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Because the authors, and tech industry milieu they represent, believes democratic government is the only method for resolving differences: >[Democracy] doesn't
by readflaggedcomm 5y ago
Because the authors, and tech industry milieu they represent, believes democratic government is the only method for resolving differences:
>[Democracy] doesn't mean that there's some alternative way to accomplish that underlying task
>[Democracy is] about a fair process for refereeing in an ongoing way, the contestation of citizens’ own choices and preferences.
Like they said, would you prefer the Pope to censor your tech? Would you wear unregulated clothing? Of course not. "[W]e need to break people out of a kind of binary mindset where markets are good and markets have all the solutions" and people's needs must be decided democratically.
- crazy_horse 5y agoThese profs know that democracy isn't a magic fix. The changes made to tech today will come from the democratic system, the same system that is not working great. The current situation sucks but a challenger still has the power, overreaching legislation instead puts that power into the public will which is arbitrary and easily misrepresented. I'm not opposed to a break-up or limits on some of the bigger companies, but it's beyond that which worries me, personally.
- readflaggedcomm 5y agoIt can be, if people are energized by their newfound agency, instead of towed around on cattle cars called Facebook and Google. Like Rob says in the interview, cooperation beats competition. Cooperative community solutions beat greedy private solutions.
- crazy_horse 5y agoI guess my main disagreement is that private solutions dn't have to be greedy and community solutions are often driven by it. I think we want the same or similar things, we disagree about the process?
- TeMPOraL 5y ago> private solutions dn't have to be greedy But they do, over time. This is what competition does. You may start out in a fresh market fully intent on doing a good and honest job, but then competitors arrive. First, they force you to innovate and improve your offering. Then, when improvements start yielding diminishing returns, you're forced to either become exploitative and dishonest, or be outcompeted.
- UnpossibleJim 5y agoWhile we live in an idealistic democracy, in truth we live in a plutocracy. Tech has become one of the venues to become a plutocrat and wield influence that a single vote in a representative republic can't even imagine.
- prox 5y agoIt’s a false view that markets will regulate themselves. They tend not to beyond what their clientbase deems acceptable or not. So we have big tech which undermines democracy, and in the US democracy is skewed because people aren’t properly represented because of lobbyists and gerrymandering (and sponsorship by corporations instead of their constituents) So this vicious circle is hard to break if we aren’t will to break with old ways.