and then a download of the PDF:
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Partial transcript of Jon Stewart speaking to Lina Khan, Chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission.
Transcribed by Christopher Day, Stenonymous.com.
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MR. STEWART: It’s already being consolidated. Apple has bought 30 AI models. Microsoft has probably bought ‑‑ Google has bought ‑‑ they all buy AI startups and put them behind their paywall. And they’re already having an arms race to see who will be either the monopoly or this will be oligopoly.
I’ve got to tell you, I wanted to have you on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it, to have you. They literally said, “please, don’t talk to her.” Having nothing to do with what you do for a living. I think they just ‑‑ I didn’t think they cared for you, is what happened. They ‑‑ they wouldn’t ‑‑ they didn’t ‑‑ they wouldn’t let us do even that dumb thing we just did in the first act, on AI.
Like, what is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to even have these conversations out in the public sphere?
MS. KHAN: I think it just shows one of the dangers of what happens when you concentrate so much power and so much decision making in a small number of companies.
I mean, going back all the way to the founding, there was a recognition that in the same way you need the Constitution to create checks and balances in our political sphere ‑‑
MR. STEWART: Right.
MS. KHAN: ‑‑ you also needed the antitrust and antimonopoly laws to safeguard against concentration of economic power, because you don’t want an autocrat of trade in the same way that you don’t want a monarch.
MR. STEWART: But then it took them ‑‑ I mean, it wasn’t until the Sherman Act in, what, 1890 something…
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End of clip shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, by More Perfect Union on April 2, 2024.
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DOWNLOAD:
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Now for some creative musing:
Educated by my country,
I could only watch in horror as
the knowledge of the past was swept aside.
They called us the most educated generation.
Then did not heed our words.
Our keepers said we could be anything.
Then voted for those that would leave us nothing.
The generations before us? Conditioned.
Conditioned to believe hard work is virtuous.
From a time when you could trust the television.
From a time when you had the television.
A time when hard work was rewarded better.
Loyalty ran both ways.
Was that a lie too?
Hard work is the only thing I’ve ever known.
Indeed, every person should know what it is to reach down deep and try hard.
Because otherwise the heart does not beat.
Because before I did, but after my birth, I was not alive.
But letting others harm your children is wrong.
The television did not tell or envision the real dangers.
Allowing predators to prey upon our American Dream.
And I understand. The world is different from when you walked it.
And I will miss you.
Those children you fought for?
I will fight for them in a way society never let you.
Because one day I may have my own.
They will have to learn to live and love alongside the other children.
They will have to play and grow in the world that we design.
Design by our action.
Design by our inaction.
Design by our empathy.
Design by our psychopathy.
They will know their father tried to change the country that would educate them.
For the better.
They will know their mother wanted their American Dream to be lucid.
So that they could be anything.
To those that would deride those like us:
“Though our songs may never be sung,
our stories will echo into eternity.”
Addendum:
I was later sent this TikTok with more from Jon Stewart on AI.
Cory Doctorow has written a lot lately about the danger of monopolies, the importance of antitrust, what he calls the “enshittification” process, and the problems with the crisis and inevitability narratives that tech companies are forever selling us about workers’ rights and “revolutionary” technologies. These issues are all interrelated; if you haven’t already, you should check him out.
Also, your poem reminds me of Langston Hughes’s Let America be America Again (1935).