How Internet Companies are Ruining Our Democracy

I think people should carefully re-read the first part of the Declaration of Independence.  Because I think sometimes we as a society start to get confused and think that we have a right to happiness.  But if you read the Declaration of Independence, it talks about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."   Nobody has a right to happiness.   You should have a right to pursue it, and I think the core of that is liberty.   

                  
                                                     -- Jeff Bezos


 This is, in a word, ignorant.   A more complete excerpt, including the complete sentence which contains the phrase quoted above is the following:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

It is clear from this fuller excerpt that the Declaration of Indepence does assert through implication that citizens have a right to happiness.   If there is no such thing as happiness, why guarantee a right to pursue it?  Thus Bezos' claim is illogical, a non sequitur.  This is easy to see from a careful reading.  More important, can anyone claim that people are happy with the system they now have?   

Jonathan Taplin's 2017 book Move Fast and Break Things. How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, gives a certain history which I have read nowhere else.  It is an important history, a history which is critical to the understanding of why we are where we are now.  

Although clearly there are antecedents to the ascendant dominance of the Internet over culture and its concomittant victory over democracy, Taplin's book usefully describes how the way the Internet has developed has indeed helped to undermine our democracy.   The book is highly recommended for its readability and credibility.