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Veteran author and longtime Silicon Valley resident Andrew Keen has stepped up his criticisms of the Internet. Describing the net as a platform that has devolved from its initial ideals and promise into a vehicle of monopolistic, manipulative and exploitative practices, a Guardian article summarizes views now gaining traction. By using Amazon, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber or any other online giant, are we striking a Faustian pact, behind which lays a mass of suffering, surveillance and ruthless harvesting?
Keen supports his arguments by mentioning that even online businesses that cite individual collaboration, those of the 'sharing' economy, are mere cynical fronts for firms already valued in the billions. As money has been sucked out of retail, transportation, photography, research and other industries into the coffers of new Internet giants, the net result has been losses of jobs and the compromise of working conditions. As for the Internet's much-touted 'individual empowerment', Keen counters with the rise of mob mentality - “Rather than creating more democracy, it’s empowering the rule of the mob. Rather than encouraging tolerance, it’s unleashed such a distasteful war on women that many no longer feel welcome on the network". Keen's book - The Internet is not the Answer - is, a touch ironically, available on Amazon.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fadrian on Wednesday February 11 2015, @01:26AM
Immoral actors will be with us always. And any control system can be corrupted given application of enough power. Although one can ameliorate these two factors, one can never eliminate them. As such, one must always have a non-bypassable way to limit the amount of relative power ever aggregated by any one group. Right now, this is done, but at high cost, by revolution. It would have been nice if the founding fathers would have ensconced this as a founding principle, as well as individual liberty. I don't think they ever thought that networks of bad actors could take down a system this quickly. Where is the scalable governmental system for the world that avoids this? That minimizes exploitation while maximizing benefit? Communism may not have been the solution, but the oligarchy we have now as a result of (unfettered capitalism, corrupting influence of government on the free market, take your pick) isn't either. Our system did not scale in the face of technical change. Leverage granted by technological capabilities and associated network effects continued apace while the systems of governance lagged behind, allowing too few to exert economic control and lay virtual serfdom on the many. What system to use? Who knows. It must allow individual success to be rewarded while limiting power to those who are so successful that they gain enough power to destroy the system? Myself, I think setting an arbitrary limit on what anyone can own works best. Make it something large enough to let someone live his life out in almost absolute luxury - I don't know... pick a number. Index it to the overall wealth of the nation. After anyone obtains this amount, fuck, I don't know how you make him redistribute it, but redistribute it he must, lest he accumulate too much power over his fellow man. In the end, if you want a stable system that destroys neither freedom nor the system that provides prosperity, you must have some form of redistribution to limit the amount of power any one actor or coordinated group of actors can obtain because otherwise, you do get revolution.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 11 2015, @12:02PM
Yes, and it should reward innovation and meaningful contributions to the common good. No more worthless bankers sitting around playing number games that don't actually produce anything. No more bond traders getting obscenely wealthy in the circle jerk that is the debt market. In fact, we should replace every class of financial worker with a very small shellscript.
The dream of striking it rich is a good motivator, so a system that eliminates that won't thrive. A system that discourages hard work by taxing labor many times the rate of taxing capital will not thrive. A nation that transforms itself into a society of layabouts who collect handouts--and rents--from an increasingly hard-pressed middle will fail. If you siphon capital from the productive and hand it to the shiftless poor and shiftless ultra-wealthy, the pool of the future's entrepreneurs, engineers, and social drivers will starve.
So your idea of a cap on wealth could be an answer. Something on the order of, "Once you have $100 million, you can afford anything anyone would ever want."
Washington DC delenda est.