Month: June 2019

Goldman Sued For Discrimination By Gay Vice President

Goldman Sachs was on the receiving end of a lawsuit Wednesday by an ex-vice president who claims that he was discriminated against, and then fired, for being gay. Former Goldman employee William Littleton sued the bank in New York state court, claiming that he was fired after eight years of “superior performance reviews” and despite “holding a position of leadership among gay and lesbian employees at the firm,” according to Bloomberg.

“Mr. Littleton was one of the most proud, active and vocal LGBTQ leaders at Goldman throughout his tenure,” his lawsuit states. Littleton claims the bank violated New York state and city anti-discrimination laws and is seeking compensation and punitive damages. 

31-year-old Littleton formerly worked with Goldman’s Product Strategy Group and said he was excluded from a call with a Goldman client because he “sounded too gay” and was asked by a supervisor once “What’s wrong with you? Do you act this way because you’re gay?” Littleton says his experience is a microcosm of “larger institutional problems” at the investment bank.

The complaint says: “Unfortunately, Mr. Littleton’s termination at Goldman is not an isolated incident or exception to the rule at the bank or on Wall Street more broadly. The bank does little more than provide lip-service to LGBTQ diversity.”

Littleton also says that he was subjected to demeaning remarks and that his compensation decreased despite promotions and increased responsibilities. In May 2018, he complained to the bank’s employee relations department and months later, he received a performance review with criticisms that he believes were “a belated attempt to create a paper trail”. He was then told his last day would be January 31, 2019.

Should the court rule in Littleton’s favor it would unleash an avalanche of lawsuits in which any alleged “suppressed minority” member who was terminated, will claim retaliation, costing their former employers millions in legal fees. What this will result in is potential employers staying as far as possible from hiring such “minority group” members, effectively jeopardizing much if not all of the recent progress to promote equal rights.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WRqKYS Tyler Durden

Hempfest Sues Washington’s Marijuana Regulators for Censoring Sponsors’ Signs

Hempfest, the annual “protestival” that has been held in Seattle every summer for the last 27 years, relies on payments by sponsors to help cover its expenses. Now that marijuana is legal in Washington, state-licensed cannabusinesses, which have an interest in supporting the legal reforms promoted at Hempfest, should be a reliable source of revenue. But under a new interpretation of state limits on marijuana advertising, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) says such companies may not display “any sign” that refers to them at Hempfest, even in connection with purely informational activities aimed at promoting debate about marijuana policies. In a lawsuit filed yesterday in Thurston County Superior Court, Hempfest and two marijuana retailers argue that the new rule violates their rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition for redress of grievances under both the First Amendment and the state constitution.

The new WSLCB policy is “so overreaching and restrictive as to be unconstitutional,” says Hempfest Director Vivian McPeak. “It is imperative that Washingtonians have access it accurate and up to date information regarding the cannabis products they purchase and consume, and that those citizens and others are able to identify the source of that information. Businesses engaged in the cannabis industry in Washington State should also have the legal right to publicly show their support for political issues and causes of their choosing. The WSLCB’s interpretation of our state’s ad restrictions prevent businesses from doing so.”

The First Amendment argument is complicated by the fact that marijuana is still prohibited by federal law. But McPeak is right that sweeping censorship like the WSLCB’s sign ban would ordinarily be unconstitutional under Supreme Court precedents dealing with political and commercial speech. And Article I of Washington’s constitution, like the First Amendment, guarantees freedom of speech as well as “the right of petition and of the people peaceably to assemble for the common good.”

The WSLCB’s policy is based on a broad reading of marijuana “advertising,” which state law prohibits within 1,000 feet of a “public park”—one of the many state rules aimed at limiting exposure of anyone younger than 21, the minimum marijuana purchase age, to messages promoting cannabis consumption. Hempfest, which in recent years has attracted about 100,000 people annually, is held in Seattle’s Myrtle Edwards Park and Centennial Park, authorized by all the requisite permits.

The WSLCB had previously agreed that “the use of a business trade name on a booth, or identified as part of a sponsorship level, would not constitute a violation of marijuana advertising laws and rules.” It therefore told its licensees that they “can use tradename/business names at the event without the need for required marijuana warnings, as required on product advertising.”

But under the new interpretation, announced in April, that WSLCB says licensees “cannot directly or indirectly be responsible for the placing of a sign or advertisement for marijuana businesses” at events like Hempfest. It adds that “licensees may attend these events or have a non-commercial sign as long as the licensee and/or the message does not reference or otherwise promote a marijuana licensed business or its products.”

As a result of that confusing directive, Hempfest’s complaint says, state-licensed marijuana businesses are “unable to determine whether any booth [they] may set up at Seattle Hempfest, to disseminate information concerning their support of marijuana law reform, or to educate the public about any effects of marijuana use or consumption, or the history of marijuana use, abuse, and criminalization, can bear their business names, logos, or address, or whether their booth can even identify their names and/or logos.”

That uncertainty, not surprisingly, has had a chilling effect on Hempfest sponsorships. According to the complaint, past sponsors have said “they are not able to sponsor Seattle Hempfest in light of recent reports of the WSLCB position.”

Hempfest argues that the new policy is “excessive, overbroad and unreasonable and fails to directly advance government interests in limiting or restricting the use of marijuana by underaged persons, or any other legitimate governmental interests and also is more extensive than necessary to serve any legitimate government interest.” Furthermore, it says, “the restrictions are not narrowly tailored to serve a substantial or compelling governmental interest.”

Even before this expansion, Washington’s marijuana advertising restrictions seemed constitutionally suspect under the logic of Lorillard Tobacco v. Reilly, the 2001 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state restrictions on outdoor tobacco ads. Those rules, like Washington’s, were aimed at shielding minors from ads for products they are not legally allowed to consume. The Court nevertheless held that the restrictions swept too broadly, barring outdoor tobacco advertising from “a substantial portion of Massachusetts’ largest cities” and in some places amounting to “nearly a complete ban on the communication of truthful information about smokeless tobacco and cigars to adult consumers.” But the Court also has held that the First Amendment does not protect “commercial speech related to illegal activity,” which, as far as the federal government is concerned, includes producing and selling marijuana.

In this case, however, Hempfest argues that the WSLCB is squelching noncommercial speech by discouraging marijuana businesses from participating in the festival. McPeak notes that “to single out particular speakers and businesses and prevent them from speaking on matters of public debate has been condemned in numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases.” And regardless of how federal courts would apply the First Amendment, Hempfest is also pressing claims under the state constitution.

Douglas Hiatt, one of the attorneys representing Hempfest, says federal marijuana prohibition should not be an issue in state court. “I don’t think our attorney general will be able to argue the federal position,” which implicates state officials in money laundering (via marijuana tax collection) and other federal felonies. “We are in state court, and I don’t think it’s relevant,” Hiatt says. “In this state, it’s legal.”

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Wall Street & The New Cold War

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

The stock market seems to rise or fall almost daily based on the latest news from the front lines of the trade wars.

When Trump threatens new tariffs and China threatens to retaliate in kind, stocks fall. When Trump delays the tariffs and China agrees to resume negotiations, stocks rise. And so it goes. It has been this way since January 2018 when the trade war began.

The latest dust-up came late last week when Trump threatened tariffs against Mexico if it doesn’t do more to curb illegal immigration to the U.S. Markets sold off on Friday as a result, bringing a terrible May to an end. Largely due to the trade war, the stock market had its worst May in seven years.

From the start, Wall Street underestimated the impact of the trade war. First they said Trump was bluffing. Then the analysts said that Trump and Xi would put their differences aside and make an historic deal.

All of these analyses were wrong. The trade war was problematic from the start and is growing worse today.

China will lose the trade war. The reasons are obvious. Foreign trade is a much larger percentage of Chinese GDP than it is for the U.S., so a trade war was always bound to have more impact on China than the U.S.

And if China tries to match the U.S. in tariffs dollar for dollar, they run out of headroom at $150 billion while the U.S. can keep going up to $500 billion and inflict far more pain on China.

Other forms of Chinese retaliation are mostly nonstarters. They cannot dump U.S. Treasuries without hurting their own reserve position and risking an account freeze by the U.S. China cannot turn up the pressure by stealing intellectual property because they’re already doing that to the greatest extent possible.

China’s latest threat is to ban exports of “rare earths” to the U.S. and its allies. Rare earths are essential for the production of plasma screens, fiber optics, lasers and other high-tech applications. Electric vehicles, mobile phones and telecommunications systems would be impossible to build without them. China is responsible for 90% of global production, which makes them a potent weapon in the U.S.-China trade wars.

“Rare” earths aren’t actually that rare. They are plentiful in quantity. The problem is that they are found in extremely low concentrations. This means a huge amount of ore and expensive mining processes are needed to extract even a small amount of these vital substances.

So rare earths are one weapon China possesses.

But over time, Western powers can replace rare earths purchased from China. There could be major manufacturing disruption in the meantime, it’s true. But it would not be the end of the world.

The U.S. will win the trade war and either China will open its markets and buy more U.S. goods or the Chinese economy will slow significantly.

But while the trade war is important, it’s not the main event.

The trade war is part of a much larger struggle between China and the U.S. for hegemony in Asia and the Western Pacific.

They are locked in a new cold war being fought on many fronts. These include trade; technology; rights of passage in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea; and alliances in South Asia, where China’s Belt and Road Initiative is promising billions of dollars for infrastructure development.

The U.S. is responding with arms deals and bilateral trade deals to counter Chinese influence. Even if a modest trade deal is worked out with China this summer, it will not put an end to the larger struggle now underway.

What are the implications?

If the Chinese view the trade war as just one step in a protracted cold war, which I believe they do, then we’re in for a long period of contracting growth that will not be confined to China but will affect the entire world.

That seems the most likely outcome for now. Get set for slower growth and perhaps stagflation. It could be like the late 1970s all over again.

Slowly, Wall Street is taking the trade wars seriously. But it is still missing its larger implications of a new cold war.

This new cold war could last for decades and it will affect the entire global economy. Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn into a shooting war.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2MuXOSQ Tyler Durden

Australian Police Raided a Newsroom and a Journalist’s Home for Reporting on Government Secrets

Earlier today, Australian Federal Police (AFP) raided the offices of a media outlet responsible for a series of stories alleging unlawful killings and misconduct by Australian troops in Afghanistan, published back in 2017. This follows on the heels of a raid earlier in the week, in which the police searched the home of a journalist who reported in 2018 that the government was considering expanding secret surveillance of citizens.

Both reports were based on documents that were leaked to journalists, and it’s obvious that both raids are attempts to track down the sources of the leaks. No journalists were arrested or charged with crimes.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC, no relation to the American company with the same acronym) published the series of stories about the behavior of Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan, including allegations that they killed unarmed men and children. The reports leaked to ABC indicated that some incidents were being investigated as unlawful killings.

This morning, AFP raided ABC’s Sydney headquarters. Law enforcement finally left the building after spending eight hours copying files connected to the news coverage onto two USB drives.

Yesterday morning, the AFP raided the Canberra home of Annika Smethurst, a journalist with News Corp who reported the plans to potentially expand domestic surveillance of citizens. As with ABC, Smethurst’s reporting was based on leaks of secret documents provided to her from sources likely working with or within Australia’s government.

ABC’s reporting of the raid on their own office notes that the justification for these searches comes from Section 79 of Australia’s Crime Act of 1914, which criminalizes the exposure of government secrets.

Though it’s unlikely any of these journalists would ever be charged with crimes, representatives for both ABC and News Corp expressed outrage at the searches, which seem intended to discourage government employees from leaking secrets to the press:

ABC managing director David Anderson said it was “highly unusual for the national broadcaster to be raided in this way”.

“This is a serious development and raises legitimate concerns over freedom of the press and proper public scrutiny of national security and Defence matters,” he said.

“The ABC stands by its journalists, will protect its sources and continue to report without fear or favour on national security and intelligence issues when there is a clear public interest.”

It’s also worth noting that these raids happened just days after federal election results were hammered out in Australia, preserving incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Liberal/National Party coalition’s government majority for three more years. Morrison didn’t seem terribly concerned that the police were raiding the homes and offices of journalists, stating, “It never troubles me that our laws are being upheld.” He also declined to state whether he supported the expansion of surveillance authorities Smethurst exposed in her reporting.

These stories were not reckless publications of secret government documents; ABC exposed troubling behavior by the country’s military in a war zone while Smethurst exposed government officials recommending more surveillance tools to be used secretly against the country’s own citizens.

Government officials like Morrison are presenting these leaks as dangerous events that have to be stopped because they reveal information that’s supposed to be withheld from the public. But that’s simply not the case here—Australians have every right to know these stories. These examples look very clearly as though officials are declaring this information to be classified government secrets because they don’t want their own citizens to know about the contents, not because there’s any sort of legitimate national security interest.

Below, watch more about these raids and the responses from The Project, on Australia’s Channel 10:

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The Declension Narrative

Historians are storytellers. And cultural historians often tell stories about stories. That’s why writing for this project appealed to me so much.

We’re a country with a lot of stories, of course. They’re the product of our diverse origins and our large, geographically varied land. We’re going to be a brilliant mess forever, I expect.

And what story should I tell in this cacophony? As I thought about the project I’d been invited to write for, I imagined would probably be a lot of familiar and compelling stories that various people would champion for one reason or another—but which one would be mine? And whose story would be the truest?

Well. It wouldn’t mine, anyway. I didn’t even try to tell a true story. My chapter is about a certain type of false story, but one that we love to tell anyway. It’s called the declension narrative. It’s a familiar story, and it’s always letting us down.

The declension narrative is simple to describe: There was a golden age, but we don’t live there anymore. We live in a time of decay and decline, and the process of decline can at best be slowed. It cannot be stopped. The best we can hope for is to hold to the past, no matter what, even as it slips from our grasp. In every way that matters, progress is illusory, at least for us.

Humans have been repeating the declension narrative in one form or another since Hesiod and Homer, with help from Confucius, Plato, and the Buddha. Stories patterned on the declension narrative are everywhere once you start looking for them.

That might be the first clue that something’s amiss: Suppose that human beings have innate cognitive biases. What would that look like? We wouldn’t be able to recognize that they’re wrong, because they’re our cognitive biases. They look good to us, that’s what makes them effective. Viewed from the inside, our cognitive biases probably look like stories that repeat themselves a lot, stories that turn up everywhere you look for them.

The truth does that too, of course, at least for some kinds of truth. Sorting the one from the other is perhaps for philosophers or psychologists, not historians. Can it really be the case, though, that the whole world has been going to hell since Hesiod? Some have thought so, including everyone from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Unabomber.

If you’ve been thinking that the declension narrative only belongs to the other guys, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. It’s all over American culture too. Oddly enough, it’s on the political left as well as the political right. I’m a libertarian, and even we’ve told it more often than we probably should. My chapter is about a familiar story, and it’s about why and how to stop telling it.

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Russia, China Prepare To Dump Dollar, Agree To Bilateral Trade In National Currencies

Just one month after conducting joint military exercises, Russia and China are set to sign an agreement which would boost the use of their national currencies in bilateral and international trade in an attempt to mmove away from the current dollar-denominated financial system, according to Russian state-owned news outlet TASS.

It is planned that Russia and China will be developing bilateral payments in national currencies, encourage and expand the use of national currencies, particularly through promotion of their use when signing international trade contracts. According to the draft agreement, the sides will also assume required measures to lift barriers for payments in national currencies. –TASS

The Kremlin released a draft decree on Wednesday outlining “settlements and payments for goods, service and direct investments between economic entities of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China are made in accordance with the international practice and the legislation of the sides’ states with the use of foreign currency, the Russian currency (rubles) and the Chinese currency (yuan).”

According to the draft, Moscow and Beijing will cooperate to develop a national payments system, along with cross-border payments in national and other currencies. 

“The sides deepen the cooperation in the field of national payment card systems and within the framework of the Russian and Chinese legislation provide support to commercial banks in their independent decision-making on joining the payment system in the state of the other side,” reads the document. 

Last November, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that discussions were under way to allow the use of China’s UnionPay credit card in Russia, and Russia’s Mir card in China. 

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (left) and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People in November. Photo: EPA

“No one currency should dominate the market, because this makes all of us dependent on the economic situation in the country that issues this reserve currency, even when we are talking about a strong economy such as the United States,” Medvedev said last year. 

“I want to say something that may raise a few eyebrows, but I think some of these [US] sanctions are good or useful because they forced us to do what we should have done 10 years ago,” he added. 

Beijing and the Kremlin have grown considerably close in recent years

On Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping touted a new level of relations with Russia during his three-day visit. “Step by step, we’ve been able to bring our relations to the highest level in history,” said Xi. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin chimed in, adding as he kicked off the meeting that ties between the two countries are “at an unprecedented level.” 

“We confirmed that the positions of Russia and China on key world problems are close, or as the diplomats say, coincide,” said Putin after the first round of discussions with Xi – who he called a “dear friend.” 

Xi, who will address a flagship investment forum Friday in the Russian leader’s hometown of St. Petersburg, will sign about 30 documents with Putin after the talks focused on trade, investment and energy. Bilateral trade increased last year by about a quarter to a record $108 billion. The countries’ first natural gas pipeline is due to open later this year and China is investing in Russia’s Yamal Arctic LNG project. –Bloomberg

 Xi brought two Chinese pandas to donate to the Moscow Zoo. Later, the Chinese leader will attend the opening of a Chinese car plant, before receiving an honorary doctorate from Putin’s alma mater in St. Petersburg on Thursday. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IpLBcv Tyler Durden

Australian Police Raided a Newsroom and a Journalist’s Home for Reporting on Government Secrets

Earlier today, Australian Federal Police (AFP) raided the offices of a media outlet responsible for a series of stories alleging unlawful killings and misconduct by Australian troops in Afghanistan, published back in 2017. This follows on the heels of a raid earlier in the week, in which the police searched the home of a journalist who reported in 2018 that the government was considering expanding secret surveillance of citizens.

Both reports were based on documents that were leaked to journalists, and it’s obvious that both raids are attempts to track down the sources of the leaks. No journalists were arrested or charged with crimes.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC, no relation to the American company with the same acronym) published the series of stories about the behavior of Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan, including allegations that they killed unarmed men and children. The reports leaked to ABC indicated that some incidents were being investigated as unlawful killings.

This morning, AFP raided ABC’s Sydney headquarters. Law enforcement finally left the building after spending eight hours copying files connected to the news coverage onto two USB drives.

Yesterday morning, the AFP raided the Canberra home of Annika Smethurst, a journalist with News Corp who reported the plans to potentially expand domestic surveillance of citizens. As with ABC, Smethurst’s reporting was based on leaks of secret documents provided to her from sources likely working with or within Australia’s government.

ABC’s reporting of the raid on their own office notes that the justification for these searches comes from Section 79 of Australia’s Crime Act of 1914, which criminalizes the exposure of government secrets.

Though it’s unlikely any of these journalists would ever be charged with crimes, representatives for both ABC and News Corp expressed outrage at the searches, which seem intended to discourage government employees from leaking secrets to the press:

ABC managing director David Anderson said it was “highly unusual for the national broadcaster to be raided in this way”.

“This is a serious development and raises legitimate concerns over freedom of the press and proper public scrutiny of national security and Defence matters,” he said.

“The ABC stands by its journalists, will protect its sources and continue to report without fear or favour on national security and intelligence issues when there is a clear public interest.”

It’s also worth noting that these raids happened just days after federal election results were hammered out in Australia, preserving incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Liberal/National Party coalition’s government majority for three more years. Morrison didn’t seem terribly concerned that the police were raiding the homes and offices of journalists, stating, “It never troubles me that our laws are being upheld.” He also declined to state whether he supported the expansion of surveillance authorities Smethurst exposed in her reporting.

These stories were not reckless publications of secret government documents; ABC exposed troubling behavior by the country’s military in a war zone while Smethurst exposed government officials recommending more surveillance tools to be used secretly against the country’s own citizens.

Government officials like Morrison are presenting these leaks as dangerous events that have to be stopped because they reveal information that’s supposed to be withheld from the public. But that’s simply not the case here—Australians have every right to know these stories. These examples look very clearly as though officials are declaring this information to be classified government secrets because they don’t want their own citizens to know about the contents, not because there’s any sort of legitimate national security interest.

Below, watch more about these raids and the responses from The Project, on Australia’s Channel 10:

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2XsurBB
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Is The Tech Bubble Bursting?

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

There are two other trends that don’t attract quite the media attention that soaring profits do.

Is the decade-long tech bubble finally popping? Tech bulls are overlooking the fundamental reality that the drivers of Big tech’s phenomenal growth–financialization and expansion into mobile telephony– are both losing momentum.

A third dynamic–Big Tech monetizing privately owned assets such as vehicles and homes– has also reached saturation and is now facing regulatory barriers.

Let’s start with market saturation: of the 5.3 billion adults on earth over 15 years of age, 5 billion now have a mobile phone and 4 billion have a smartphone: The end of mobile (Benedict Evans). As for teens between 10 and 15, only the truly impoverished don’t have a mobile phone of some kind.

As I discuss below, the primary dynamic of the past decade has been the integration of web-based services into mobile telephony. By any measure, that cycle is now complete.

I recently explored technology’s ties to financialization and deflationary trends in prices and profits: Two Intertwined Dynamics Are Transforming the Economy: Technology and Financialization

Technology Is Not Just Disruptive, It’s Disastrously Deflationary

The basic idea here is that the tech bubble has been inflated by a unique set of circumstances:

— financialization, one manifestation of which is unprofitable Unicorn companies going public at lofty valuations (see chart)

— the establishment of quasi-monopolies that have become immensely profitable.

These conditions are changing.

1. Many tech giants (Microsoft and Apple) are moving to monthly services, in effect becoming profitable utilities. These may be profitable but they are no longer fast-growing in terms of revenues or profit margins.

2. Calls for regulation of lightly regulated data-based corporations (Facebook and Google) are rising.

3. The weakness of Lyft and Uber stocks after their IPOs suggest a weakening appetite for betting on growth at any cost as a business model.

4. The profitable build-out of the past decade has been integrating web services with mobile telephony and data-mining social media and search. These have now been built out, so the tech cycle has reached stagnation in the S-Curve–a reality visible in Google’s recent earnings disappointment.

There are two other trends that don’t attract quite the media attention that soaring profits do:

1. Previous tech cycles / bubbles were founded on technologies that had the potential to greatly boost productivity. This cycle ( integrating web services with mobile telephony) is more about consumer convenience and distribution of services such as AirBNB and Uber than productivity.

To the degree that entertainment and the addictive distractions of social media are now at everyone’s fingertips, and people are checking their phones hundreds of times a day, productivity has suffered rather than increased.

2. The services that are now distributed to mobile telephony are tremendously deflationary to revenues and profits. To note just one example of many, with a smart phone in hand, there’s no longer any need to buy a camera or portable music player.

More pernicious is the deflationary impact on revenues and wages. The number of Uber drivers who earn the equivalent of what taxi drivers once earned (no great sum in most cases) is small.

In effect, Uber monetized an under-utilized asset–individuals’ privately owned autos– and stripped out the labor overhead that accompanies employment(and makes it expensive to employers).

These moves transfer income to the owner of the distribution network (Uber, AirBNB, etc.) while offering a slice of income to the owner of the asset being monetized (the privately owned auto or flat).

Whatever income security exists in this distribution of income goes to the owner of the distribution network (Uber, AirBNB etc.) rather than the owner of the asset that’s being monetized.

The labor component of the service is poorly paid and stripped of income security and other standard benefits: Uber drivers don’t qualify for unemployment, disability, healthcare etc. unless they pay those very costly labor overhead expenses out of their own pocket.

This model is under pressure on multiple fronts. Municipalities are starting to push back against the monetization of housing that’s zoned for residential use only, and against the low wages and zero benefits paid to “gig economy” workers.

In other words, it isn’t just absurd IPO valuations that are suggesting this tech bubble is about to burst–the fundamentals of the business models and the deflationary impact of technology are about to reduce the cash flows and profits of tech companies.

As for the fantasy that AI and machine learning will generate trillions in profits: as I explained in Is the World Becoming Wealthier or Poorer? (March 27, 2019) there is nothing intrinsically profitable about machine learning, robotics or AI.

Rather, each is extraordinarily deflationary to profits as each is readily commoditized.

*  *  *

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook): Read the first section for free in PDF format. My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF). My book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition. Read the first section for free in PDF format. If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. New benefit for subscribers/patrons: a monthly Q&A where I respond to your questions/topics.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Mvm1Io Tyler Durden

France Takes Aim Against Legal Analytics

According to a story in the Artificial Lawyer [here], France has enacted a new law that will criminalize the “reuse” (“reutilisation”) of the “identity data of magistrates and members of the judiciary”(“Les données d’identité des magistrats et des membres du greffe”) for the purpose of “evaluating, analysing, comparing or predicting their actual or alleged professional practices” (“pour objet ou pour effet d’évaluer, d’analyser, de comparer ou de prédire leurs pratiques professionnelles réelles ou supposées”).  [The French version can be found here]

The target, apparently, are companies offering legal analytics and modeling services designed to find patterns in the decisions of particular magistrates and to predict their future decision-making performance, which have sprung up in the wake of the French government’s (laudable) efforts to make all case law publicly-accessible online. [A good example of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences]

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France Takes Aim Against Legal Analytics

According to a story in the Artificial Lawyer [here], France has enacted a new law that will criminalize the “reuse” (“reutilisation”) of the “identity data of magistrates and members of the judiciary”(“Les données d’identité des magistrats et des membres du greffe”) for the purpose of “evaluating, analysing, comparing or predicting their actual or alleged professional practices” (“pour objet ou pour effet d’évaluer, d’analyser, de comparer ou de prédire leurs pratiques professionnelles réelles ou supposées”).  [The French version can be found here]

The target, apparently, are companies offering legal analytics and modeling services designed to find patterns in the decisions of particular magistrates and to predict their future decision-making performance, which have sprung up in the wake of the French government’s (laudable) efforts to make all case law publicly-accessible online. [A good example of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences]

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2WmhXyV
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