Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

Yes, conspiracy theories like Russia hacked the election.

Or, to go back to technology, take Facebook for example. Perhaps people would have liked to have a social networking site before, but it simply wasn't available. When it became available, many people used it and enjoyed it in their leisure time. Because it's free, and, while large, does not pull very large revenues per user, it doesn't show up as a major economic activity. And because it's used mostly as an end-consumer leisure activity, it is missed by indicators that don't measure this well. So there can be a substantial total increase in services enjoyed, and we might be missing it. Again - might. I cannot say for sure, but it's worth asking.

The entire left side of the aisle? But, not any other people? Hmmm.

> He very loudly accused Amazon of being a "monopsony" during Amazon's most recent dust-up with the big publishers, on grounds that its market power would enable it to hurt consumers, although he acknowledged, Amazon hadn't used its economic power that way.

Well, they are a giant player with immense power that already dictates things to its supply chain...

And the important thing to do is recognize risks before the problems manifest. It wouldn't be any good to tell you your garage was full of flammable rags after your house burned down.

> Yet, Krugman goes along with this exploitation, and presumably banks very large royalties for himself at student's expense.

Compared to wages, speaking fees, etc? I doubt it.

But nonetheless, you do have a good point about textbooks being exorbitantly priced. When we provide student-loans, schools increase tuition. If we gave children a billion dollars a year universities would still be pretending to be broke and asking for more.

IMHO, that's the racket we need to break. As long as there's a government license to print a "right to work" token (a degree), you'll have players entrench around it - like camping spawn spots. And as always, the less effective the school is at teaching the more resources they have for political battles.

When you grow up believing you will be driving flying cars and seeing robots help you around the house, how else are you supposed to feel?

we have flying cars. they're called private jets, but most people can't afford them. we have to take the flying bus! we've had robots in our homes for a while. do they have to be anthropomorphic to count, or what?

I am also disappointed in how closed and centralized the applications that run on the internet have become since the internet was privatized. Where we used to have decentralized systems in the 80s to late 90s, we now have huge star (wheel and spoke) networks.

internet applications may be closed and centralized, but i think you are forgetting about the mountains of free/open software that those systems are built upon. life-changing mountains of software. foss is the foundation that a lot of careers (including my own) are built upon.

obviously it would be better if we were all on an open source distributed net, but its not like it isn't a solvable problem. we just have to be more creative.

We have invented the most important tool in the history of humanity and it's being used by billions of people to look at Facebook instead of say, solving real problems like climate change.

the internet is a communication network that people use for a lot of different things, including working to solve climate change.

i don't think we've figured out social networking quite yet. or the internet for that matter. i think its all quite exciting! so much new shit happening all of the time. not only that, but i have the opportunity to be a part of it. i may not be the person that ends up in the history books, but i'm here at ground zero.