How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

Re:How does ‘class-passing’ actually work? by Consultant32452 on Thursday February 01, 2018 @01:56PM (#16284609)

I think you're undervaluing the impact of the internet on small business. Sure, a few guys at the tippy top of Uber-eats are the only ones getting fabulously wealthy, but I've discovered several wonderful mom and pop restaurants through that service. Sure, only a hand full of people at Google are getting fabulously wealthy, but most of the video content I consume these days are regular-ish people on Youtube who now make their living making those videos without having to go through Hollywood gatekeepers. There's been at least a half dozen small businesses I've hired based solely off their Craigslist ads, businesses I likely would've never heard of and might not have ever existed without the internet/Craigslist. I don't understand why people point to the few fabulously wealthy people and exclaim that because everyone else isn't fabulously wealthy that the system is failing us all. We still have a ways to go, but the internet to me has moved several things further down the democratized spectrum than they ever had been before.

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Re:How does ‘class-passing’ actually work? by TheOtherHobbes on Friday February 02, 2018 @02:44AM (#16289078)

Just because you’ve thrown a few crumbs of business or exposure at these people doesn’t mean they’ve become any richer than their equivalents would have been in the pre-Internet days.

The fact that the technological requirements for small new businesses and cottage content industries have changed shouldn’t be confused with an improvement in the opportunity landscape as a whole.

If anything, these “businesses” - especially the content creators - are more like digital feudalisms, as (mostly) low-status low-value workers try to scratch out an existence on territory owned by a single entity they have no democratic influence on.

The reality is that wealth concentration among the hyper-rich is accelerating as they capture an ever-increasing share of global productivity.

If the Internet were likely to fix this, we’d have seen some evidence of this happening by now.

But there is exactly zero evidence for this, and even less reason to believe that it can happen, given where we are today.

The only thing that might change this is total disintermediation - open, distributed, publicly owned, non-corporate hardware and software infrastructure, including search, security, content distribution, storage, and applications.

You only have to think about that for a few moments to see how far we are from that kind of Internet, and just how locked down, siloed, chokepointed, gated, and obsessively monetised the Internet we have today is.

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Re:How does ‘class-passing’ actually work? by Consultant32452 on Friday February 02, 2018 @08:24AM (#16290309)

>The fact that the technological requirements for small new businesses and cottage content industries have changed shouldn’t be confused with an improvement in the opportunity landscape as a whole.

Except cottage content and product industries can now sell to virtually the entire planet. That simply wasn't available before.

>as (mostly) low-status low-value workers

Here you're projecting your own bias against them. I'm not suggesting "the system" is without flaws, but the average joe seems to be doing alright in general, especially if you consider average joe historically and globally.

>The reality is that wealth concentration among the hyper-rich is accelerating as they capture an ever-increasing share of global productivity.

Wealth concentration among the hyper-rich doesn't concern me in the least. Generally speaking wealth is created by providing value, not taking it.

>If the Internet were likely to fix this, we’d have seen some evidence of this happening by now.

The internet is in the process of unseating media monopolies and democratizing information. The poorest of the poor across the world have access to information that was previously only available to the wealthiest who could attend universities in rich countries. The internet has allowed small businesses with basically no infrastructure to reach the entire global market. It's allowed families to keep in touch instantaneously across oceans.

>You only have to think about that for a few moments to see how far we are from that kind of Internet, and just how locked down, siloed, chokepointed, gated, and obsessively monetised the Internet we have today is.

You're comparing the internet to some fantasy you have. I'm comparing the internet to the world before the internet.

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Re:How does ‘class-passing’ actually work? by sedachv on Thursday February 01, 2018 @08:30PM (#16287620)

The Internet does enable easier local business discovery. Where are all the new small businesses though? The latest Census data is from 2015 and shows the number of new small businesses created is at a level not seen since the mid-1970s:

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-nea...

Whatever combination of factors is at work suppressing small business creation since the 2008 recession is not being overcome by the advantages you listed.

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Re:How does ‘class-passing’ actually work? by Consultant32452 on Thursday February 01, 2018 @11:19PM (#16288375)

The economy tanked and just as it was starting to recover the government made it illegal to take on risk by having no or crappy insurance. Meanwhile healthcare prices skyrocketed. Simultaneously we doubled down on our immigration policy towards providing citizenship for unskilled, impoverished immigrants rather than the kind of means based immigration policy popular in most of Europe. That means we missed out on a lot of talented, educated immigrants who might have either started companies or been willing to work for startups. We cracked down on internships. And we allowed patent trolls to run amok. Let's also not forget the credible threats of doubling minimum wage.

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