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Major Computing Entities as Public Goods
Twitter, Amazon, Google, and similar things are like the railroad, mining, and lumber companies of yore, run by a small number of highly influential individuals who happen to be in charge by a combination of luck and whatever else makes you one of those people. The thing is, these corporations effectively serve as public goods, just like our roads, our power grid, our water and sewage systems, our public mail service, our fire departments, etc. but they are not public entities. |
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Comments (5)
Quoting:If you don't like their service, don't use it.
Exactly. If we had real free enterprise in the U.S., there would already be lots of competition for the "services" named in the article, which would negate the following "suggestion" named in the article:
Quoting:4) Alternative services, like Amazon, Google, Twitter, etc. can be developed by non-profits using an OpenSource GPL-like model.
I'm all for the open source model. But, why the need for non-profits to replace the commercial entities? Free the markeplace and let a free market decide on the best services.
Quoting:Free the markeplace and let a free market decide on the best services.
Except in the entire history of the U.S. the marketplace has never truly been free, and as long as there are moneyed interests willing to bend the system to their benefit, it never will be free.
(Reality can really be a bummer.)
In our entire history, not just the U.S. And yet the closer we come to that ideal, the better things seem to work.
We shouldn't abandon an ideal just because we're not capable of fully achieving it.
This is true for market segments as well as regions (countries).
Hong Kong is not in a great place, physically, and yet the freedom of import/export (negligible tariffs, business regulations, etc) turned a city with nothing but a harbor into the transshipment center of the world.
When the Internet was freed of the "no commercial use" and peering restrictions, and was thrown open to anyone with the hardware (and money) to connect, the resulting explosion of use and innovation created the Internet we now know in barely 2 years.
Why did "Hollywood" become the movie making center of North America rather than New York, which was already the center of theater (and talent, and population, and industry)? Because Edison's oppressive patents on moving pictures were enforced on the East coast, but not the West.
...and so on.
Geoffrey, no one is saying that there must be total free rein, chaos, no responsibility, in order to have a "free market".
Only that the more people are restrained by the _results_ of their actions both good and bad, rather than by artificial limits and regulations, the more innovation and imagination results. Development accelerates, efficiencies are discovered and exploited, and everyone is better off.
It's a continuum, not black-and-white.
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None of them can compel you to pay for their service.
None of them can prevent competition.
The only thing these firms are is big, and only big because they are well-known and people choose to use them.
If you don't like their service, don't use it.