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I think his "objection" is similar to mine in that technology supposedly promises that everyone can be a producer, but instead we are getting even more centrali
by gozo 11y ago
I think his "objection" is similar to mine in that technology supposedly promises that everyone can be a producer, but instead we are getting even more centralization. We see the same thing in technology, were instead of open standards we get e.g. Facebook. Or in startups were the prospects of actually competing with one of the larger players is almost theoretical at this point.
A lot of people are fine with living for the moment hoping they can make it rich before opportunities shift. Others think more about what future they want to see.
- mc32 11y agoTechnology never promises anything. People may have presumptions, projections, etc. But technology itself never makes promises. Some individuals may make some claims, but you can get all kids of claims from all kinds of people.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- vonklaus 11y agoI agree that there is something off putting about these companies in that, as a cynic, I think they are simply putting a nice whitelabel wrapper on someone else's work. That being said, it is hard to make the case that this is centralization and I have concluded that I believe these businesses are good because: * Everyone is a private contractor, they are free to make their own choices and work (or not work) for a company. * They can be flexible service providers and they can create their own reputation. * Companies like airbnb/uber/sprig simply provide a platform . It is likely that many platforms will arise as for some of these businesses the barriers to entry are pretty low. The workers and producers can be on all platforms or go completely independent but Uber without driver's isn't a 50b company. * If your options are make some money in the "sharing economy" or make no money in the "real economy" I think you would choose to hop in. i see this as the new websearch model. Companies provide the best results and ratings, while offering ancillary support to users and charge them instead of showing adverts. the problem is if one gets really good, really powerful and effectively controls a lions share of virtually all of the search results routing all queries and related services through a single provider. lets hope that if that were to happen that not only would they not be evil but that they would good.
- webmasterraj 11y ago> Everyone is a private contractor, they are free to make their own choices and work (or not work) for a company. I don't know if Sprig hires cooks as contractors but that doesn't necessarily mean they have the same freedom contractors usually have. See the lawsuits that brought Honejoy down, and the class action one against Uber. I actually think this is the biggest argument in favor of Josephine, that the author didn't bring up. Sprig needs to standardize user experience, so has to walk the line between enforcing policies on their cooks and still treating them as contractors. Josephine is literally a marketplace, where your interaction is directly with that contractor. Much better, from a legal risk question.
- rayiner 11y agoWhy does anyone think technology is something other than a force enabling centralization and consolidation? In a free market, more efficient organizations will win out over less efficient ones. Bigger organizations leverage economies of scale and win out over smaller ones. Organizations this keep getting bigger until diseconomies of scale balance economies of scale. Technology reduces diseconomies of scale, enabling organizations to keep getting more efficient at large sizes. Hence, Amazon versus the mom and pop shop, Uber versus an independent cab company, Sprig versus the local Chinese delivery, etc. The future is megacorps and technology will enable them.
- gozo 11y agoWe do get some verity as a consequence of the long tail. Even though it's not totally independent, people do make a living on e.g. YouTube. While we can say that people have been naive and that fears over things like Microsoft's monopoly in hindsight seem fairly "cute", there's also a long history of dystopian science fiction predicting less romantic futures. Often including megacorporations. I guess one of the benefits for VCs funding young people straight out of school is how quickly they can make them accept the new normal. It's not even (only) Amazon versus mom and pop shop, it's Amazon vs eBay. It almost seems like the idea of the (unbiased) platform will be a footnote in history at this point. I don't know if the enabling of greater economies of scale in itself is bad. Instead it's the extreme potential for anti-competitive behavior. I have no idea how to realistically stop the first one from leading to the later one though.
- nitrogen 11y agoWhy does anyone think technology is something other than a force enabling centralization and consolidation? Because decentralization and democratization were central to the vision we saw in the 1990s when we discovered the public Internet that universities had been building. The early days were all about independence and progress.
- rayiner 11y agoI find that ironic because communication technology plainly facilitates centralization. Society was less centralized and grass roots democracy was much more important when people had to ride a horse all day to vote and you didn't have national media markets. The Internet in comparison is going to be what enables World Government.