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I’m being unnecessarily confrontational because I’m having a bad day, sorry, that’s not helpful. I would say this: I agree with you that massive faceless monop
by jakewins 3y ago
I’m being unnecessarily confrontational because I’m having a bad day, sorry, that’s not helpful.
I would say this: I agree with you that massive faceless monopolies with no accountability are terrible, and often a direct consequence of economies of scale.
It is also, simultaneously, true that the labour saving effects - human hours spent per calorie of food or pair of socks - is a number of orders of magnitude such that modern society (ie the not starving/not freezing part of it) could not exist without it.
These two things are simultaneously true, which is what makes the problem hard; we want one effect of economies of scale and not the other.
- politician 3y agoA way out: Does your example apply beyond the necessities of basic survival? We can take it as an axiom that it would not serve humanity for oxygen to be distributed on credit on the Moon.
- BrenBarn 3y agoI mean, again, I think that's true, but only up to a point. Basically what I'm saying is that up to a certain point economies of scale are good for production, and beyond that they mostly just become good for profit. I feel like the main problem people are having with my comment is I said "virtually all" economies of scale and forgot to say "beyond a certain point". By "all" I meant "across all domains" (as opposed to just content moderation), not "of every possible size all the way down to individual artisans". I agree that there is some level of economy of scale that is probably required for things like production of clothes, but I think we should try to keep companies close to that level.