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This sentiment is good and important. What we lack today is a vision that the future doesn't have to be shitty. It really doesn't. In the 2000s, we had techn

This sentiment is good and important. What we lack today is a vision that the future doesn't have to be shitty. It really doesn't. In the 2000s, we had technical optimism. The change was when the ad-supported model took over. Tech became a force for manipulation. I don't think the big change can come from simply open source without incentive. I could be wrong. More traditional business models where the end user is the customer would go a long way against cynicism. As would non-VC models where tech can exist without profiting 100x or dying. The only change that needs to occur is in culture. We just need to think that these models are worth trying and to talk about our success in them. There are many great examples of small tech businesses that are not cynical. The end result is a productive 'race to the bottom' that Hotz is talking about. Lots of small companies competing with lower and lower margin and better and better products. A real market aligned with the customers. It's too bad he took VC so he cannot ethically participate. Still, with a lot of his open software, he is an agent of the change he wants to see in the world. That's definitely worth something.

snapplebobapple 2y ago
There's multiple problems here. 1. The thing that needs to change is not culture, it's literally the supreme court that has to change because the change in the 70's as the court transitioned to judge rehnquist's ideas is what caused the current problem. Prior to that we had a robust antitrust department that was going way too hard (they were breaking up regional gas station chains, so instead of saying "just don't do that" we went the exact opposite end of the spectrum into very wrong territory and allowed massive multinational monopolies/oligopolies). 2. The productive race to the bottom is awesome but it also needs some changes to copyright/patents. Contrary to what Mr. Hotz thinks, they are not stupid, they are a good idea that has been utterly coopted and rebranded to maximize holder value (at the direct cost of total societal value). To fix it we need to change the law to require minimization of harm at a given increase in copyrightable/patentable output with wording directing the error to be on the side of less damage to non copyright/patent holders. Copyright is easier here than patents because copyright terms went full retard. We could cut them down to the patent term and I highly doubt we see more than negligible drop in creative output because most of the value is in those first 20 years for almost all creative works.

snapplebobapple 2y ago

There's multiple problems here. 1. The thing that needs to change is not culture, it's literally the supreme court that has to change because the change in the 70's as the court transitioned to judge rehnquist's ideas is what caused the current problem. Prior to that we had a robust antitrust department that was going way too hard (they were breaking up regional gas station chains, so instead of saying "just don't do that" we went the exact opposite end of the spectrum into very wrong territory and allowed massive multinational monopolies/oligopolies). 2. The productive race to the bottom is awesome but it also needs some changes to copyright/patents. Contrary to what Mr. Hotz thinks, they are not stupid, they are a good idea that has been utterly coopted and rebranded to maximize holder value (at the direct cost of total societal value). To fix it we need to change the law to require minimization of harm at a given increase in copyrightable/patentable output with wording directing the error to be on the side of less damage to non copyright/patent holders. Copyright is easier here than patents because copyright terms went full retard. We could cut them down to the patent term and I highly doubt we see more than negligible drop in creative output because most of the value is in those first 20 years for almost all creative works.