I like to be agreeable. I’m not really into rocking boats or stirring things up. If there is a flow to be found, I will usually be found going with it.
But today, one day after Trump
v2.0 became official, I’m wondering if I should change my tune and say “no” more often. Already the world seems to be changing, and not in any way I’m comfortable with.
There has been a lot of talk about how Big Tech is embracing the wild and wacky world of misinformation in the new era of MAGA. Musk’s malevolent makeover of X has proven to be prescient
rather than puerile. Mark Zuckerberg is following suit by sending Meta’s fact-checkers packing. Jeff Bezos first blocked the Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris and then dialed
back diversity, equity and inclusion at Amazon to be better aligned with Trumpian sensibilities.
All these moves are driven purely by business motives. The Tech Broligarchs (the world’s
most exclusive white male club) are greasing the wheels for maximum profitability over the next four years for their respective empires. They are tripping over each other rushing to scatter rose
petals at Trump’s toes. When collectively those three are worth close to 1 trillion dollars – well, a dude has the right to protect his assets, doesn’t he?
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I don’t
think so. I’m not okay with any of this. As Big Tech primes the profitability pump by pandering to the new president, we are all going to pay a much bigger price. The erosion of social capital
is going to be massive. And so, I feel the time has come to say when I don’t agree with something.
We all somehow believe that free markets will eventually lead us to the best moral
choice. And nothing could be further from the truth.
Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milt Friedman was wrong when he said, “an entity’s greatest responsibility lies in the
satisfaction of the shareholders.” This doctrine has guided the corporate world for half a century now, towing along our western governments in its wake. The enshrining of profits as more
important than social responsibility has led us inevitably to where we are now, where the personal worth of a handful of tech billionaires is judged as more important than the sustainability and
fairness of our own society.
Normally, we would rely on our governments to put legislation in place that protects us from the worst instincts of big business. But yesterday, with the second
swearing-in of Donald Trump as president, we saw that dynamic flipped on its head. For the next four years, the U.S. will have a sitting president who will be leading the way in the race to the
bottom. Corporate America will be hard-pressed to keep up.
So, if big business is not looking out for us, and our government is looking the other way, who should we turn to? The answer, sadly:
There’s no one left but ourselves. If we don’t agree with something -- if the world is going in a direction contrary to our own values -- we have to say something. We also have to do
something, becoming a little more defiant.
That is the theme of the brand-new book “Defy,” by organizational psychologist Dr. Sunita Sah. She says that we are typically hard-wired
to comply rather than defy: “There are situations where you want to defy, but you go along with it. Maybe the costs are too great, the benefits too meager, or the situation is dangerous. We
all have to do that at times, even our defiant heroes like Rosa Parks. How many times did she comply with the segregation laws? A lot, but there comes a moment when we decide now is the time to defy.
It’s figuring out when that time is.”
For myself, that time has come.