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Devil's advocate, walls and the enablement of taxation also centralized capital and enabled cities to spend it on public works that might not have been built ot

by ethbro 10y ago

Devil's advocate, walls and the enablement of taxation also centralized capital and enabled cities to spend it on public works that might not have been built otherwise (and before I get the "then they shouldn't!" retort, I think we can all agree there are shared infrastructure resources that w/couldn't be built by private actors). In a world where all phones are loosely controlled Android derivates competing on slim profit margins, is anyone going to make the drive for hard hardware-enabled crypto? And even if they wanted to, could they afford it?

kbenson 10y ago
> Devil's advocate, walls and the enablement of taxation Sure. I wasn't making a case that taxation at the wall is bad, but that it has the capability to be bad. We use regulation in (mostly) free markets to greater or lesser success to steer the markets in some manner. If you accept that pure capitalism doesn't necessarily yield an optimally performing system when people are involved, then that ability to influence the market is a useful capability, especially when applied judiciously. A blanket rate isn't necessarily the most efficient form of that, but it is a way to raise revenue. > In a world where all phones are loosely controlled Android derivates I think you've already stacked the starting conditions to the point where it's not really worthwhile to consider. That situation would be ripe for disruption in some manner, because I think it's inherently unstable. All it takes is a small niche market for alternatives that do make choices based on privacy, or security, and events that spur interest in those topics, and the larger population of providers will need to respond appropriately or risk ceding a increasingly large portion of the market to those that do.
- ethbro 10y ago
  I think the outcome of the first generation of smartphone OS's has (surprisingly for me at least) shown that there's really only room for a handful of players (Android/AChina, iOS) with sufficient numbers of users to be self-sustaining. As you note, not sure a unipolar outcome would ever be stable enough to have persisted, but I wouldn't have expected a bipolar arrangement either. And I can imagine a market structure that would have depressed manufacturer profits far enough so as to preclude serious R&D / innovation on their parts.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    You know, it's common enough to have one dominant player in a marker, a small few chasing players, and then a bunch of very niche players that I'm there's a lot of economic theory behind it that I'm unaware of. It probably relies quite a bit on how invested in the product you are once you've decided on it, but there are plenty of examples throughout history[1], 1: http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Smartphone_Market_Share_2007_Through_2011.png http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Smartphone_Market_Share_2...
    - AnonymousPlanet 10y ago
      Let's keep this in mind the next time we get the idea to let market forces regulate, say, school systems or infrastructure.

by ethbro 10y ago

kbenson 10y ago

> Devil's advocate, walls and the enablement of taxation Sure. I wasn't making a case that taxation at the wall is bad, but that it has the capability to be bad. We use regulation in (mostly) free markets to greater or lesser success to steer the markets in some manner. If you accept that pure capitalism doesn't necessarily yield an optimally performing system when people are involved, then that ability to influence the market is a useful capability, especially when applied judiciously. A blanket rate isn't necessarily the most efficient form of that, but it is a way to raise revenue. > In a world where all phones are loosely controlled Android derivates I think you've already stacked the starting conditions to the point where it's not really worthwhile to consider. That situation would be ripe for disruption in some manner, because I think it's inherently unstable. All it takes is a small niche market for alternatives that do make choices based on privacy, or security, and events that spur interest in those topics, and the larger population of providers will need to respond appropriately or risk ceding a increasingly large portion of the market to those that do.

ethbro 10y ago
I think the outcome of the first generation of smartphone OS's has (surprisingly for me at least) shown that there's really only room for a handful of players (Android/AChina, iOS) with sufficient numbers of users to be self-sustaining. As you note, not sure a unipolar outcome would ever be stable enough to have persisted, but I wouldn't have expected a bipolar arrangement either. And I can imagine a market structure that would have depressed manufacturer profits far enough so as to preclude serious R&D / innovation on their parts.
- kbenson 10y ago
  You know, it's common enough to have one dominant player in a marker, a small few chasing players, and then a bunch of very niche players that I'm there's a lot of economic theory behind it that I'm unaware of. It probably relies quite a bit on how invested in the product you are once you've decided on it, but there are plenty of examples throughout history[1], 1: http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Smartphone_Market_Share_2007_Through_2011.png http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Smartphone_Market_Share_2...
  - AnonymousPlanet 10y ago
    Let's keep this in mind the next time we get the idea to let market forces regulate, say, school systems or infrastructure.