5 ms·

No single entity owns or controls any of those things, perhaps with the exception of search. But more importantly - can you explain what you mean by a power im

by zepto 6y ago

No single entity owns or controls any of those things, perhaps with the exception of search. But more importantly - can you explain what you mean by a power imbalance? Don’t all companies have a power imbalance of some kind with their users?

RobertKerans 6y ago
> No single entity owns or controls any of those things, perhaps with the exception of search. Right, but it's about the level of control. It's not one single entity: instead control is effectively split between a very few megacorporations with an ability to obliterate smaller competition. Their incentive is to control the market, to control both ends of any pipelines they are involved in. Which is the same as any company, sure, but it is the level of power that these companies have that is worrying. It may not be a bad thing with bad effects -- it's really convenient in many ways! The power gives them the ability to produce some really good things! But history would suggest that, as a general rule, it is not a great idea to hand extremely large amounts of power and control to a few entities who are only beholden to (and whose only real aim is to) generate money for investors.
- zepto 6y ago
  > But history would suggest that, as a general rule, it is not a great idea to hand extremely large amounts of power and control to a few entities who are only beholden to (and whose only real aim is to) generate money for investors. I’d like to see this general rule somewhere. People say it often, and cite a few examples, but nothing that amounts to a general rule that I have seen. Also, it’s simply not true that these companies only real aim is to generate money from investors. If you look at the incentive structures for the people involved, that starts to look like an untenable position. For example there are a lot of subject matter s experts whose incentive is to build careers based on their contributions and expertise - e.g. Chris Lattner. This is just one example of how this reductive idea of what a company is simply breaks down. Certainly some companies - usually financial ones - have no other goal, but outside of the financial sector this is just not true. And really - the companies we’re talking about have only had this ‘power’ for just over a decade, and frankly all of their products, Google, Apple, and Facebook are quite lacking. There is no room to compete head to head with them, but plenty of room to innovate and compete in way that they are simply under delivering.
  - RobertKerans 6y ago
    I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle. > I'd like to see this general rule somewhere. People say it often, and cite a few examples, but nothing that amounts to a general rule that I have seen. Pick any megacorporation that has reached a point in terms of market cap where they can dictate favourable political/economic conditions for themselves, so from when companies started appearing, so mid-late 1700s. With the caveat that almost all of them have "good" effects from specific perspectives: all huge eastern trading companies (Dutch & British East India), all huge western trading companies (well, sure, they traded slaves but yowza, look at how much they put into the economy!), all huge chemical companies, all large arms manufacturers, all huge oil companies, Japan when split between zaibatsus, etc etc etc. Doesn't seem to matter what sector they are in apart from it involving control of a necessary resource. > Also, it’s simply not true that these companies only real aim is to generate money from investors. Yes it is, that's what the point of a company is. It's literally the definition. It's why a company as a legal/business entity is formed. Hiring subject matter experts -- well, yes, obviously a company will do that, and those experts will have personal reasons for working for the entity that are most often not directly be "enrich this entity". But that is for the most part irrelevant to my point. > And really - the companies we’re talking about have only had this ‘power’ for just over a decade, and frankly all of their products, Google, Apple, and Facebook are quite lacking Their products being lacking from your perspective isn't really relevant here either. Google and AWS control and sell access to physical infrastructure, virtual infrastructure, cross spectrum products built on that infrastructure, tools to use that infrastructure. They control [a large % of] both ends of the pipe, so to speak. Apple, I dunno, I don't know much about how they got to the position they're in. FB, well as a minor example: "ah well, yes, it was kinda sorta mainly organised on our platform using our infrastructure, but whatcha gonna do?". And only having this level of power for a decade? Again, why is that important, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > > Also, it’s simply not true that these companies only real aim is to generate money from investors. > Yes it is, that's what the point of a company is. It's literally the definition. It's literally not the definition; now, it's true that the purpose of a public stock offering, or other offering of equity or debt for money is an effort to raise money from investors, but companies (even more narrowly corporations) need not ever engage in those activities, and even if they do that doesn’t make that purpose of the activity the overall purpose of the organization; it's just an instrument by way of which the organizations seeks it's broader goal.
feanaro 6y ago
> Don’t all companies have a power imbalance of some kind with their users? Some amount of power imbalance is okay. Obviously not every entity can have the exact same amount of power nor would this be desirable. What matters is the scale of the difference. A single entity having several orders of magnitude more power than the average entity. Let's call this a "giant", for ease of reference. All entities optimize toward the execution of their own agenda (this shouldn't be controversial). This is in essence a good thing since it drives competition, refinement and development. The trouble starts when giants appear. The giants are few and the non-giants are many. It is unlikely that the giants' agendas will forever be aligned well with the agendas of the non-giants. Yet, due to their sheer size, the giants have the ability not only to compete and cooperate with the non-giants, but to change and warp the very rules of the game to something that doesn't resemble the rules we started out with. In this sense, scale truly makes all the difference. I think a physics analogy is apt here. Think of a bunch of marbles of roughly comparable masses bouncing around each other. They need not all have exactly the same mass for the overall dynamics of the setting to be retained. They will also have different individual momenta which will change constantly as time progresses. Now introduce a large stone sphere weighing over a ton into the picture. Can we reasonably say this new system has similar dynamics to the old one? After all, it's just one more marble. Yet now for the first time we have a marble that is practically immoveable but can move any other, which is a strictly new dynamic.

by zepto 6y ago

RobertKerans 6y ago

> No single entity owns or controls any of those things, perhaps with the exception of search. Right, but it's about the level of control. It's not one single entity: instead control is effectively split between a very few megacorporations with an ability to obliterate smaller competition. Their incentive is to control the market, to control both ends of any pipelines they are involved in. Which is the same as any company, sure, but it is the level of power that these companies have that is worrying. It may not be a bad thing with bad effects -- it's really convenient in many ways! The power gives them the ability to produce some really good things! But history would suggest that, as a general rule, it is not a great idea to hand extremely large amounts of power and control to a few entities who are only beholden to (and whose only real aim is to) generate money for investors.

zepto 6y ago
> But history would suggest that, as a general rule, it is not a great idea to hand extremely large amounts of power and control to a few entities who are only beholden to (and whose only real aim is to) generate money for investors. I’d like to see this general rule somewhere. People say it often, and cite a few examples, but nothing that amounts to a general rule that I have seen. Also, it’s simply not true that these companies only real aim is to generate money from investors. If you look at the incentive structures for the people involved, that starts to look like an untenable position. For example there are a lot of subject matter s experts whose incentive is to build careers based on their contributions and expertise - e.g. Chris Lattner. This is just one example of how this reductive idea of what a company is simply breaks down. Certainly some companies - usually financial ones - have no other goal, but outside of the financial sector this is just not true. And really - the companies we’re talking about have only had this ‘power’ for just over a decade, and frankly all of their products, Google, Apple, and Facebook are quite lacking. There is no room to compete head to head with them, but plenty of room to innovate and compete in way that they are simply under delivering.
- RobertKerans 6y ago
  I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle. > I'd like to see this general rule somewhere. People say it often, and cite a few examples, but nothing that amounts to a general rule that I have seen. Pick any megacorporation that has reached a point in terms of market cap where they can dictate favourable political/economic conditions for themselves, so from when companies started appearing, so mid-late 1700s. With the caveat that almost all of them have "good" effects from specific perspectives: all huge eastern trading companies (Dutch & British East India), all huge western trading companies (well, sure, they traded slaves but yowza, look at how much they put into the economy!), all huge chemical companies, all large arms manufacturers, all huge oil companies, Japan when split between zaibatsus, etc etc etc. Doesn't seem to matter what sector they are in apart from it involving control of a necessary resource. > Also, it’s simply not true that these companies only real aim is to generate money from investors. Yes it is, that's what the point of a company is. It's literally the definition. It's why a company as a legal/business entity is formed. Hiring subject matter experts -- well, yes, obviously a company will do that, and those experts will have personal reasons for working for the entity that are most often not directly be "enrich this entity". But that is for the most part irrelevant to my point. > And really - the companies we’re talking about have only had this ‘power’ for just over a decade, and frankly all of their products, Google, Apple, and Facebook are quite lacking Their products being lacking from your perspective isn't really relevant here either. Google and AWS control and sell access to physical infrastructure, virtual infrastructure, cross spectrum products built on that infrastructure, tools to use that infrastructure. They control [a large % of] both ends of the pipe, so to speak. Apple, I dunno, I don't know much about how they got to the position they're in. FB, well as a minor example: "ah well, yes, it was kinda sorta mainly organised on our platform using our infrastructure, but whatcha gonna do?". And only having this level of power for a decade? Again, why is that important, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > > Also, it’s simply not true that these companies only real aim is to generate money from investors. > Yes it is, that's what the point of a company is. It's literally the definition. It's literally not the definition; now, it's true that the purpose of a public stock offering, or other offering of equity or debt for money is an effort to raise money from investors, but companies (even more narrowly corporations) need not ever engage in those activities, and even if they do that doesn’t make that purpose of the activity the overall purpose of the organization; it's just an instrument by way of which the organizations seeks it's broader goal.

feanaro 6y ago

> Don’t all companies have a power imbalance of some kind with their users? Some amount of power imbalance is okay. Obviously not every entity can have the exact same amount of power nor would this be desirable. What matters is the scale of the difference. A single entity having several orders of magnitude more power than the average entity. Let's call this a "giant", for ease of reference. All entities optimize toward the execution of their own agenda (this shouldn't be controversial). This is in essence a good thing since it drives competition, refinement and development. The trouble starts when giants appear. The giants are few and the non-giants are many. It is unlikely that the giants' agendas will forever be aligned well with the agendas of the non-giants. Yet, due to their sheer size, the giants have the ability not only to compete and cooperate with the non-giants, but to change and warp the very rules of the game to something that doesn't resemble the rules we started out with. In this sense, scale truly makes all the difference. I think a physics analogy is apt here. Think of a bunch of marbles of roughly comparable masses bouncing around each other. They need not all have exactly the same mass for the overall dynamics of the setting to be retained. They will also have different individual momenta which will change constantly as time progresses. Now introduce a large stone sphere weighing over a ton into the picture. Can we reasonably say this new system has similar dynamics to the old one? After all, it's just one more marble. Yet now for the first time we have a marble that is practically immoveable but can move any other, which is a strictly new dynamic.