111–120 of 148 posts
You would have profile providers and interaction providers, and any of us would subscribe ourselves into the services we want to use, disconnecting whenever we didn't want to use e.g. Twitter or wanted to take a break. Within these joins, a person could control which of their PII they want to allow the service to have access to. You could run your own PII provider or join/pay for someone else to run it.
I think someone pointed out that "decentralization" is different from "democratization" and I would wholeheartedly agree. I think of both as independent variables which can be tuned in the construction of any organizational structure. Also to me the idea that democracy, as it pertains to business structures, should also be something that is tunable.
Projects like DAO's are great examples if highly distributed yet fairly undemocratic structures. As the core team creating them (and often monetizing them) do not nessecarily share power in the direction of the project. I am not advocating for or against that but just pointing it out.
But as history has shown there are real tradeoffs when you try and reach scale (in whatever metric) when you centralize democracy. It's my view that there is a sweet spot (and serious upside) for introducing decentralization and democratization into most projects, but it all depends on the use case. As a few examples take a look at the success of projects like stocksy.com (royalty based stock images company owned by the contributors), smart.coop (freelancers cooperative that handles contracts and billing). And of course Mondragon (https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/) which takes democracy in the workplace to an industrial scale.
At my current company (https://www.staffing.coop and https://www.tribeworks.io) we decided to form as a cooperative (instead of using a DAO) because it better fit our current needs. But we don't see this as a static choice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nearly every law in the US is a weaponized corporate action to prevent competition and secure market hold. That already happened. That is the root cause of the wealth disparity. You argue for more of the same. The government will not be able to fix problems it created. It will only make them worse.
This Friedman-like thinking and cute propaganda sound bytes just doesn't work tho Chile during the Pinochet Regime is an excellent example of the Neoliberal system not delivering on the promises, as hn_throwaway_99 mentioned, economies of scale simply take over any benefit of low gov friction "free markets", and any small advantage over time becomes an overwhelming one. At which point it simply becomes a mathematical…
I've been reading Robert Anton Wilson this morning, so I'm all hopped up on conspiracy theory (what do you call it when the conspiracies are real?) Anyhow, the system is "works as intended", in re: mass automation of society. You want decentralization because you want power. Let me tell you a story about power and decentralization: Many years ago a friend of mine an I were rambling in the Mission district (of SF) lat…
> Anyhow, the system is "works as intended", in re: mass automation of society. Wait, what is the idea that "the system has an intent" based on?
One aspect is the existential angst of the species, i.e. "Which is worse? That the world is ruled by the Iluminati. or that it isn't?" Is there a God or do we really have to do the job ourselves? Are we the victims of chance in an uncaring universe, and the sweep of progress merely an illusion? Or are we in fact the self-creating Telos of a sentient Universe?
Does Humanity have a Soul? If not, can we Create one?
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Even if we suppose that "the system" is ruled by an elite (which is arguably true†) can we suppose that the elite is unified and harmonious in their intent? Or are we caught up in "warfare between secret societies" after all? Certainly the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 can't be part of any sane plan, can it?
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In one of the Subgenius books there's a story about how humanity is actually a biological weapon of the anaerobic microbes used in their ancient war with the oxygen-breathers, and the current climate crisis is their gambit, we're doing our jobs.
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All I'm really saying is that both "system" and "intent" are open-ended terms...
"What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" (youtube.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698
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But yeah, the Internet et. al. are basically working in the way that the elite want them to to keep control of the masses, however imperfectly. Watch Hong Kong and you can see "the system" adapt in near-real-time. The next episode is happening right now.
† "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens"
> Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
One thing I don't see argued very much is that lowering barriers to entry and providing more frictionless access usually inevitably leads to more consolidation, not less. When there is very open access (e.g. "Anyone with a computer can spin up a website!") it means that users will choose services that even have small improvements or advantages, until those services build up so much market share that they inevitably h…
It's a key reason why technological improvements tend to increase rather than decrease inequality. Technology, generally, appears to serve wealth and power.
I'm not fully convinced this is a universal rule, though it seems at the very least a strong bias. It seems to fall from the observation that "all machines are amplifiers", which means that all machines are force multipliers.
It may be that there are technologies which are dissipators and can be used to deflect or divert attacks, though these still seem to favour the more heavily-capitalised party. Shields rather than swords or range weapons, or perhaps distracting / obscuring capabilities.
What makes for decentralised systems is increased frictions, whether physical, political, cultural, or social.
Where transport is expensive, materials are locally sourced, talent participates locally, government and business operate locally.
It was the factory system, mass production, transport, and advertising which allowed one factory or manufacturer to serve the whole world. Mind: specialisation means that there are probably many individual niches which can be filled, though horizontal and veritical integration may carve into this as well.
We already have a decentralized/federated social network with millions (probably billions) of users. It's called email, and it works pretty well--though not perfect, email illustrates that there's nothing intrinsically impossible about such systems.
Messaging systems (like emails) and social networks are not the same thing. Maybe mailing lists would be closer, but those are actually centralised.
Also: messaging is actually a very important part of social media companies' strategy (e.g. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nearly every law in the US is a weaponized corporate action to prevent competition and secure market hold. That already happened. That is the root cause of the wealth disparity. You argue for more of the same. The government will not be able to fix problems it created. It will only make them worse.
This Friedman-like thinking and cute propaganda sound bytes just doesn't work tho Chile during the Pinochet Regime is an excellent example of the Neoliberal system not delivering on the promises, as hn_throwaway_99 mentioned, economies of scale simply take over any benefit of low gov friction "free markets", and any small advantage over time becomes an overwhelming one. At which point it simply becomes a mathematical…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Enlightenment comes when you realize that being a consumer is not a 24/7 occupation. The same people who consume also need to be either small business owners, freelancers, or employees. In fact without the money from that, they couldn't be consumers in the first place. So what's bad for a consumer role can balance out or be very good if it helps keep more people making money as opposed to the "efficient single corpor…
Nearly every law in the US is a weaponized corporate action to prevent competition and secure market hold. That already happened. That is the root cause of the wealth disparity. You argue for more of the same. The government will not be able to fix problems it created. It will only make them worse.
What I proposed is the opposite: laws working against those mega-corporations in favor of many smaller corporations.
Only the people, through law, have the power to do that. The big corporate overlords, left to their own devices, wont be able to fix the problems they created. They will only make them worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This Friedman-like thinking and cute propaganda sound bytes just doesn't work tho Chile during the Pinochet Regime is an excellent example of the Neoliberal system not delivering on the promises, as hn_throwaway_99 mentioned, economies of scale simply take over any benefit of low gov friction "free markets", and any small advantage over time becomes an overwhelming one. At which point it simply becomes a mathematical…
But... Like... Economies of scale are literally what gave the capitalist West it's unthinkably high standard of living.
It's actually below most western European countries in most global metrics, including such basics as infant mortality. It trumps most in gun deaths and incarceration rates though, so there's that...
E.g.
http://premieroffshore.com/usa-is-best-country-in-the-world/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_the_...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180924190303.h...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-student...
And those countries have much less megacorps and "economies of scale"....