Save the Constitution from Big Tech (WSJ)

Liberals should worry too. If big tech can shut down the president, what stops them from doing the same to Joe Biden if he backs antitrust suits against social-media companies? Our Framers deeply understood the need for checks and balances in government. They couldn’t anticipate the rise of a new Leviathan with unchecked power to make extraconstitutional political judgments under the mantle of private enterprise.

 American democracy is under siege from Silicon Valley’s political plutocracy. Next week Mr. Trump will be a private citizen without a Twitter account. Our new class of corporate monarchs will still control whether and how Americans can hear from the president—or anyone else. We have devolved from a three-branch federal government to one with a branch office in Silicon Valley. But there’s no democratic accountability for Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg.

--"Save the Constitution from Big Tech" WSJ, 1/11/2021

There is a lot going on here, and I agree with the authors' points for the most part, but another little thought crept in.  In Civilization: Call To Power (the only non-Sid-Meiers-created Civilization iteration), there was a future-gov option called Corporate Republic, where the major companies ran the government.  While some called this a critique of capitalism, I saw a hidden salute.  Corporate republics had to be run for the benefit of the corporations, who still had to generate profits.  But what they found was that the best way to generate profits was ...to keep the people happy by raising their standard of living.  If they didn't do that, revolutions would break out.  The FANGed monsters will need to realize this if they intend to hold power for any real length of time.

And as well, everyone's a wise sage until the paradigm shifts, and then they're idiots again. Trump's super-power was that he shifted (temporarily) the paradigm.  The Left is both doing well and playing a fool's game in tamping down the Right.  It is well in the short run and perhaps the middle run to create a uniform landscape.  The big problem happens when the paradigm starts to shift, and the Powers That Are find themselves holding a wolf by the ears.  

Want a self-fulfilling prophecy?  Tamp down the Right because you're afraid "the next one" will be even worse.