In this solo episode, Jason Hartman discusses a company that is monopolizing web traffic. What happens if one company controlled almost all of the world’s access to information? He also talks about digital dollar or cryptocurrency.
Announcer 0:01
This show is produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit Hartman media.com.
Announcer 0:11
Welcome to the holistic survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The holistic survival show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. sudden change or worst case scenario. You’ll be ready. Welcome to holistic survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your hosts, Jason Hartman.
Jason Hartman 1:00
Good day, everybody. Good day, we’ve got some big news. You may know already big news, by the way. We’re gonna have some big news in a couple of weeks here. We’re doing live election night coverage. Yes. So for all of you friends out there who are politically inclined, but focusing really on the economic aspect of political life. How does it affect taxes, monetary policy, fiscal policy, those kind of people who are interested in those topics? If you want to come on the show on the live stream, join us on election night. So I wanted to throw that invitation out there. Let us know you can reach out through Jason hartman.com. And let us know if you’re interested in in joining us for that you can come on for just a couple of minutes to say hello, and we’ll do the play by play on this crazy election season. We have an absolutely crazy one. But what is the big news? What is the big news? Well, you probably heard it already. But can you imagine? Can you imagine if one company controlled almost all of the world’s access to information? Can you imagine that? Could you imagine if your ability to know something? or to even not know what you don’t know? I don’t know. Did that make sense? reminds me that Donald Rumsfeld things are things we know we don’t know. And the things we add whatever. I don’t remember it. But the scariest part of it is that concept I always talk about on the creating wealth podcast, which is you know it, you can’t hear the dogs that don’t bark. You can’t hear the dogs that don’t bark. And when you don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t hear the dogs that don’t bark, that is a huge problem. It’s worse than fake news, it’s worse than misinformation, because you just wouldn’t be exposed to something at all. And imagine what that is like, that is truly, truly scary and truly tragic. Well, that’s the era in which we live. As most of you know, we have got a few companies that control all of the world’s information. And well, almost all of it. And here’s an example. So this one company that is really wants to be thought of as many companies like 26 letters in the alphabet. Yeah, you know what I’m getting at. So look at the dominance they have in the search market. I wonder if this will be censored? I wonder We’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see. Maybe it’ll be ghost posted. Nobody will see it. But at 1.54% of all of the search traffic on desktop computers in the United States. Wow. That’s what they control, the second competitor to them, only 12% and the third less than 5%. So that’s astounding. I mean, hey, congratulations on their incredible success for sure. But then you look at mobile devices, mobile, they’ve got, let’s just call it 95% 94.92% of all search traffic on any mobile device in the United States of America, a country with 328 million people, all of whom are connected. I am sure every buddy in the United States must be connected by now. If they’re not that really Does surprise me but it’s possible. Anyway, the vast majority of them are connected. And there you go. There’s the numbers right there, folks, that is one Corporation controlling all of that access to information. And look at the others. By the way, I interviewed the founder of DuckDuckGo on my podcast before on the creating wealth show right here on the creating wealth show not on the live stream, but on the creating wealth show that is absolutely astounding. Let’s take a look at this. This is an interesting news report
Audio Clip 5:32
Out of the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Google tonight, the Justice Department accusing the tech giant of being a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet. Google handles nearly 90% of what Americans are searching for on the internet. Here’s our Chief Justice correspondent here tops
Audio Clip 5:48
The Justice Department declaring war on Google
Audio Clip 5:51
Every day, billions of people come here with questions,
Audio Clip 5:55
Federal prosecutors accusing Google of being a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet, accounting for close to 90% of searches in the country. They claimed the tech giant has been engaging in anti competitive tactics, paying phone manufacturers and companies billions to allow Google to be their default search engine, prosecutors alleging the ties were so deep, a senior Apple official Roche, our vision is that we work as if we are one company, according to the complaint. In some cases, even if consumers want to delete Google from their devices, they can’t.
Jason Hartman 6:28
So this is very reminiscent of the Microsoft antitrust suit that we had what was that was in the 90s. Right? Where they wanted Internet Explorer automatically installed on all the computers. But I think this is much worse than that. You know, just because the browser is there doesn’t mean you have to use it, you were certainly able to install other browsers on your PC’s back in the day. But this is I mean, 90% of the world’s information, essentially, which is sort of like it’s almost the same thing. So let’s keep listening.
Audio Clip 7:04
It’s illegal under traditional anti trust principles must be stopped. We emerged today calling the lawsuit, a monumental case for the Department of Justice. And more importantly, for the American consumer. Ever DOJ is asking a judge to rule that Google violated antitrust laws, and that could lead to the company being broken into smaller pieces. Today, Google responded saying the lawsuit is deeply flawed and would do nothing to help consumers. Google says this will only pop up lower quality search engines.
Jason Hartman 7:33
Oh, so what they’re saying is, we don’t want any competition, because our search engine is the best. So we’re just going to prop up lower quality search engines. And are they kidding? It won’t do anything for consumers. You get the idea that arrogance, that one company should control all of this information is just absolutely insane to me. It violates like every democratic principle. Remember, in the old Soviet Union, how they had the official government news agency, it was called the TASS news agency. And every time you would hear report on the news, I remember this is a kid, according to the TASS news agency, because that was the only source of news coming out of Russia, or out of the Soviet Union, I should say out of the USSR back in the USSR, reminds me of the Beatle song, and it was all controlled by this one, entity TAs. And now 90% of the information on internet searches in the entire country, in an ostensibly free and democratic country with a First Amendment is controlled by one company. Now you’re ready to be amazed. This is how much they are planning to spend defending the case. Ready for this? One $120 billion dollars with a B $120 billion. Of course, there’s a lot at stake here. Right. There’s a lot at stake. And, you know, will this be like, you know, mob Bell, at&t that was split up into separate companies. It Back in the old days, right? There hasn’t been much. Really, if you look at it overall, there hasn’t been much of an appetite by the government to engage in prosecuting antitrust cases in really in decades. I mean, there’s only been a few of them these kind of landmark cases and this this is definitely one of them. So we’ll see how it plays out. That’s the report on that but check this out. Now all of the tech giants are concerned about this. Obviously you saw when they were testifying before Congress Few what was that a few weeks ago, maybe a little over a month ago, you saw saw them all on that sort of zoom screen. And you saw Tim Cook at Apple, you know, the guy that runs all the sweatshops. By the way, be sure you look up Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes speech, the self righteousness of some of these folks, it’s just mind boggling. It really is. But all of them, all of the tech giants are stepping up lobbying efforts. And they are just, they’re gonna do their best to buy off the government. Okay, of course, present company whose platform we’re on now, will probably be censored. There’s probably like nobody watching this right now.
Jason Hartman 10:40
They’re going to spend $19.3 million, which I don’t know, well, that’s just on lobbying. It’s not on legal. It’s not on public relations. It’s just strictly lobbying. So, you know, I spent a day as a lobbyist, by the way, that was really interesting. I went to Capitol Hill with a group of real estate investors. This was I don’t know how long those take maybe 10 years ago or something. We went to Capitol Hill and we lobbied, you know, a congress and we went in, you know, I went to Nancy Pelosi, his office, and Diane Feinstein’s and who else we got arlen specter, I remember, you know, sometimes they would sit down with us, usually, it was like their aides, and they come and sit down and hear, you know, the pitch of why this needs to be that way. And this, you know, that way, but the real lobbyists, I mean, I was just an amateur, you know, that was like a field trip for me. But the real lobbyists, they bring the money in the brown paper bags, right? You know, here, let me slip this little box to you. Right. And, you know, it’s it’s a box of cash, right or something. They do all kinds of favors. It doesn’t even have to be like that there. It’s so easy to do that kind of stuff. Oh, well. I mean, listen, Ask the Expert who’s the expert? That would be Joe Biden, Joe Biden, and hunter Biden experts. Yep, definitely. You know, it’s like, let me see, well, son, you know, I gotta go over and talk to the mayor of Moscow. And, you know, let’s see if we can get some favor there. You know, nepotism, keep it all in the family. And so there there’s just all kinds of ways to do payola. I mean, look at if you don’t think our government is totally bought and paid for. First off, you’re out of your mind. Right? Most people won’t disagree with me on that one. But first of all, learn about Citizens United, that famous case, Citizens United. Okay, that famous famous case, you know, I’m sure there are many documentaries on it. So learn about Citizens United, first off, but then just think about all of the ways to do payola. And all of these deals, you know, someone wants a bank charter, and they want to open a bank, real estate developer wants to develop some land. And you know, it’s like, well, you know, you do this, and there’s this like, subtle favor, that, you know, is worth millions and millions of dollars, maybe 10s of millions of dollars. It just happens all the time. And if you don’t believe it, then ask yourself, How can a communist like Bernie Sanders, get three beautiful houses? How is it that these people enter government, whatever level of government, and they’re, you know, a lot of them are just total losers. They’ve never made any money in their life. They they’ve never owned a house, you know, they’ve never invested in anything, really, they’ve never run a business. yet. They they’re in Congress, or they’re in any any part of government doesn’t matter doesn’t have to be Congress. The Congress is a good one, because, hey, where’s the House Ways and Means Committee? Right? That’s the powerful committee, so that the tax isn’t spent spends, and, and they, they, they’re in government for 10 years, and suddenly they’re wealthy? How does that happen? You know, they’re making, what, 190 grand a year with their government job, which, you know, they got some nice perks and benefits, too. But how did they become multimillionaires doing that job on that salary? I don’t get it. You know, it’s just kind of amazing how that happens really is. But look at the lobbying effort. They’re all stepping it up. You see here from 2010 2015. Now 2020 lobbying efforts have doubled in the last five years for most of these companies, whether it be Facebook, Amazon alphabet, which is Google, or Apple, all of them, they’re all really getting into the business of lobbying. So anyway, more to come on this stuff. Maybe I’ll just give you a little another tidbit here before I go. I didn’t get a chance to talk about this yesterday, but the digital dollar is coming. And I’ve always said the cryptocurrency that is going to take over the world.
Jason Hartman 15:03
That’s going to be the digital dollar. It’s not going to be and I’d love to be wrong about this. I want to be wrong about this. It’s not going to be Bitcoin. It’s not going to be a theory m it’s not going to be any other cryptocurrency it is going to be a cryptocurrency, a digital currency backed by the two most powerful entities the human race has ever known. What are those two most powerful entities, governments and central banks? You know, no, cryptocurrency has a standing army. No, cryptocurrency has a fleet of what? 12 aircraft carriers. Okay, that’s what the dollar has. So all of this crazy stuff about and the dollar is not backed by anything. You know, you’re, that’s this, these arguments are just nutty. Okay. So yeah, that’s, that’s the deal. So you can see the steps toward it now, you know, they’re talking like, oh, China is rushing to develop their digital currency, right. And you know, I’m not against digital currency, I think it’s great. But the way it’s going to be used and abused is going to be terrible for us. Little citizens, it’s going to be Orwellian, it’s going to be a complete loss of spending privacy, in a complete way to treat us all as puppets on a string. So that Think about it. When that cryptocurrency is put into the app, on your phone, or on your mobile device, the government can do things like make it expire, they can say, Okay, this expires at the end of the month, so you have to spend it before it expires. Or maybe its value declines like they used to do on gift cards. And in most places, that’s illegal. Now, because it’s a scam. By the way, don’t buy gift cards ever. That’s the ultimate fiat currency or trading dollars that are widely exchangeable for gift cards that are hard to use access, have expiration dates, all that stuff, right here, I’ve got three Banana Republic gift cards I haven’t used and they all have like varying amounts of monies, I gotta scratch the thing off the back and figure out how to put them together just so I don’t lose my money. I got another one here, an American Express gift card, you know, this, this is total money, folks. Okay, don’t buy those and don’t buy them for other people either. They’re just, it’s a whole different thing. But of course, this kind of thing will help prevent money laundering, as the article says, it’ll help prevent illegal activities, drugs, smuggling, arms, dealing, etc. but also prevent a lot of freedom. Because one of the few freedoms that you have with good old hard cold cash is spending privacy, you can spend your money in with a relative amount of privacy, if it’s not electronic money, right? If it’s not on a credit card, etc. And so that’s something to be very careful of, but it’s coming, and the technology will be great. They’ll make it super convenient. But again, we’ve got to be forever vigilant for our freedoms and our rights and, you know, democratic values, in which by the way, these big tech companies are not acting with democratic values. Clearly, we see that I want to give a big shout out to the government. Oddly, the DOJ, the Department of Justice, that finally got around to doing this antitrust case, it took them long enough took them way too long. even thinking about it forever. But you know, it just took them forever. So anyway, that’s that. Okay. I want to talk to you about senior housing. We’ve got to talk about apartments and how what’s what’s going on with apartments, we got to talk about housing inventory. I’ve got another study on that, all kinds of stuff. So we’ll get back to that. We’ve just got a whole bunch of stuff to talk about on future episodes. Thank you for joining me. And until next time, happy investing to all.
Jason Hartman 19:22
Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show’s specific website and our general website heart and Mediacom for appropriate disclaimers and Terms of Service. Remember that guest opinions are their own. And if you require specific legal or tax advice, or advice and any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you’re using and write a review for the show we would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.