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The secret of democracy is that, even when there are no good options to choose from, people agreed on the solution. Therefore you are not a the whim of a single

The secret of democracy is that, even when there are no good options to choose from, people agreed on the solution. Therefore you are not a the whim of a single person or entity and this legitimates the way you live. As for technology existing only because of Google or some other large company, that's not the case. Google was more innovative when it was smaller. Netscape created the whole browser industry as a small startup. Just let a lot of small to medium size companies compete in the market and split the ones that become so big as to become a threat to the whole ecosystem.

d1zzy 6y ago
There are many problems that cannot be solved by the resources available to a medium sized company. Which is why you need multiple governments to get together to help out something like AirBus or space programs. Similarly Google at its scale can tackle large problems more efficiently than having 10000 medium sized companies pool their resources together to do the same. In other words, everything has pros and cons that depend on each particular situation. Large companies aren't "all bad" and small companies aren't "all good", you just chose to give lower priority (or ignore) ti the bad aspects of small companies while showing concern with the bad aspects of large companies.
- coliveira 6y ago
  That's a theory without data to back it up. Especially in technology, where big innovation usually comes from small to medium sized companies. What smaller companies cannot do is coerce the market to extract profits at the level done by Google and their pears. That's why we need anti-trust legislation.
ben509 6y ago
> The secret of democracy is that, even when there are no good options to choose from, people agreed on the solution. No, a plurality of people agreed on the solution, and everyone else disagreed with it but was stuck with it. > Therefore you are not a the whim of a single person or entity and this legitimates the way you live. Now you're at the whim of a popularity contest.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Yeah, to me the solution is configurability with sensible defaults. It increases the work of the developers, but it has the benefit of reducing the number of decisions the developers have to make on behalf of the user.

d1zzy 6y ago

There are many problems that cannot be solved by the resources available to a medium sized company. Which is why you need multiple governments to get together to help out something like AirBus or space programs. Similarly Google at its scale can tackle large problems more efficiently than having 10000 medium sized companies pool their resources together to do the same. In other words, everything has pros and cons that depend on each particular situation. Large companies aren't "all bad" and small companies aren't "all good", you just chose to give lower priority (or ignore) ti the bad aspects of small companies while showing concern with the bad aspects of large companies.

coliveira 6y ago
That's a theory without data to back it up. Especially in technology, where big innovation usually comes from small to medium sized companies. What smaller companies cannot do is coerce the market to extract profits at the level done by Google and their pears. That's why we need anti-trust legislation.

ben509 6y ago

> The secret of democracy is that, even when there are no good options to choose from, people agreed on the solution. No, a plurality of people agreed on the solution, and everyone else disagreed with it but was stuck with it. > Therefore you are not a the whim of a single person or entity and this legitimates the way you live. Now you're at the whim of a popularity contest.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
Yeah, to me the solution is configurability with sensible defaults. It increases the work of the developers, but it has the benefit of reducing the number of decisions the developers have to make on behalf of the user.