In previous posts about the battle for control of the Cato Institute, I’ve noted (Part I) that the “Koch side” is a variety of different actors with different motivations who collectively seem not to apprehend the Cato Institute’s value. Next (Part II), I looked at why the Koch side is fairly the object of the greater scrutiny: their precipitous filing of the original lawsuit.
My premise has been that the Koch side cares. That is, I’ve assumed that they want to preserve Cato and see its role in the libertarian movement continue. Some evidence to undercut that assumption has come around, namely, their filing of a second lawsuit—and now a third! [Update: Mea culpa—there hasn’t been a third lawsuit. Just a new report of the second one. I had assumed the second was filed in state court and thus thought this was distinct. I’m not following the legal issues, obviously, which matter very little.]
The Koch side may be “on tilt.” Lawsuit-happy, win-at-any-cost. We will just have to wait and see.
For the time being, I will continue to assume that the Koch side has the best interests of liberty in mind and explore the dispute from that perspective. I owe the world some discussion of Cato-side miscalculation—of course, there is some—but before I get to that in my next post, I think it’s worth talking about the burden of proof in the Kochs’ campaign to take control of Cato.
Only fringies will deny that the Cato Institute adds some value to the liberty movement. It does. The question—if preservation of liberty is the goal—is how well it will do so in the future. The central
substantive issue in the case—there are many side issues—is how Cato will operate in the future.
Now, here’s a quick primer on public campaigns and the difference between the “yes” side and the “no” side. Continue reading →
Last week, I posted about the conflict between the Koch brothers and the Cato Institute, threatening to make that post first in a series. Never let it be said that I don’t follow through on my threats, sometimes.
Recapping: I believe the Koch brothers want what’s best for liberty, but the actions of the “Koch side”—an array of actors with differing motivations and strategies—may not be serving that goal. This seems due to miscalculation: the Koch side seems not to recognize how much of the Cato Institute’s value is in its reputational capital, capital which would be despoiled by a Koch takeover. I basically fleshed out an early point of Jonathan Adler’s on the Volokh Conspiracy.
But why is it the Koch side that gets the attention and not the Cato side? Continue reading →
Over just the past 24 hours, there’s been quite a hullabaloo surrounding the Wall Street Journal’s controversial front-page story on Google’s edge caching plan and whether it violates Net neutrality. (See Cord’s post and Bret’s). Lessig calls it a “made-up drama“, David Isenberg says it’s “bogus” and “bullshit,” and Google’s Rick Whitt has said it’s much ado about nothing.
Regardless, here’s the important thing not to overlook about this episode: It is a prime example of the what Tim Lee has referred to as “the fundamental problem of backlash” that ensues whenever there is even
a hint of a potential violation of network neutrality (however one defines it). As Tim argued in his excellent Cato paper on Net neutrality, “No widespread manipulation would go unnoticed for very long,” and a “firestorm of controversy would… be unleashed if a major network owner embarked on a systematic campaign of censorship on its network.” (p. 23). Indeed, this (non-)story about Google’s edge-caching plans have spawned an intense “firestorm of controversy” over the past 24 hours and it doesn’t even involve serious network meddling or censorship! I’ve been trying to keep up with all the traffic about this on TechMeme and Google News during that time, but I have given up trying to digest it all. (Take a look at those snapshots I pasted down below to get a feel for the volume we are talking about here).
In that regard, I love this quote from the always-bloodthirsty Tim Karr of the (inappropriately-named) regulatory activist group Free Press:
If Google or any other tech company were secretly violating Net Neutrality, there would be an absolute and cataclysmic backlash from the grassroots and netroots who have made Net Neutrality a signature issue in 21st Century politics. The Internet community would come crashing down on their heads like Minutemen on Benedict Arnold.
Indeed, that’s exactly what we saw today. But it wasn’t just pro-regulatory fanatics like Free Press. The entire tech and business blogoshere and even some of the mainstream media were on top of this. That’s the “fundamental problem of backlash” at work, and with a vengeance.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.