Windfall tax would be sticking-plaster policy for a short-sighted government Josh Williams Nothing is certain but death and taxes, goes Benjamin Franklin’s famous quip. As war grinds on in Ukraine, we have no shortage of the former. The question occupying the Treasury today is whether one should lead to the other. Should the energy giants’ huge recent profits – a direct result of the war in Ukraine [...]
Founder culture is a form of tyranny JOSH WILLIAMS Elon Musk may or may not buy Twitter. It was revealed this week that the sale, apparently agreed, has a $1bn break clause. If that sounds like a lot, remember that $1bn is small change to Elon. By my calculation, it is to him what the membership fee at my local, council-run swimming pool is [...]
Musk’s anarchic vision won’t help Twitter but a subscription model might Josh Williams In late January, an unknown investor began quietly building a stake in Twitter. A little over two months later, Elon Musk breached the surface. On April 4th, he revealed a 9.2 per cent stake. Though two days later an official filing corrected that to 9.1 per cent, Musk has become Twitter’s largest shareholder. Poor arithmetic [...]
European tech laws should tempt the next Silicon Valley to cross the Atlantic April 1, 2022 In the early years of the last century, Louis Brandeis of America’s Supreme Court believed that markets, without regulation, would destroy their most treasured characteristic, competition. It was Justice Brandeis, above all others, whose actions curtailed the oil industry’s “robber barons” and brought about the age of “antitrust”. Today, for the first time since, anti-monopolists [...]
Russians learn the only thing worse than social media is no social media March 18, 2022 This week, Instagram feeds in Russia went dark. With Facebook already blocked, Twitter access restricted and a threat of the same to Youtube, the Russian state is silencing fora of dissent. In this column, I have often criticised the social media giants. Their business models are built on their ability to surveil you. They have [...]
From Abramovich to the Saudis: Football clubs have become the laundry for muddy reputations March 4, 2022 In 2003, Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea Football Club. In the years thereafter, a perennial underachiever became one of the most successful clubs in English football, a five-times Premier League champion and twice winner of the Champions League, the pinnacle of European football. Today, they are the reigning European and world club champions. Results on the [...]
The spectre of entrenched inflation will soon hit loss-making start-ups hard February 18, 2022 Larry Summers was Treasury Secretary to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama’s Director of the National Economic Council, and President of Harvard University. When he offers an economic prediction, therefore, he is worth listening to. A recent one was sobering. Summers believes we are entering a period of “higher entrenched inflation”. Make no mistake: inflation is a [...]
New York Times’ pursuit of subscribers over profit buys into a Big Tech delusion February 4, 2022 Those five, elusive letters. Only when I have found them can my day begin. Alas, they may soon become more elusive still. This week, the New York Times bought Wordle for an undisclosed, seven-figure fee. Ominously, the “Gray Lady” has promised only that Wordle will “initially remain free”. The New York Times has been unusually [...]
The left’s polarising piety is its own worst enemy in the politics of climate January 21, 2022 Throughout much of the English speaking world, climate change is a politically polarising issue. In the United States, Canada and Australia, the left favours action while the right opposes it. How lucky we are that this is not the case in Britain. Here, more than a decade of Conservative government has seen the introduction of [...]
Even a well-told story won’t save Big Tech from the cold hard stare of global attention January 7, 2022 On December 30th, the historian Timothy Snyder published a review of unimprovable snideness in the New York Times. His victim was an American academic, Jonathan Gottschall, whose new book, “The Story Paradox”, examines the role of stories in society. In his book, Gottschall argues that the “science” of storytelling has been understudied and its power [...]
