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What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

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Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#131

Post by ClumsyPilot »

perl4ever wrote: post #122
coldtea wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't tell if sarcasm or not, but the US doesn't have some "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_t…

The World Bank[1] says in 2018, US GDP per capita was over $62K while the EU was under $37K. That seems like a huge difference to me and I don't think anybody really understands why it exists - American or not. It's salient not because it disproves your judgment (and that of many others) that the US is a dysfunctional hellhole, but because it is what people are compelled to rationalize away and obviously don't succee…

EU includes some poor countries that were recently under Soviet occupation.

And before that WW2 levelled entire cities, like capital of Poland was obliterated as it was bombed once when Germans took it, once when the Polish rose up, then again as Soviets took it.

At the dawn of computer era there was a wall, landmines and machine gun nests going though the centre of Berlin.

Isolate your comparison to northern Europe, spared by war and Soviets, and the difference in GDP is no longer in US favour.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#132

Post by jasonhansel »

viraptor wrote: post #127
jasonhansel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not centralized in the way Facebook is, since your mailing lists may come from a wide variety of sources running separate servers & software. Also: messaging is actually a very important part of social media companies' strategy (e.g. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.).

Messaging is an important part and most social networks contain messaging. But messaging on its own is not a social network. (no contact discovery, subscription to events, persistent connection with other users)

Yes! Which is why we need other decentralized social networks that can follow email's route to success.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#133

Post by ClumsyPilot »

squirrelicus wrote: post #117
CyanBird wrote: post #107

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.

Or perhaps it's mostly down to modern technology, and corruption being kept in check.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#134

Post by perl4ever »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #131
perl4ever wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The World Bank[1] says in 2018, US GDP per capita was over $62K while the EU was under $37K. That seems like a huge difference to me and I don't think anybody really understands why it exists - American or not. It's salient not because it disproves your judgment (and that of many others) that the US is a dysfunctional hellhole, but because it is what people are compelled to rationalize away and obviously don't succee…

EU includes some poor countries that were recently under Soviet occupation. And before that WW2 levelled entire cities, like capital of Poland was obliterated as it was bombed once when Germans took it, once when the Polish rose up, then again as Soviets took it. At the dawn of computer era there was a wall, landmines and machine gun nests going though the centre of Berlin. Isolate your comparison to northern Europe,…

1) You can cherry-pick US states too, and;

2) Just look at the chart I linked to - on decadal timescales, the EU was catching up to the US rapidly and then plateaued, in more than one cycle. No idea why, but something significant was happening and then stalling. Obviously history wasn't retroactively occurring and being eradicated.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#135

Post by jayd16 »

rhizome wrote: post #110
jayd16 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrent links are centralized in trackers and you'd see a single tracker site dominate if the legal atmosphere allowed for it. And honestly, it doesn't work as well. If you don't care about decentralization for decentralization sake its not ideal. Streaming websites don't use it. Netflix doesn't torrent a video to you.

Can't collections of tracker links themselves be federated?

Sure they could but the point is its a lot easier to just centralize.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#136

Post by Ar-Curunir »

coldtea wrote: post #118
edoo wrote: post #97

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.

It's not the government that created the problem, it's the big corporations, getting too powerful, and buying laws to stifle competition and enjoy market hold. 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 proble…

I agree with most of your comment, but I disagree that law is the only avenue. One can imagine other structures like co-ops.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#137

Post by edoo »

tinsx wrote: post #129
edoo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a just society the only possible way to get rich is through helping people. We want rich people. The more rich people the better off everyone is. Capitalism is beautiful. If a company is able to sustain market share through healthy competition then wonderful, that is great. Every law in the US right now is to ensure those corporations don't lose market share, edging everyone else out. It is basic economics. It is…

The issue with the current set of laws regulating corporations is that those laws were made with intervention from lobbyist groups, which changed legislation to benefit those lobbying groups. In reality, the way to do this fairly is to repeal these laws, remove power from corporations giving it back to the state (possibly through actually taxing corporations and the rich properly, along the lines of what Huey Long pr…

The regulation is what allows the problems by design. Take Wall Street, most the big names would have been shut down and liquidated to cover crime restitution... if it weren't for regulation. The EPA regulations shield companies from liability if they have an accident but were following the regulations they lobbied for. I worked for a megacorp that passed safety laws to hurt competitors. The airport TSA regs are specifically for shielding the airlines from liability in the case of a security incident. All regulations are a fraud. Every problem they purport to solve would already be covered by existing law, serious law. Either you are liable for damages or you are not. With any regulations the big players never are. Pollution is already covered through property and violence laws (poisoning my air is a violent act). Removing the regulations is what would remove power from the corporations. If it is already covered under existing law then the regs are to bypass them.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#138

Post by ClumsyPilot »

perl4ever wrote: post #134
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU includes some poor countries that were recently under Soviet occupation. And before that WW2 levelled entire cities, like capital of Poland was obliterated as it was bombed once when Germans took it, once when the Polish rose up, then again as Soviets took it. At the dawn of computer era there was a wall, landmines and machine gun nests going though the centre of Berlin. Isolate your comparison to northern Europe,…

1) You can cherry-pick US states too, and; 2) Just look at the chart I linked to - on decadal timescales, the EU was catching up to the US rapidly and then plateaued, in more than one cycle. No idea why, but something significant was happening and then stalling. Obviously history wasn't retroactively occurring and being eradicated.

2) It's good data, the graph shows 2008 as an inflection point. I think that's the disastrous austerity programme chosen by political leadership throughout europe. Instead of investing they decided to cut spending in a recession. That's my take anyway.

1) You can't brush off foreign occupation 29 years ago as cherry picking. This dataset starts in 1960s, when all of Eastern Europe were soviet puppets. There is nothing comparable in recent US history.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#139

Post by lugg »

salawat wrote: post #23
oblio wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no new B2C web company can work without Google.

Technically it can. You just have to use alternate old school advertising practices to get discovered. Radio/television spots, word-of-mouth, Billboard, etc... The very fact you think it is impossible to reach end users without using Google should highlight just how much they have cornered the market. Remember, internet search was not always a given, and the worked just fine.

In lesser words, almost.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#140

Post by TheRealPomax »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #92
TheRealPomax wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know _why_ they cancelled HTML 5.3, right? A different group had (what the world at least concluded was) better ideas for HTML5, took the spec, declared it "living" rather than versioned, and declared itself the authority on HTML. For a while that meant we had _two_ HTML 5 specs, at odds with each other, and eventually W3C had no choice but to acknowledge their coup had succeeded (for better or for worse) because…

WHATWG formed as an initiative of browser vendors to collaborate on new browser functionality and other stuff that needed coordination, and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem now is this has led the web stack to be defined by a closed club with fewer and fewer members, with incentives not necessarily aligned with users. But the web isn't just a browser vendor's gamble; it's used for vital communication and…

This seems a false, or at least uninformed, statement. WhatWG is just as closed as W3C was: the discussions are public, and anyone can contribute to them. Is there a hurdle that you need to overcome to show you actually care enough before you're allowed to participate? Sure. But it's the kind of hurdle that anyone with an email address can overcome. You're not excluded just because you don't work for "a browser vendor".

Also, it feels like you're confusing the end user with the developers. Business, education, admininstration, media, science, law, medicine, etc. are all fields that rely on the web _through_ browsers and browser components, made by browser vendors. Whether that's IE6, or WebKit, or Electron, or Android Webview. So yes: the browser vendors are absolutely the people primarily pulling the strings, and pushing the envelope, which makes a whole lot of sense: it's their collective product they're curating.

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