Andy Kessler

WSJ: Don’t Buy Into Big-Tech Hysteria

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-buy-into-big-tech-hysteria-11582484198

Is Big Tech “downgrading humanity”? So says former Googler and podcaster Tristan (rhymes with “twist-on”) Harris, director of the weirdly named Center for Humane Technology. Mr. Harris and many of his fellow tech skeptics describe humans as little different from pets, believing everyone who uses Facebook or an iPhone is a manipulatable idiot. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Mr. Harris preaches about an “attention crisis.” OK, you have my attention. Testifying before the Senate last year, he said tech companies are in a “race to the bottom of the brain stem.” He also claimed humans in the 21st century still have “Paleolithic emotions.” Basically, “we’re chimpanzees with nukes.” Wait, did he just call you a chimp?

Elsewhere he has claimed that social networks are delivering “outrage that works on the piano key of your nervous system.” The man can certainly turn a phrase. He explains that “technology is getting better and better at hacking human weaknesses.” And you’d better put down that glass, because “we’re drinking from the Flint water supply of information.”

Mr. Harris’s most fevered claim is that social media has taken over politics. “We’re not really in control of world history anymore,” he says. “The technology companies that are shaping our information sense-making environment are in control of every major electoral outcome, and whether people believe conspiracy theories.” And there it is. It isn’t Hillary Clinton’s fault she lost in 2016. It was maybe the Russians and certainly Big Bad Tech. Mr. Harris insists “one side is currently winning by there not being regulation.” You can probably guess which one he means.

Mr. Harris believes “we’ve been manipulated into this multiyear-long hypnotic trance,” and that “we need someone to snap their fingers and wake all of us up out of this.” A savior, a messiah. Might that someone be Mr. Harris?

Alarmism can be a lucrative business.

WSJ: President Donald J. MacGuffin

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/president-donald-j-macguffin-11581278117

Is he a disease or a cure? Like him or hate him, there’s tons of spilled ink trying to assess President Trump’s governing style. To me, the key to understanding Trumpism is remembering why he was elected.

What do I mean? Voters chose Donald Trump as an antidote to the growing inflammation caused by the (OK, deep breath . . .) prosperity-crushing, speech-inhibiting, nanny state-building, carbon-obsessing, patriarchy-bashing, implicit bias-accusing, tokey-wokey, globalist, swamp-creature governing class—all perfectly embodied by the Democrats’ 2016 nominee. On taking office, Mr. Trump proceeded to hire smart people and create a massive diversion (tweets, border walls, tariffs) as a smokescreen to let them implement an agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and originalist judges.

Those reforms have left the market free to do its magic and got the economy grooving like it’s 1999. The daily Trump hurricane—like the commotion over the Chiefs from Kansas—makes the media focus on the all-powerful wizard while ignoring the policy makers behind the curtain.

Alfred Hitchcock called this kind of distraction a “MacGuffin”—something that moves the plot along and provides motivation for the characters, but is itself unimportant, insignificant or irrelevant. It can be a kind of sleight of hand, a distraction, and Mr. Trump uses his own public persona as a MacGuffin in precisely that way. The mobs decked in “Resist” jewelry fall for it every time.

For example, Sen. Bernie Sanders used his remarks during the Senate impeachment trial to point out that the media had documented some 16,200 alleged lies by President Trump. The MacGuffin worked! Mr. Sanders and his peers are focused on the president’s words, while most voters see the real plot unfolding in America—millions of jobs and rising wages.

The president’s success comes from his ability to shrug off critics. My son went to college in the early days of the social justice power grab. He recalls heated discussions in which someone would interrupt him to say, “Sorry, but you don’t get a say—you have white privilege.” My son would shoot right back: “Yeah, I don’t believe in that,” and resume his argument.

WSJ: How I Almost Bought the Knicks

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-i-almost-bought-the-knicks-11580673783

Kobe Bryant dropped 61 points on the New York Knicks on Feb. 2, 2009, at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks have been painfully awful for years, appearing in the playoffs only five times since 2000. Here’s a secret: I almost bought the Knicks. Well, “almost” is a stretch.

Sitting bored at my desk at Morgan Stanley in 1994, I got a call from a college friend, John Demitroff, then a G.X. Clarke & Co. bond salesman. “You work for an investment-banking company,” he said. “Could you help Dave DeBusschere and me buy the Knicks?” I think I spit out my coffee.

It turned out that seven years earlier John had overheard that the EF Hutton brokerage firm was raising a $350 million fund to buy National Basketball Association franchises. The next day he read an article about DeBusschere and left a message to pitch him on a business opportunity buying NBA teams. Now this made some sense: No. 22 DeBusschere was an NBA champion, hall of famer, eight-time All Star and even the commissioner of the American Basketball Association when it merged with the NBA in 1976. An old boss had told my friend, “When you see an opportunity, just ask. You never know.”

Sage advice. Amazingly, DeBusschere called back the next day and they met at a downtown New York diner. John explained that he had a buyer (EF Hutton) and needed sellers. DeBusschere knew everyone in the NBA—would he be interested? DeBusschere agreed and they even signed a short partnership deal. And then . . . nothing happened. EF Hutton kited checks and was sold to Shearson Lehman. The partnership unraveled.

Now jump ahead to ’94. The Knicks (along with the Rangers, Madison Square Garden and the MSG Network) were put up for sale by Viacom, which had taken control of its owner, Paramount. That’s when my friend called for help. I was an analyst following tech companies, not even an investment banker; we were just a couple of know-nothing 30-somethings. No matter—I was in.

The first thing I told John was to get “the book.”