Letters to the Editor
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Democracy of the Marketplace
This just highlights the fundamental problem with the "democracy of the marketplace"--the market is the sort of democracy where one dollar equals one vote. Those with deep pockets get their "free speech" amplified; those with nothing basically have no voice. For about a century now, we have no longer accepted such a "weighted" system in our political life--no one suggests anymore that only the landed gentry out to have the right to vote, or that voting rights and income be correlated--but for some reason we still accept this sort of tyranny in our economic life. ('Cause we all know that economics and politics are completely different, right--no overlap whatsoever?)
Seriously folks, the naked hypocrisy of Google's "anti-anti" ad-policy, and its clear pro-corporate--and, frankly, anti-democratic--bias is staggering, but not at all surprising. That's what happens when a company goes public and relies primarily on advertising for its revenue; it becomes accountable not to people but to its market overlords. More to the point, this is all perfectly rational on Google's part--given its legal obligations to its shareholders, it's acting entirely in a rational manner. It couldn't behave differently even if it wanted to.