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<zaroth>: I'm not sure why you were downvoted, so have an upvote. Not saying I entirely agree with you -- calling it a "tax" is incendiary and no more accurate
by declan 11y ago
<zaroth>: I'm not sure why you were downvoted, so have an upvote.
Not saying I entirely agree with you -- calling it a "tax" is incendiary and no more accurate than saying "why do we need to pay a 10% tax to grocery stores or Amazon?" -- but your broader point is an interesting one.
I'm pessimistic about this application of p2p discovery in the short term, but in the longer term (>7 years) you may well be right. The short/medium-term problem, and this goes back to 1990s discussions among cypherpunks about anonymous reputation systems, is that those "honest reviews" are attractive targets for gaming.
- zaroth 11y agoI don't need the karma, I'd much rather have the discussion! :-) Rent-seeking is probably a better description than tax, in that while it certainly costs a lot to build and maintain these systems, and they do provide some measure of value, the goal here is to build scale, build monopoly, and then extract profit. The alternative is building the technology in a open / decentralized fashion which doesn't grant any level of centralized control. Open source software provides such incredible economy of scale that I do think such a system could one day reasonably compete with the best a multi-billion-dollar corporation could offer.