By skyforbes 
A “market of ideas” is the foundation of a liberal country.
If TikTok’s influence on the US election can make the difference between winning and losing, then TikTok is Trump’s balls. If X (Twitter) can do the same, then, TikTok will be Zhang Yiming’s ball. Whose balls it is, and who will have to pay the highest price.
Social media has influenced mass thinking in a unique way from the day it emerged. When entrepreneurs realized this influence, they started designing all kinds of algorithms that exploited human weaknesses, and even today, with the assistance of AI, they have improved their precision influence on the minds of individuals.
TikTok’s algorithm is recognized as the precise influence on thought №1, and Musk’s improvements in the X (Twitter) algorithm were learned from TikTok. In a day when the American people are deeply polarized and divided in their ideas, the two parties may be won or lost by the critical 5% of the middle voters. So, “Dim Mak,” the precision influence on mass thinking may have changed the overall political ecology of the United States.
Who made the balls of TikTok? You could say it was Zhang Yiming. But Zhang Yiming is nothing more than a devil let loose by exploiting human weakness. The first person to ban TikTok was Trump, whose reason was national security. Trump’s ban in his first term was overturned by a federal court, with judges concerned about free speech and due process violations.
But the Democrats, led by Biden, enacted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Control Applications Act (PAFACA) in 2024. This bill is creating a hijacking material for opponents. The Democrats are hoisting the flag of their ideals against their own. They forget that angels apart from God are devils. The human world is Shura Field, where the fight between the asura and Śakra-led deva. In Buddhist lore, the Asuras have beauty but no food, while the Śakra-led deva have food but no beauty. The two sides either fight each other or cooperate through exchange.
Human cooperation is not due to altruistic angelic hearts but is based on self-interest, with devils compromising with each other to form rules of the game that can coexist peacefully. Freedom of speech is to protect the devil’s voice and thus protect the devil from the devil.
Capitalism holds up the banner of liberty against socialism, but capitalist governments have always tried to regulate the people’s liberty. The core idea of regulatory capitalism is to correct the allocation of resources in the market and to dominate the direction of economic development through government regulation. If regulation could be successful, then markets for free trade would have long since ceased to exist in this world.
Liberty is a right! When liberty can be distinguished between good and bad liberty, negative and positive liberty, God-given (a priori) liberty, and human spontaneity (a posteriori) liberty, then liberty no longer exists. There is only liberty to have or not to have, more or less. The regulatory capitalism of the Democrats and the crony capitalism of Trump are hurting liberty. The market is the guarantee of individual rights, of freedom through free choice in production and consumption. The same applies to the market of ideas. Those who worry that people’s minds are being poisoned should first ask if their own minds have been poisoned.
No one knows who’s the one with the most critical balls for the next election. But sadly, no one is really serious about how and how much algorithms and AI are hurting the independent minds of the people either. When the Democrats stop the devil’s voice, they stop the angels from singing. The scary thing isn’t TikTok’s effect on people’s minds, it’s the fact that TikTok has no competition to compete with under the market of regulated capitalism. And now, TikTok will be in the pocket of crony capitalism!
No doctrine can ever be correct to lead the future, much less be the only God who guides people’s lives. Opinions can compete with each other, but people with different views do not need to kill each other. Only a free “market of ideas” is the foundation of a liberal nation.
Arno Will, April 5, 2025
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Theory of Relativity in Economics — The Coase Theorem Under the Mass Critique
Welfare and the Welfare State
Welfare and the Welfare State — Starving Youth
Welfare and the Welfare State — Origins and History
Welfare and the Welfare State — Rights and Liberty
Last Dignity of the Poor — Organ trade, the poor to live, as well as the rich renew their lives?
