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The key is "nonprofit". Capitalism cannot unlock the potential of the web the way Wikipedia, project Gutenberg, Stack Overflow, Internet Archive, the Pirate ba

The key is "nonprofit". Capitalism cannot unlock the potential of the web the way Wikipedia, project Gutenberg, Stack Overflow, Internet Archive, the Pirate bay and open source software has done. Humans are social and moral beings. Our motivations are not limited to profit maximization and rent seeking. Micro-economics can never explain Wikipedia.

eterm 3y ago
Stack Overflow isn't a non-profit though?
- geysersam 3y ago
  Yes you're right. But I think the point still stands. There are other examples.
  - eterm 3y ago
    If your point is that capitalism can't deliver something like Stack Overflow then I'm not sure the point does still stand, because clearly it could.
    - geysersam 3y ago
      The point is rather that a notable chunk of the the worlds most valuable websites are nonprofits. Despite them receiving considerably less investment than their for profit / venture capital counterparts.
      - ThunderSizzle 3y ago
        Although non-profit doesn't mean charity. Non-profits simply mean they're income needs to be balanced with their expenses, such as through wasteful (or polarizing) spending in the example of Mozilla.
        asadotzler 3y ago
        That is not what non-profit means. It means that the IRS does not tax you. There are many different kinds of non-profits and none of them are required to balance income and expenses -- many save far more than they spend and some spend more than they save, they're simply not pulling profits out for investors.
        nhumrich 3y ago
        Thats also not what non profit means. There are many kinds of non-profits and some of them aren't exempt. There is a no tax incentive to non profits that qualify (501c), but the definition is, quite literally, that they can't turn a profit. In other words, excess cash cannot be divied out among its owners.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
vasco 3y ago
> Capitalism cannot unlock the potential of the web Luckily you can just log in to the communist internet, invented before the capitalist one and with way better content and potential. Right?
- dkns 3y ago
  Because world is binary and the only two choices are capitalism and communism, right?
  - nickpp 3y ago
    Please feel free to present the alternatives.
- geysersam 3y ago
  Having a free society is not the same as having only capitalism decide where resources should be allocated. I'm just noting the that the most valuable websites on the internet are relatively nonprofit.
  - marcusverus 3y ago
    > Having a free society is not the same as having only capitalism decide where resources should be allocated. Huh? Capitalism is literally a state of economic freedom. People accumulate capital via consensual economic transactions, then decide what to do with it (stuff like funding Wikipedia!). How is this contrary to a free society?
  - vasco 3y ago
    You stated the full potential of the web cannot be unlocked by capitalism. I merely illustrated that the web was invented and ran by a capitalist society, the internet you see today is a product of capitalism, the good parts and the bad ones. Unless you can link me websites created and ran from countries with different systems - that you had in mind as being superior.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
ulfw 3y ago
Well it's not like twitter is making profits, especially in it's current state.
- geysersam 3y ago
  Exactly. And the more they're trying to squeeze some revenue out of it, the worse it gets. It's the same with reddit. Sure, running Reddit isn't cheap. But the value it generates dramatically outweigh the costs. Despite this, it's difficult to finance it without making the site considerably worse.
roenxi 3y ago
They are fundamentally capitalistic enterprises - the servers are property (capital) controlled by a small handful of people. I suspect that most of those projects are turning a profit too - whether or not run by nominal non-profits. They aren't corporate projects.
devjab 3y ago
I think it would be more fair to say “venture” or “growth” capitalism. Non-profit organisations exist on the same principles of capitalism that for-profit organisations do, and many of them would not exist in a world without the freedom from external governance that all organisations are offered through capitalism. I know this can be a touchy subject for people on the American left, but there is likely a reason human history has not produced a whole lot of organisations with independent governance outside of capitalism. At least I think you will be hard pressed to find examples of it if you go looking. I know because I’m a left leaning Scandinavian who spent a lot of my youth looking (including a minor in history). That being said, organisations like Twitter are the worst examples of capitalism. At least in my opinion, in that they are companies that do not generate a profit. But instead plan to, somehow, sometime, generate a profit for their investors. It’s essentially like running a non-profit organisation without any of the moral obligations. Obviously a very cool idea here on HN considering this is a venture capitalist site, but maybe not so good for humanity as a whole.
- laserlight 3y ago
  > there is likely a reason human history has not produced a whole lot of organisations with independent governance outside of capitalism. The reason is that capitalism actively undermines any competing type of organization. Organizations which build sustainable and ethical products or services are quickly driven out of market when capitalism offers competing products or services for free.
kolinko 3y ago
Stack Overflow is a capitalist venture. So is HN by the way.
nologic01 3y ago
There is a strong element of truth in that, but I don't think its the whole truth. While carefully airbrushed from public discourse the very function of capitalism is absolutely predicated on the legitimacy and protection granted by the collective. Every time an "important sector" gets bailed out you have a direct confirmation of our deep inter-dependencies. Privatizing profit and socializing loss is proof of the deep prevailing immorality of the "system". Yet there is nothing that says that all those financial inventions must degenerate into obsessive profit-seeking. Capitalism is a broad set of contractual arrangements, information flows, monetary accounting and the like, that facilitate economic function. Almost everything in this toolkit is configurable (via legislation and regulation, but even more so by widely adopted moral behavior) to the most minute detail. You could have for-profit employee owned corporations for example (they do exist and they work just fine). Blaming "generic" capitalist tools is similar to blaming digital tech as such. Both are manifestations of "social tech" but what you do with them depends on your moral sandbox. You can legitimately blame php for its limitations as a technology. But you can use php to write mediawiki or to write facebook. You can piggy-bag on PageRank or LLM to sell targeted ads or opt to empower every person alive with new and powerful information processing tools. I think people adopt non-profit status to immunize against a metastasized environment where anything but the most rapacious behavior is dead on arrival. But it really does not have to be this way and it wasn't always that way (in space and time). In a sense it is an extreme measure which realistically and unfortunately (in the short term at least) cannot become the norm. We really ought to fix capitalism. Even if our digital sphere was a benign utopia, we face horrendous environmental sustainability problems that the current version of capitalism has absolutely no idea how to fix. Hopefully there will be a well researched and objective Wikipedia article on how to do this :-)

eterm 3y ago

Stack Overflow isn't a non-profit though?

geysersam 3y ago
Yes you're right. But I think the point still stands. There are other examples.
- eterm 3y ago
  If your point is that capitalism can't deliver something like Stack Overflow then I'm not sure the point does still stand, because clearly it could.
  - geysersam 3y ago
    The point is rather that a notable chunk of the the worlds most valuable websites are nonprofits. Despite them receiving considerably less investment than their for profit / venture capital counterparts.
    - ThunderSizzle 3y ago
      Although non-profit doesn't mean charity. Non-profits simply mean they're income needs to be balanced with their expenses, such as through wasteful (or polarizing) spending in the example of Mozilla.
      - asadotzler 3y ago
        That is not what non-profit means. It means that the IRS does not tax you. There are many different kinds of non-profits and none of them are required to balance income and expenses -- many save far more than they spend and some spend more than they save, they're simply not pulling profits out for investors.
        nhumrich 3y ago
        Thats also not what non profit means. There are many kinds of non-profits and some of them aren't exempt. There is a no tax incentive to non profits that qualify (501c), but the definition is, quite literally, that they can't turn a profit. In other words, excess cash cannot be divied out among its owners.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

vasco 3y ago

> Capitalism cannot unlock the potential of the web Luckily you can just log in to the communist internet, invented before the capitalist one and with way better content and potential. Right?

dkns 3y ago
Because world is binary and the only two choices are capitalism and communism, right?
- nickpp 3y ago
  Please feel free to present the alternatives.
geysersam 3y ago
Having a free society is not the same as having only capitalism decide where resources should be allocated. I'm just noting the that the most valuable websites on the internet are relatively nonprofit.
- marcusverus 3y ago
  > Having a free society is not the same as having only capitalism decide where resources should be allocated. Huh? Capitalism is literally a state of economic freedom. People accumulate capital via consensual economic transactions, then decide what to do with it (stuff like funding Wikipedia!). How is this contrary to a free society?
- vasco 3y ago
  You stated the full potential of the web cannot be unlocked by capitalism. I merely illustrated that the web was invented and ran by a capitalist society, the internet you see today is a product of capitalism, the good parts and the bad ones. Unless you can link me websites created and ran from countries with different systems - that you had in mind as being superior.
ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago

ulfw 3y ago

Well it's not like twitter is making profits, especially in it's current state.

geysersam 3y ago
Exactly. And the more they're trying to squeeze some revenue out of it, the worse it gets. It's the same with reddit. Sure, running Reddit isn't cheap. But the value it generates dramatically outweigh the costs. Despite this, it's difficult to finance it without making the site considerably worse.

roenxi 3y ago

They are fundamentally capitalistic enterprises - the servers are property (capital) controlled by a small handful of people. I suspect that most of those projects are turning a profit too - whether or not run by nominal non-profits. They aren't corporate projects.

devjab 3y ago

I think it would be more fair to say “venture” or “growth” capitalism. Non-profit organisations exist on the same principles of capitalism that for-profit organisations do, and many of them would not exist in a world without the freedom from external governance that all organisations are offered through capitalism. I know this can be a touchy subject for people on the American left, but there is likely a reason human history has not produced a whole lot of organisations with independent governance outside of capitalism. At least I think you will be hard pressed to find examples of it if you go looking. I know because I’m a left leaning Scandinavian who spent a lot of my youth looking (including a minor in history). That being said, organisations like Twitter are the worst examples of capitalism. At least in my opinion, in that they are companies that do not generate a profit. But instead plan to, somehow, sometime, generate a profit for their investors. It’s essentially like running a non-profit organisation without any of the moral obligations. Obviously a very cool idea here on HN considering this is a venture capitalist site, but maybe not so good for humanity as a whole.

laserlight 3y ago
> there is likely a reason human history has not produced a whole lot of organisations with independent governance outside of capitalism. The reason is that capitalism actively undermines any competing type of organization. Organizations which build sustainable and ethical products or services are quickly driven out of market when capitalism offers competing products or services for free.

kolinko 3y ago

Stack Overflow is a capitalist venture. So is HN by the way.

nologic01 3y ago

There is a strong element of truth in that, but I don't think its the whole truth. While carefully airbrushed from public discourse the very function of capitalism is absolutely predicated on the legitimacy and protection granted by the collective. Every time an "important sector" gets bailed out you have a direct confirmation of our deep inter-dependencies. Privatizing profit and socializing loss is proof of the deep prevailing immorality of the "system". Yet there is nothing that says that all those financial inventions must degenerate into obsessive profit-seeking. Capitalism is a broad set of contractual arrangements, information flows, monetary accounting and the like, that facilitate economic function. Almost everything in this toolkit is configurable (via legislation and regulation, but even more so by widely adopted moral behavior) to the most minute detail. You could have for-profit employee owned corporations for example (they do exist and they work just fine). Blaming "generic" capitalist tools is similar to blaming digital tech as such. Both are manifestations of "social tech" but what you do with them depends on your moral sandbox. You can legitimately blame php for its limitations as a technology. But you can use php to write mediawiki or to write facebook. You can piggy-bag on PageRank or LLM to sell targeted ads or opt to empower every person alive with new and powerful information processing tools. I think people adopt non-profit status to immunize against a metastasized environment where anything but the most rapacious behavior is dead on arrival. But it really does not have to be this way and it wasn't always that way (in space and time). In a sense it is an extreme measure which realistically and unfortunately (in the short term at least) cannot become the norm. We really ought to fix capitalism. Even if our digital sphere was a benign utopia, we face horrendous environmental sustainability problems that the current version of capitalism has absolutely no idea how to fix. Hopefully there will be a well researched and objective Wikipedia article on how to do this :-)