The president of Foxconn has a huge pool of labor from which to draw, and even he has stated that he's going to put a million or so robots online in the next couple of years.
Robots don't have the same issues as humans. They don't need breaks. You don't need to feed them. They don't get pregnant. They don't need to be protected from dangerous chemicals. They don't commit suicide (thus embarrassing you).
We'll replace as many jobs as we can with robots. Unfortunately, robots aren't consumers, so as you eliminate workers, you eliminate markets for your products. Of course, if you are already rich, you don't need to be in business anymore anyway.
So to restate your sentence correctly: Automation and producing goods where there is a comparative advantage to producing those goods are both increases in efficency which MAY lead to higher wages.
YES. That's the issue. The benefits of productivity aren't being passed around to most of society. In theory, we should all be working fewer hours now because it takes fewer manhours to product many things. But instead we have some people working long hours and others not working at all. And it isn't just a skills issue. We need people in childcare, elder care, and care of the disabled, but we don't want to pay people much to do these jobs.
Companies and investors make more money when they figure out how to eliminate jobs, so that is their incentive. And as soon as it is possible to replace many of the high priced labor in Silicon Valley, those jobs will go, too. And if you are above the age of 40, getting retrained for new jobs there won't help. The companies will just hire the latest crop of smart kids from high school or college.
And more than likely, as soon as you start making a living wage, the company finds someone else who will do it cheaper and you're out of a job. As long as we have nearly an unlimited supply of labor in the world, wages can be suppressed. Yes, it does lower the costs for consumers, but as their wages go down, they can't buy more anyway.
If I am an apple picker, paid based on lb of apples I pick, I earn more money.
Or you just expand supply and the money per apple that you make goes down.
It's been happening for a long time for clothing. Machines allow people to make more clothing, so the pay per item goes down. At best they are treading water.
We have a large group of scientists saying there is global warming, and it is caused by burning fossil fuels.
The fossil fuel industry, not wanting to be disrupted, lobbies Washington to suppress an inconvenient science. So not only is Washington not addressing a problem, it isn't even supposed to know there is a problem.
Consider how long the tobacco industry fought any research suggesting a link between cancer and smoking.
So you can see how powerful industries have ways to control many aspects of society. They can pay researchers for studies that they want; they can pay to have killed the research they don't want; they can give donations to politicians they want in office; they can create media outlets that only put forth the stories they want covered and in ways they want them covered.
I suppose one way to bring down the very wealthy is to destroy their financial system. Since most of their wealth is on paper, if you eliminate the ways to record and transfer wealth, it doesn't really exist.
Of course it would bring down a lot of other people, too, and there would be chaos, but I suppose some terrorists might decide to do it (presumably there would be backup systems so there would be adequate records, but if one figured out how to wipe out everything, it would be a mess). The doomsday scenario people are stockpiling food and water, just in case.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Beware of big companies
ALEC, a Tax-Exempt Group, Mixes Legislators and Lobbyists - NYTimes.com: "The records offer a glimpse of how special interests effectively turn ALEC’s lawmaker members into stealth lobbyists, providing them with talking points, signaling how they should vote and collaborating on bills affecting hundreds of issues like school vouchers and tobacco taxes."
There is no need to break up Google, the only any market needs is simple, low bar to entry and lots of competitors, the application of those principals though is hard, endless regulations that raise the bar so only the big can manage to stay in the game, allowing exclusive deals meant to keep others from entering, granting monopolistic powers to all little guys which innevitably sell those powers producing super monopoly pools for just a few.
My point is that once a company becomes as big as Google, it has the financial resources to lobby the political system to favor what it needs to stay in control.
Start by reforming campaign financing and lobbying. Lots of people across the political spectrum support it and yet nothing has gotten done. If anything, more money is flowing into politics. ALEC, for example, writes laws and gives it to politicians who pass them unchanged. Those laws favor ALEC members.
Re: It's The Rich, Mike, who start and profit from the class war.
Yes, when your customers have no money to spend, they don't buy from you, unless you convince them to go into debt, which then comes with its own set of problems.
I used to think this reality would take down the rich and their companies. But now I have come to realize that they have so much money they are overspending on art, property, and so on, so if most of the rest of the world disappeared, they'd continue to live on their estates, have a few servants, and then just trade back and forth amongst themselves. Now with automation, they don't really need a huge army of workers to maintain their lifestyles. Unfortunately the "workers" of the world don't really have much leverage. Even if they organize revolutions, the wealthy can retreat behind walls and stay safe.
Naomi Klein on Capitalism and Climate Change | BillMoyers.com: NAOMI KLEIN: ... "there's a privatization of response to disaster, where I think that wealthy people understand that, yes, we are going to see more and more storms. We live in a turbulent world. It's going to get even more turbulent. And they're planning. So you have, for instance private insurance companies now increasingly offer what they call a concierge service. The first company that was doing this was A.I.G. And in the midst of the California wildfires about six years ago, for the first time, you saw private firefighters showing up at people's homes, spraying them in fire retardant, so that when the flames came, this house would stay. ... After Hurricane Katrina a company in Florida saw a market opportunity. And they decided to offer a charter airline that would turn your hurricane into a luxury vacation. That was actually the slogan. They would let you know when a hurricane was headed for your area. They would pick you up in a limousine, drive you to the airport, and whisk you up. And they would make you five star hotel reservations at the destination of your choice. So, you know, why does a hurricane have to be bad news after all?"
In essence, some of us are challenging the idea that the world economy can be sustained on a concept of infinite growth. If anything, we probably should be downsizing, at least in advanced countries, but downsizing freaks out Wall Street and politicians. And downsizing isn't bad as long as everyone shares in it, rather than placing the burden on the middle and lower classes. The sharable movement at least acknowledges that we need to find ways to get by with less. And if we get by with less, we're not going to pay companies trying to sell us goods and services.
I've been following along with Krugman's discussions and the links that he points to.
First of all, I believe we are in a transition as big as the Industrial Revolution, so it isn't just another business cycle that will be worked out eventually. And the big boost in productivity from the 19th century to the present was tied to energy. Right now we are beginning to recognize that even if we continue to find more fossil fuels, it may not be in the planet's best interests to burn them. But we don't seem to be making a transition to an alternative very quickly.
So we have two big issues affecting employment: energy and changing economic systems. Yes, we can fully employ everyone, but that means perhaps letting everyone work a bit less and sharing the rewards of that increased productivity, which we haven't done. And from a resource point of view, we need to get away from making more stuff than people need or can afford to buy. (Also, another issue we will need to deal with is the tightening of fertilizer. Big ag may not be sustainable. Peak Phosphorus And Food Production.)
Here's more about the evolution of economic systems.
P2P Foundation -- Peer to peer and the feudal transition: "What I want to show now is how similar is the predicament of the current world-system. After 1989 and the fall of the centralized state socialisms, capitalism is now a global system, without any outside. While there are still wide areas of the world that could be more developed, it is hitting ecological, energy and natural resource limits. Already consuming two planets, it is an impossibility for China and India to achieve the same levels of the West, despite their very fast growth, as that would consume four planets. Maintaining an infinite growth system in a finite material world, is a logical and physical impossibility. What this means is that the limits of extensive development are being reached, just as happened with the Roman Empire. But surely, capitalism could switch to a mode of intensive development, becoming a cognitive, experience-based economy?"
Re: Re: Re: "There are always middlemen." -- We can reduce them.
Perhaps, but if the last few decades have taught us anything, it's that you still face the substantial risk of putting your money under the control of a group of unapologetic thieves.
Yes, that's pretty much how more people see it these days -- that it is rigged against them. That wariness has at least taken the steam out of the IPO market, which is a very good thing. And without IPO exits, the return for VCs goes down, too. Which is also a good thing, given what companies have been funded.
For as many smart people as have gone to Wall Street over the last few decades, I'm not sure what positive we have to show for it. Did we really need to find new ways to push money around?
Coincidentally, this is the exact reasoning behind having a progressive income tax. Money is power in our society, and if you accumulate enough wealth it become easy (and inevitable) to subvert society and present an existential threat to it. The progressive tax structure was intended as a way of putting the brakes on that sort of accumulation.
That's why I don't fully embrace the Techdirt approach to life. I'm concerned that some of the points advocated are done so to allow Google to function that much more unencumbered, which will make Google that much more powerful. Now if we can talk about how to free up society and ALSO break up corporations the size of Google, I'm more open to the discussions.
I'm also concerned that certain libertarian positions are going to be used to allow those with property to continue to maintain it, while not creating opportunities for those without property to ever get any. If libertarian arguments ultimately maintain the status quo, I'm not really excited about them. And by status quo, I mean allowing rich people to stay rich. If you have to pay for everything out of your own pocket, then it's hard to get anywhere if you can't pay. Privatizing everything doesn't work so well for you if you can't pay for education, health care, safety protection, etc.
Ultimately I am very concerned that the quality of life for most of the world will go down with the effects of global warming and unsustainable economics, but the wealthy won't have to deal with it because they can buy their own safety. So they can continue to advocate policies that are bad for the world, but if 90% of the world's population disappears as a result, it doesn't affect them very much.
Re: Re: "There are always middlemen." -- We can reduce them.
Investing while uneducated in the stock market is nearly the same as the casino's risks but many of the risks disappear if research is done before hand.
Even with research it is hard for average investors to make good investments in the market these days. The market works when everyone has equal access to information and when the trading technology operates the same for everyone. Neither of those are the case these days.
Now, if I were advising someone with a long-term frame who wanted to put money into the market, I'd say, "S&P 500." But if you need access to your funds in within the next 10 years, cash may be your best bet. As we have seen since the dotcom crash, it can take a long time to recover what a down market can do to your portfolio.
The era of centralized and walled services like Facebook is on the rise, but it'll pass. The era of decentralized and more user controlled networks is looming.
The lure of walled services is data collection. The more you can monitor your users, the more data you have on them. As people have pointed out in the post about Google fiber, it's a great opportunity for Google to see everything you do online.
So if it is up to companies, I think they will continue to do everything they can to keep you within their walls, even if those walls aren't always visible. I hope the blocking technology continues to keep up to deprive them of that data. But as we run more stuff on mobile devices, it's hard to keep these companies out of our lives.
There is a lot online and in mobile I won't do because I don't want to share that info. So that may be the ultimate backlash. People stop using networks, apps, etc.
With companies and human beings, the effect appears to be this: it take a certain predatory nature to be willing to do what it takes to achieve great wealth and/or power.
It's not that achieving it makes you predatory. It's that if you aren't predatory, you won't really want to achieve it in the first place.
Good point. Which is why I think we need to talk about how to engineer the system (it doesn't have to be through laws, but it does have to be to stop gaming the system as much as possible) so that once power/wealth get too concentrated, a brake happens, or the power center automatically comes apart. I don't expect either to happen right away, but I am highlighting the discussions about the P2P and other movements as I find them.
Capitalism and economics as we know them are not the only options and there are experiments in other economic systems. In many cases those are happening because people have been shut out of mainstream economics and have no choice. If your income is disappearing, you look for ways to get by on less. And as consumption declines, it has a ripple affect elsewhere. People are going to stop buying stuff because they can't buy stuff. And as they do that, they take down industries trying to sell them stuff.
I first got online in 1993 and worked part time for the Apple Media Research that was in Boulder back then. I've been watching the various big and mini tech booms since (and I have covered them as a writer/editor). There are tech people who are primarily motivated to create something useful for society, but whenever the money starts to flow, we get stories of the most recent generation of rich entrepreneurs. They are going to exclusive conferences, having great parties, etc. So it's all about "rich." And the rich tend to do what allows them to associate with other rich folks, which isn't the life that most people live.
Like I said, I think the problem is about economics and how wealth is accumulated, which then acts as a bubble to segregate those with power from everyone else.
I posted this in the discussion about disruptive industries, but it is so good and so relevant I want to repost it here.
How to Fix Your Soul - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review: "Imagine that I pioneer a wondrous nanomaterials startup that offers everyone a blindingly awesome new technology. What's likely to happen, without institutional innovation — without better building blocks for markets, corporations, and economies, in this case?
"Well, the first thing that's likely to happen is...nothing. Wall St and Sand Hill Rd probably won't bat an eyelid at my startup, choosing, instead, to do what they've been doing for the last decade or so: allocating capital to Groupon, Zynga, Facebook, and their ilk. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that by some miracle of virtue, that they do invest in my amazing nanomaterials startup. What happens next? Well, without political innovation, I'll get rich, and my backers will get rich — but the middle class is likely to continue its long, slow slide into oblivion. The benefits of technological innovation, in other words, without institutional innovation, are likely to remain hyperconcentrated at the top — with all the attendant problems that stem therefrom: regulatory capture, political gridlock, mega-lobbying, middle class implosion, planetary destruction, and finally, more of the same: real economic stagnation."
I think as companies become bigger and more powerful, they exert more control. I'd like to see more decentralization of everything, including company ownership. Ultimately I'd like to see world economic systems change to such an extent there is no need for a company as big/powerful as Apple or Google.
If the tech community, which believed in openness, can have companies that behave like big oil, big auto, big pharma, etc., I think it ultimately affects every company that gets to a certain size.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Right now Google is a limited threat
If there is one thing Google will do for sure, sneaking up on Time Warner isn't it. Google moves far too slowly. We first heard of Google Fiber years ago. They are just now making it a reality, and remain uncertain if they are going to even expand it further than Kansas City.
Yes, that is the point. Time Warner does what it wants for now because it is in markets where Google is not, and may never go.
Well, what if Google teamed up with the municipal broadband groups? Let them use the "Google Fiber" name, helped them get set up, and prevented the monopolists from killing them off with legal fees.
Would this require communities to fund their own rewiring? If so, I don't think most of them have to the money right now to do that. I think it is a great idea to have a community to own the system, but trying to raise the money to do this might be hard in the current economic environment.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re:
Robots don't have the same issues as humans. They don't need breaks. You don't need to feed them. They don't get pregnant. They don't need to be protected from dangerous chemicals. They don't commit suicide (thus embarrassing you).
We'll replace as many jobs as we can with robots. Unfortunately, robots aren't consumers, so as you eliminate workers, you eliminate markets for your products. Of course, if you are already rich, you don't need to be in business anymore anyway.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re: Sales
YES. That's the issue. The benefits of productivity aren't being passed around to most of society. In theory, we should all be working fewer hours now because it takes fewer manhours to product many things. But instead we have some people working long hours and others not working at all. And it isn't just a skills issue. We need people in childcare, elder care, and care of the disabled, but we don't want to pay people much to do these jobs.
Companies and investors make more money when they figure out how to eliminate jobs, so that is their incentive. And as soon as it is possible to replace many of the high priced labor in Silicon Valley, those jobs will go, too. And if you are above the age of 40, getting retrained for new jobs there won't help. The companies will just hire the latest crop of smart kids from high school or college.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re: One possible revolution
Fixed Costs Are Driving Americans To The Poorhouse - Business Insider
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: One possible revolution
Or you just expand supply and the money per apple that you make goes down.
It's been happening for a long time for clothing. Machines allow people to make more clothing, so the pay per item goes down. At best they are treading water.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: The energy/climate question
We have a large group of scientists saying there is global warming, and it is caused by burning fossil fuels.
The fossil fuel industry, not wanting to be disrupted, lobbies Washington to suppress an inconvenient science. So not only is Washington not addressing a problem, it isn't even supposed to know there is a problem.
Consider how long the tobacco industry fought any research suggesting a link between cancer and smoking.
So you can see how powerful industries have ways to control many aspects of society. They can pay researchers for studies that they want; they can pay to have killed the research they don't want; they can give donations to politicians they want in office; they can create media outlets that only put forth the stories they want covered and in ways they want them covered.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
One possible revolution
Of course it would bring down a lot of other people, too, and there would be chaos, but I suppose some terrorists might decide to do it (presumably there would be backup systems so there would be adequate records, but if one figured out how to wipe out everything, it would be a mess). The doomsday scenario people are stockpiling food and water, just in case.
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Beware of big companies
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Beware of big companies
My point is that once a company becomes as big as Google, it has the financial resources to lobby the political system to favor what it needs to stay in control.
Start by reforming campaign financing and lobbying. Lots of people across the political spectrum support it and yet nothing has gotten done. If anything, more money is flowing into politics. ALEC, for example, writes laws and gives it to politicians who pass them unchanged. Those laws favor ALEC members.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: It's The Rich, Mike, who start and profit from the class war.
I used to think this reality would take down the rich and their companies. But now I have come to realize that they have so much money they are overspending on art, property, and so on, so if most of the rest of the world disappeared, they'd continue to live on their estates, have a few servants, and then just trade back and forth amongst themselves. Now with automation, they don't really need a huge army of workers to maintain their lifestyles. Unfortunately the "workers" of the world don't really have much leverage. Even if they organize revolutions, the wealthy can retreat behind walls and stay safe.
Naomi Klein on Capitalism and Climate Change | BillMoyers.com: NAOMI KLEIN: ... "there's a privatization of response to disaster, where I think that wealthy people understand that, yes, we are going to see more and more storms. We live in a turbulent world. It's going to get even more turbulent. And they're planning. So you have, for instance private insurance companies now increasingly offer what they call a concierge service. The first company that was doing this was A.I.G. And in the midst of the California wildfires about six years ago, for the first time, you saw private firefighters showing up at people's homes, spraying them in fire retardant, so that when the flames came, this house would stay. ... After Hurricane Katrina a company in Florida saw a market opportunity. And they decided to offer a charter airline that would turn your hurricane into a luxury vacation. That was actually the slogan. They would let you know when a hurricane was headed for your area. They would pick you up in a limousine, drive you to the airport, and whisk you up. And they would make you five star hotel reservations at the destination of your choice. So, you know, why does a hurricane have to be bad news after all?"
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: The energy/climate question
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
The energy/climate question
First of all, I believe we are in a transition as big as the Industrial Revolution, so it isn't just another business cycle that will be worked out eventually. And the big boost in productivity from the 19th century to the present was tied to energy. Right now we are beginning to recognize that even if we continue to find more fossil fuels, it may not be in the planet's best interests to burn them. But we don't seem to be making a transition to an alternative very quickly.
So we have two big issues affecting employment: energy and changing economic systems. Yes, we can fully employ everyone, but that means perhaps letting everyone work a bit less and sharing the rewards of that increased productivity, which we haven't done. And from a resource point of view, we need to get away from making more stuff than people need or can afford to buy. (Also, another issue we will need to deal with is the tightening of fertilizer. Big ag may not be sustainable. Peak Phosphorus And Food Production.)
Here's more about the evolution of economic systems.
P2P Foundation -- Peer to peer and the feudal transition: "What I want to show now is how similar is the predicament of the current world-system. After 1989 and the fall of the centralized state socialisms, capitalism is now a global system, without any outside. While there are still wide areas of the world that could be more developed, it is hitting ecological, energy and natural resource limits. Already consuming two planets, it is an impossibility for China and India to achieve the same levels of the West, despite their very fast growth, as that would consume four planets. Maintaining an infinite growth system in a finite material world, is a logical and physical impossibility. What this means is that the limits of extensive development are being reached, just as happened with the Roman Empire. But surely, capitalism could switch to a mode of intensive development, becoming a cognitive, experience-based economy?"
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Re: Re: Re: "There are always middlemen." -- We can reduce them.
Yes, that's pretty much how more people see it these days -- that it is rigged against them. That wariness has at least taken the steam out of the IPO market, which is a very good thing. And without IPO exits, the return for VCs goes down, too. Which is also a good thing, given what companies have been funded.
For as many smart people as have gone to Wall Street over the last few decades, I'm not sure what positive we have to show for it. Did we really need to find new ways to push money around?
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Beware of big companies
That's why I don't fully embrace the Techdirt approach to life. I'm concerned that some of the points advocated are done so to allow Google to function that much more unencumbered, which will make Google that much more powerful. Now if we can talk about how to free up society and ALSO break up corporations the size of Google, I'm more open to the discussions.
I'm also concerned that certain libertarian positions are going to be used to allow those with property to continue to maintain it, while not creating opportunities for those without property to ever get any. If libertarian arguments ultimately maintain the status quo, I'm not really excited about them. And by status quo, I mean allowing rich people to stay rich. If you have to pay for everything out of your own pocket, then it's hard to get anywhere if you can't pay. Privatizing everything doesn't work so well for you if you can't pay for education, health care, safety protection, etc.
Ultimately I am very concerned that the quality of life for most of the world will go down with the effects of global warming and unsustainable economics, but the wealthy won't have to deal with it because they can buy their own safety. So they can continue to advocate policies that are bad for the world, but if 90% of the world's population disappears as a result, it doesn't affect them very much.
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Re: Re: "There are always middlemen." -- We can reduce them.
Even with research it is hard for average investors to make good investments in the market these days. The market works when everyone has equal access to information and when the trading technology operates the same for everyone. Neither of those are the case these days.
Now, if I were advising someone with a long-term frame who wanted to put money into the market, I'd say, "S&P 500." But if you need access to your funds in within the next 10 years, cash may be your best bet. As we have seen since the dotcom crash, it can take a long time to recover what a down market can do to your portfolio.
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Re:
The lure of walled services is data collection. The more you can monitor your users, the more data you have on them. As people have pointed out in the post about Google fiber, it's a great opportunity for Google to see everything you do online.
So if it is up to companies, I think they will continue to do everything they can to keep you within their walls, even if those walls aren't always visible. I hope the blocking technology continues to keep up to deprive them of that data. But as we run more stuff on mobile devices, it's hard to keep these companies out of our lives.
There is a lot online and in mobile I won't do because I don't want to share that info. So that may be the ultimate backlash. People stop using networks, apps, etc.
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Re: Re: Beware of big companies
It's not that achieving it makes you predatory. It's that if you aren't predatory, you won't really want to achieve it in the first place.
Good point. Which is why I think we need to talk about how to engineer the system (it doesn't have to be through laws, but it does have to be to stop gaming the system as much as possible) so that once power/wealth get too concentrated, a brake happens, or the power center automatically comes apart. I don't expect either to happen right away, but I am highlighting the discussions about the P2P and other movements as I find them.
Capitalism and economics as we know them are not the only options and there are experiments in other economic systems. In many cases those are happening because people have been shut out of mainstream economics and have no choice. If your income is disappearing, you look for ways to get by on less. And as consumption declines, it has a ripple affect elsewhere. People are going to stop buying stuff because they can't buy stuff. And as they do that, they take down industries trying to sell them stuff.
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Silicon Valley and money
Like I said, I think the problem is about economics and how wealth is accumulated, which then acts as a bubble to segregate those with power from everyone else.
I posted this in the discussion about disruptive industries, but it is so good and so relevant I want to repost it here.
How to Fix Your Soul - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review: "Imagine that I pioneer a wondrous nanomaterials startup that offers everyone a blindingly awesome new technology. What's likely to happen, without institutional innovation — without better building blocks for markets, corporations, and economies, in this case?
"Well, the first thing that's likely to happen is...nothing. Wall St and Sand Hill Rd probably won't bat an eyelid at my startup, choosing, instead, to do what they've been doing for the last decade or so: allocating capital to Groupon, Zynga, Facebook, and their ilk. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that by some miracle of virtue, that they do invest in my amazing nanomaterials startup. What happens next? Well, without political innovation, I'll get rich, and my backers will get rich — but the middle class is likely to continue its long, slow slide into oblivion. The benefits of technological innovation, in other words, without institutional innovation, are likely to remain hyperconcentrated at the top — with all the attendant problems that stem therefrom: regulatory capture, political gridlock, mega-lobbying, middle class implosion, planetary destruction, and finally, more of the same: real economic stagnation."
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Beware of big companies
If the tech community, which believed in openness, can have companies that behave like big oil, big auto, big pharma, etc., I think it ultimately affects every company that gets to a certain size.
On the post: Time Warner Cable Doesn't Think There's Demand For Google Fiber
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Right now Google is a limited threat
Yes, that is the point. Time Warner does what it wants for now because it is in markets where Google is not, and may never go.
On the post: Time Warner Cable Doesn't Think There's Demand For Google Fiber
Re: Municipal broadband
Would this require communities to fund their own rewiring? If so, I don't think most of them have to the money right now to do that. I think it is a great idea to have a community to own the system, but trying to raise the money to do this might be hard in the current economic environment.
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