Google is pulling sites’ ad revenue. They have immense power. So what?

This is how capitalism works. If you’re for capitalism, be for this. If you’re not for capitalism, then say what you’re for.

But to not oppose capitalism and then bitch about how capitalists operate is moronic. This is how power operates. Either shut up and accept it, or propose an alternative.

Why is ZeroHedge or Jimmy Dore bitching about this?  ZeroHedge is a libertarian website site.  They believe in unfettered property rights.  Well, Google is exercising their unfettered property rights, so ZH should shut up.  And while Jimmy is easily the best thing on the left (although it’s a low bar, I grant you), Jimmy seems generally fine with capitalism.  So he should shut up, too.

Do you think things are going to get better?  On our present trajectory, these are still just love taps the ruling class is doling out.  Things haven’t even gotten serious yet.  Wait till the ruling class starts trying.  These are still the salad days.

On our present trajectory, these actors will one day be longing for the halcyon days when Google was just demonetizing websites.

When I used to hang out at the now-defunct FireDogLake, I used to argue with site owner Jane Hamsher.  When Facebook floated the idea of charging fees to its business customers like Hamsher, she went on a PR offensive to oppose it.  Understandably, since Zuckerberg’s idea would have cost her a lot of money.

But I said to her, You never oppose the capitalist system.  Zuckerberg is a capitalist, and FB is his cash cow and his website.  If your business model depends on him, that’s not his problem.  It’s yours for not being smart enough to come up with a better business model.

She never addressed the argument.  This is typical of everyone on the left, then and now.  They bitch about the things powerful capitalists do, but they basically accept the capitalist framework uncritically.

But you can’t have it both ways.  If you say nothing about capitalism and propose no alternative to it, then you can’t bitch when capitalists do what capitalists do.  And if you’re going to oppose capitalism, then say what you’re for already.

What the left wants — and this is not at all just Jimmy, it’s the entire left — is to have its cake and eat it too.  It wants the bad capitalists gone, but it wants to take its place among the pantheon of influential owners in the economy and society.

Put more baldly, no one on the left is willing to get out into the fields under the hot sun and do their fair share of picking the cotton — and that includes Jimmy.  So when the capitalists act, as they always and invariably do, the left has no real way to oppose them.  So the left is reduced to whining.

And frankly, the libertarians are just getting what they deserve, so fuck them.  Besides, Google is going to re-monetize them within a week anyway.  ZeroHedge will be fine, and they have to know that.

The left, on the other hand, is classist as hell and will never change.