by
Jaron Lanier
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To a libertarian or "austerian" I say: If we desire some form of markets or capitalism, we must live in a bell-shaped world, with a dominant middle class, for that is where customers come from. Neither a petro-fiefdom, a military dictatorship, nor a narco-state can support authentic internal market development, and neither does a winner-take-nearly-all network design.
I accept the implication though obvs not the condition lol
This reminds me of the way some libertarians are convinced that lower taxes will always guarantee a wealthier society. The math is wrong; outcomes from complex systems are actually filled with peaks and valleys.
yeah no shit. he's making libertarians look pretty dumb here
[...] If the system remembers where information originally came from, then the people who are the sources of information can be paid for it.
yeah but can you pay them enough to preserve their middle class lifestyles without drastically compromising profit margins for these companies? it's a tricky balance--you have to substantially temper expectations on both ends. why even bother
We do have rules in place to charge commercial concerns for using the public airwaves. Maybe that model could be extended to information flows in general. The argument would be that every citizen contributes to the information space whether they want to or not. Everyone is measured and tracked in the network age. So why not have government collect compensation for the use of that value in order to fund social welfare?
his argument against this (on the next page) is that we should instead go "all the way" and treat information as genuinely valuable which, I would argue, is NOT going all the way
he also characterises such an endeavour (of granting licenses) as potentially limiting new ventures (putting a "political choke hold on expression") which is ofc bad
my response to this is: does he not realise that governments (or at least all governments with sovereign money) can print their own money or ...?
A humanist approach to future digital economies might, on first sniff, smell redistributionist, but it is nothing of the kind. Some people would contribute and earn more than others. The point is not to create a fake contest where everybody is guaranteed to win, but rather to be honest about who contributed to successes, so as not to foster fake incentives.
in trying to water down his argument for conservatives, he strips it of any true audacity and makes it pointless. why have a contest that controls distribution at all?????
[...] "Your arch has been replicated fifty-eight times around the world. Check out this giant version from a beach in Rio." Through the mixed-reality glasses, you and your friends find yourselves sharing a beach with revelers in Rio.
Wow, a nice day's earnings for you. "Seagull, that casino nearby has an excellent restaurant, doesn't it? Let's splurge." You call out to your friends, "Who's hungry?"
his stupid seagull on a beach fantasy. is this supposed to be utopia???? this is disgusting, i have no words
The pattern repeats in most of the cases where people are starting to find careers in the new information economy. A small number of people make some money from YouTube videos, for instance, because Google has started to share ad revenue with top stars. This is a great development, but the number is inherently small, and the tiny numbers of video producers who are making a living for the moment are not necessarily doing well enough to build wealth for their futures.
how is this a great development? 1) top youtubers could make money anyway through influencer marketing and 2) this is just contributing to the rise of youtube celebrities so more and more people can make shitty videos about their shopping hauls or pranks. JUST BECAUSE IT MAKES MONEY DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GOOD FOR SOCIETY
If the information economy is to evolve on its present track, so that each player is either running a Siren Server or is an ordinary person ricocheting between two extremes of noncapitalism, between fake free and fake ownership, then markets will eventually shrink and capitalism will collapse.
yes pls
The death of Facebook must be an option if it is to be a company at all. Therefore your online identity should not be fundamentally grounded in Facebook or something similar.
or ... Facebook should just be a government-run utility (he does say it's becoming more like one in the previous paragraph)
I guess the argument against that is: if the govt is the only body that has legitimate use of force, then there is a fear that it will use the data it has on you for malicious purposes. that is a valid fear when you view govt as a bad thing, something that's not accountable, but does it have to be that way? think about this more
In a humanistic information economy, as people age, they will collect royalties on value they brought into the world when they were younger. This seems to me to be a highly moral use of information technology. It remembers the right data. The very idea that our world is construed in such a way that the lifetime contributions of hardworking, creative people can be forgotten, that they can be sent perpetually back to the starting gate, is a deep injustice.
Putting it that way makes the complaint sound leftist. But today's there's also an erasure of what should be legitimate capital. The right should be just as outraged. The proposal here is not redistributionist or socialist. Royalties based on creative contributions from a whole lifetime would always be flowing freshly. It would be wealth earned, not entitlement.
there is literally no such thing as wealth "earned", it is ALWAYS entitlement. you "earn" it by some sort of social and regulatory convention, and the amount is not the result of some universal arbitration process, either ...
we (as a society) need to address this idea of "earning" wealth. it's such a key facet of capitalist realism and so pernicious