The big conflict of our age is between Big Government and the MAAFIA (Microsoft Apple Alphabet Facebook Instagram Amazon), says Craig Sams. The implications for health freedom are profound.
Recently Theresa May has been making threatening noises about needing to control the internet and social media for ‘national security’ reasons. The press, including the erstwhile freedom-loving Guardian, are full of articles somberly bemoaning the hazards of allowing the free-for-all of viewpoints that the internet allows.
This new transparency is driving our rulers crazy. It used to be that you could do what you liked in the corridors of power. You could cut deals with drug companies to prohibit alternatives to their products that sell with 1000% (at least) markups via the NHS You could declare war on innocent countries in order to bring them democracy, killing hundreds of thousands of innocents while sustaining the market for the bombs and missiles that create profits. Whenever I read an argument for nuclear power, military expenditure or protection of pharmaceutical makers and see the word ‘jobs’ I see red. Claiming ‘jobs’ is the last refuge of the scoundrel, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson (on patriotism).
Google was recently fined €2.3 billion for stacking the deck on price comparison. Big deal. Nobody uses those sites anymore – just go to Amazon and you can see it all. This is just an EU way of taxing a company that is making the world a more efficient and economically smarter place.
The big conflict of our age is between Big Government and the MAAFIA (Microsoft Apple Alphabet Facebook Instagram Amazon). Big Government rules us by force, with a momentary opportunity every four or five years, to consent to more rule by force. The MAAFIA rules us by consent. We voluntarily let them have our personal data because we trust them in a way that we would never trust a government. They give us something back: convenience; money saving; time saving; instant access to massive amounts of knowledge; safety; social networking. They let competing ideas fight it out on their platforms. If you want insights into how to be healthy you don’t look on a government website, you go to Google or ask your Facebook friends. If you want to know what the Government thinks just study the lobbyists from FOWAP (Finance, Oil, War, Agribusiness, Pharma). They set the Government agenda and the mainstream media dutifully tell us it’s for our own good.
The Government takes our money, as taxes, then insists that our ‘free’ medical system revolves around addictive overpriced drugs with horrific side effects. If you try to offer a herbal remedy for illness, or other natural treatments that don’t have side effects, you could end up in jail. The Government taxes soft drinks to raise £500 million a year and then blows £250 million a year on subsidies to sugar producers. And we elect them!
The MAAFIA is here to stay. Of course, the mainstream media will egg on the Government to control it while still defending themselves against press censorship. The Guardian and The Times are both watching helplessly as their readership defects to online forums. How frustrating it must be for a journalist who has worked their way up the pecking order at a newspaper and then finds that some kid with a three million following on Instagram is being courted by advertisers because their followers trust them more than the recycled press releases they can read in a newspaper.
Hands off the MAAFIA! It has been created in our image and carefully reflects our every thought and deed to make sure that it is a true manifestation of what we most care about. It is immune to lobbyists and political bribes. It is our gateway to true freedom.
