No rhetoric will lessen the harm Big Tech can do
Trade is certainly a complex issue, but Doug Kelly’s opinion piece “Save American technology from manufacturing’s sad fate” (Nov. 23) offers little except vague cheerleading for Big Tech.
Trade policy was hardly the major reason that the auto industry declined. A major factor was that the auto industry, facing no competition in the postworld War II global economy, got lazy, reduced its innovation, and then pushed Congress to protect it from its folly as Japan and Germany rebuilt their economies and produced comparable or better vehicles.
“Buy American” was a weak defense against foreign companies that bet on buyers wanting innovative alternatives to the land barges Detroit was producing.
No amount of “national security” rhetoric or appeals to “promote our values” (Kelly’s words, and empty of meaning) mitigates the need to examine how Big Tech’s goal of eliminating competitors and reaping the most profit possible has contributed to social and psychological problems for youth, the destruction of thousands of small businesses, and threats to, and debasement of, our political processes.
It’s also worth mentioning that Facebook contributes a significant part of the dark money that funds Kelly’s American Edge Project.
Steve Abbott, Columbus