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This shouldn't really be any surprise, it's basically been the publishing business model for a century. More interesting still is how some 1%'rs (e.g. Bezos) w

This shouldn't really be any surprise, it's basically been the publishing business model for a century. More interesting still is how some 1%'rs (e.g. Bezos) will operate something like the Washington Post at a loss simply to retain the actual power that having a top tier media company provides, in terms of narrative control. > select few kings (mostly queens now) It's still going to be investors behind the scenes who really pull these strings. The name at the top of the masthead isn't the owner....

bawolff 7y ago
Not just publishing but capitalism in general. If you're a replaceable cog in the machine, you're probably not getting paid much. If you want to get rich in a capitalist society, either have scarse skills allowing you a good bargaining position or find a way to own the means of production.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  It hasn't been about "the means of production" in a long time. When Marx wrote that, the primary barrier to the employees going into business for themselves was that a factory cost (in today's money) millions of dollars. The employees didn't have millions of dollars so they had to work for capitalists instead of going into business for themselves. The reason you're not Facebook today isn't that you can't get ahold of some servers. The reason you're not CNN isn't that you can't afford a video camera sufficient for news reporting. The reason you're not Starbucks isn't that you lack the capacity to make coffee. The reasons the workers can't strike out out their own without capital in the modern world are increasingly regulatory barriers and gatekeeping. It would be a lot easier to build your own Facebook if you could bootstrap on their social graph with the permission of the users but not of Facebook, but then there's the CFAA and the DMCA etc. It would be a lot easier to build your own CNN if we had a system for small anonymous irreversible micropayments with correspondingly low transaction costs, but then there's the byzantine hellscape of financial regulations and KYC laws. It would be a lot easier to build your own Starbucks if you could start off by operating out of your own home, but tell that to zoning regulations that prohibit commerce in the residential areas where your customers live. It's no longer about the means of production. Now the problem is that the regulatory barriers to entry give advantage to larger entities with more scale, but the larger the entity is the more people there are at the bottom of the pyramid.
  - bawolff 7y ago
    Sure its not literally about the physical means of production, but more the abstract notion around creating/owning a bussiness. A hard problem that does involve real skill and lots of risk. The reason you're not starbucks isn't that you can't serve coffee out of your house. Do you think that independent coffee houses don't exist? Do you think that new coffee franchises don't come into being regularly? The reason you're not facebook has nothing to do with dmca or cfaa (relatively easy to comply with regulations). Do you think that facebook didn't have to deal with that when they started? They were hardly the first social network either so its not like they had first-movers advantage.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      > Sure its not literally about the physical means of production, but more the abstract notion around creating/owning a bussiness. A hard problem that does involve real skill and lots of risk. But that makes it a completely different problem. There is no longer a prohibitively expensive "means of production" causing the problem, to which a solution might have been collective ownership, but now instead a collection of barriers to entry to what might otherwise reasonably have been employee-owned businesses if not for the barriers that increase the scale required for success past what the employees can afford. > The reason you're not starbucks isn't that you can't serve coffee out of your house. Sure it is. If you can't serve it out of your house then you have to buy separate commercial property from where you live in order to start out. That dramatically increases the barrier to entry and excludes most of the prospective entrants. It also makes it that much more likely for the small entities that do exist to fail, because they have higher expenses. So you get more Starbucks and fewer independent coffee shops than you would have otherwise. > The reason you're not facebook has nothing to do with dmca or cfaa (relatively easy to comply with regulations). It's not about compliance costs in that case, it's about the regulations prohibiting a method of competition (adversarially bootstrapping from a competitor's social graph), which entrenches the incumbents. > Do you think that facebook didn't have to deal with that when they started? They were hardly the first social network either so its not like they had first-movers advantage. It's not about first-movers advantage either. It's about rules that promote scale and thwart competition, by e.g. de facto inhibiting network forks. It's why Facebook (or whoever is winning this year) has a billion users instead of there being nobody that big and thousands of independently operated community networks each with a fraction of the users. The problem isn't that nobody can be Facebook. Facebook is clearly Facebook. The problem is that there shouldn't be this much consolidation, and making your own Facebook is harder than it ought to be.
101404 7y ago
Bezos isn't a 1%er. He is 1. Billionaires are way above the 1%.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
notatoad 7y ago
>(e.g. Bezos) will operate something like the Washington Post at a loss the Post has been profitable since 2017. https://www.axios.com/washington-post-1515418495-9c9dc541-165f-4e99-b002-ad41416737ef.html https://www.axios.com/washington-post-1515418495-9c9dc541-16...

bawolff 7y ago

Not just publishing but capitalism in general. If you're a replaceable cog in the machine, you're probably not getting paid much. If you want to get rich in a capitalist society, either have scarse skills allowing you a good bargaining position or find a way to own the means of production.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
It hasn't been about "the means of production" in a long time. When Marx wrote that, the primary barrier to the employees going into business for themselves was that a factory cost (in today's money) millions of dollars. The employees didn't have millions of dollars so they had to work for capitalists instead of going into business for themselves. The reason you're not Facebook today isn't that you can't get ahold of some servers. The reason you're not CNN isn't that you can't afford a video camera sufficient for news reporting. The reason you're not Starbucks isn't that you lack the capacity to make coffee. The reasons the workers can't strike out out their own without capital in the modern world are increasingly regulatory barriers and gatekeeping. It would be a lot easier to build your own Facebook if you could bootstrap on their social graph with the permission of the users but not of Facebook, but then there's the CFAA and the DMCA etc. It would be a lot easier to build your own CNN if we had a system for small anonymous irreversible micropayments with correspondingly low transaction costs, but then there's the byzantine hellscape of financial regulations and KYC laws. It would be a lot easier to build your own Starbucks if you could start off by operating out of your own home, but tell that to zoning regulations that prohibit commerce in the residential areas where your customers live. It's no longer about the means of production. Now the problem is that the regulatory barriers to entry give advantage to larger entities with more scale, but the larger the entity is the more people there are at the bottom of the pyramid.
- bawolff 7y ago
  Sure its not literally about the physical means of production, but more the abstract notion around creating/owning a bussiness. A hard problem that does involve real skill and lots of risk. The reason you're not starbucks isn't that you can't serve coffee out of your house. Do you think that independent coffee houses don't exist? Do you think that new coffee franchises don't come into being regularly? The reason you're not facebook has nothing to do with dmca or cfaa (relatively easy to comply with regulations). Do you think that facebook didn't have to deal with that when they started? They were hardly the first social network either so its not like they had first-movers advantage.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > Sure its not literally about the physical means of production, but more the abstract notion around creating/owning a bussiness. A hard problem that does involve real skill and lots of risk. But that makes it a completely different problem. There is no longer a prohibitively expensive "means of production" causing the problem, to which a solution might have been collective ownership, but now instead a collection of barriers to entry to what might otherwise reasonably have been employee-owned businesses if not for the barriers that increase the scale required for success past what the employees can afford. > The reason you're not starbucks isn't that you can't serve coffee out of your house. Sure it is. If you can't serve it out of your house then you have to buy separate commercial property from where you live in order to start out. That dramatically increases the barrier to entry and excludes most of the prospective entrants. It also makes it that much more likely for the small entities that do exist to fail, because they have higher expenses. So you get more Starbucks and fewer independent coffee shops than you would have otherwise. > The reason you're not facebook has nothing to do with dmca or cfaa (relatively easy to comply with regulations). It's not about compliance costs in that case, it's about the regulations prohibiting a method of competition (adversarially bootstrapping from a competitor's social graph), which entrenches the incumbents. > Do you think that facebook didn't have to deal with that when they started? They were hardly the first social network either so its not like they had first-movers advantage. It's not about first-movers advantage either. It's about rules that promote scale and thwart competition, by e.g. de facto inhibiting network forks. It's why Facebook (or whoever is winning this year) has a billion users instead of there being nobody that big and thousands of independently operated community networks each with a fraction of the users. The problem isn't that nobody can be Facebook. Facebook is clearly Facebook. The problem is that there shouldn't be this much consolidation, and making your own Facebook is harder than it ought to be.

101404 7y ago

Bezos isn't a 1%er. He is 1. Billionaires are way above the 1%.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

notatoad 7y ago

>(e.g. Bezos) will operate something like the Washington Post at a loss the Post has been profitable since 2017. https://www.axios.com/washington-post-1515418495-9c9dc541-165f-4e99-b002-ad41416737ef.html https://www.axios.com/washington-post-1515418495-9c9dc541-16...