To me, this isn't isolated loners. It's the first real community I've ever known. The first one I've ever actually felt like I was a part of, where I was always welcome and could always rely on finding people like me.
I understand that some people dislike this shift. It's easy to see where it might be inconvenient for local communities that used to depend on coercing membership to exist. It used to be easy to erase those who were alone in the crowd.
You're absolutely right. We didn't get a Global Village. Instead, we have a network of Global Villages. They are many and diverse and offer genuine community to everyone in ways that the old approach no longer did. This is beautiful and terrible - it's a shift from surviving to thriving.
We finally get to see that there's an option other than ghettos run by the tyranny of geography.
why would anyone entertain let alone engage opposing viewpoints when it's much more comfortable to just retreat to a place with common similar beliefs. Make no mistake Hn is an echo chamber as well.
People want to be in a place with common similar beliefs - this isn't a bad thing, its human nature. Its far safer to be around people you know don't like to eat people like you.
The main argument seems to be that because we're not having forced arguments and considerations in meatspace, mano-a-mano, we're not challenged enough. I'd argue we're extremely challenged nowadays, but most of the difficulty is in finding how to deal with the new stage upon with the game is set. Its like arguing that we've lost the ability to form up a cavalry line because of the airplane. You're right in a way, but its irrelevant. The game is changing, and everyone is scrambling to figure out what the new meta is.
In meatspace social pressure exists unlike on the internet. An example is racist/misogynist jokes are not acceptable in most IRL contexts (especially those that are being logged/recorded permanently as is the case on the majority of the modern web) whereas on the internet it's not only discouraged but it's actually a great way to build a following quickly.
The internet is fundamentally changing how we communicate, ingest news, and share information.
The argument is that before safe spaces and echo chambers online, individuals that aim to engage general public with their message in any meaningful context are forced to compromise their extreme views. In my view Alex Jones wouldn't be a nationally recognized name before the internet, at best he'd be able to get influence over 30 or so of his local conspiracy theorists. No publication would print his views, because of how large a portion of the population they would alienate and anger. I'd argue this pressure is a net positive and having it removed online is leading us down a dark path.
That is my point and what is changing, as people figure out how to interact in the platform. In Oklahoma yesterday nearly all local news outlets reported on a group of adults threatening violence (or to have their children/grandchildren commit violence) on a 12 year old transgender girl. They did that on Facebook, and their names are out there along with their identities. People are moving towards more identifiable or at least moderated spaces, because frankly most people don’t want to interact on a platform that’s main feature is they allow anyone to say anything with no consequences.
Alex Jones may not exist if it weren’t for the internet, but the backlash to views like his is real as public spaces on the internet figure out how to deal with bad actors.
But in the original "community", you wouldn't actually be exposed to opposing viewpoints all that often either. You actively had to seek them out too. Ancestor comment pointed out that community was required for survival. Once survival and security is guaranteed, then you can start thinking about self-actualisation, which is a different kind of community.
> when it's much more comfortable to just retreat to a place with common similar beliefs
This is an age-old argument, but taking a new form. Of course people like just doing what's comfortable; we've just replaced the 5 hours of broadcast TV a day with 5 hours of mindless social media refreshing. It's only a minority that actively seek to challenge themselves.
I mean, "more comfortable to just retreat to a place with common similar beliefs" is a good theory. But it is hardly the only one I can think of. Off the top of my head I also have:
1) Wealth is being eroded by the response to the '08 crisis leaving known-bad cultures to thrive in the lending industry. Social fabric starts to unravel due to lack of wealth creation.
2) Academics have had a long history of being in tension with democratic ideals. Famously, right when they came up with the idea of 'academies' Socrates was executed by a jury trial. More recently, communism had strong support in academic circles of Europe. We've massively increased the exposure of people to the university culture in the last 1-2 generations. Maybe technocrat leanings are leaking out? Technocrats don't compromise well on social issues, they believe there is a best answer.
Basically, the problem might not be algorithms and search bubbles, even though this is a forum that knows a lot about algorithms and search bubbles.
You bring up very good points.
> Technocrats don't compromise well on social issues, they believe there is a best answer.
You are absolutely correct. Algorithms and search bubbles are just symptoms not the disease. Elite untouchable tech giants with no oversight molding human thought and behavior to increase their bottom line and power with a 'move fast a break things' attitude in regards to the any social or ethical implications - that's the disease.
The rule that seems to be working itself out is this: people can pursue any interest they want, but we have social contracts when those interests interact with other people. Groups converge and have little friction when many people share at least some of the values, so you get things like HN, reddit, etc, but not unmoderated.
Alternately, by removing yourself from your community you failed to give them examples that would've broadened their horizons.
Like, this is one form of problem with today's filter bubbles--they help polarize communities by preventing the natural mechanisms of discovery and compromise that are required for groups of humans to coexist in meatspace.
People weren't unenlightened because LGBT people were hiding, LGBT people were hiding because of a fear of violence and ostracization. Only when it became unacceptable to be violent towards people did they change, and that's a slow process. Only then can you effect any change. There are braver people than I who stayed in those situations, but most of them were also a lot better at fitting in with the community in the first place.
The only way to get to people like that is to hurt them, either physically, mentally, economically or socially. That's what we're doing as a collective by changing norms so that it's no longer considered acceptable to beat people up for being <insert whichever unique attribute you want>.
Doing that will result in conflicts. Sometimes those conflicts will escalate into violent ones. As a single person it's often not viable to proceed into that territory alone, and so it's better to widthdraw from that society.
For every MLK there were hundreds of lynchings. You can’t lead with no followers.
With that said, a more charitable reading might be that the person was noting the power of representation and role models to inspire.
That said, as all things, there's a balance. The Internet is a great tool for bringing people virtually close together and spreading ideas. Sharing those ideas is a great way to enhance your local community.
> tyranny of geography
Haha. We're a long way from being omnipresent so you better get used to having neighbors. ;-)
You're very right! Sharing ideas to enhance your local community can be incredibly valuable and rewarding! However, some people occasionally find that their local communities do not always uniformly and enthusiastically welcome the ideas they want to share. Some people, faced with such experiences and fears, might consider that analog and digital communities offer different tradeoffs.
It depends. I find the fact that people can isolate themselves into communities where it's very easy to censor out any possible dissenters and dissenting opinions to be pretty damn damaging to our society.
That can be said about every development ever. But it being more easy / efficient can bring out existing systems out of balance at some point, once counter-acting forces are overwhelmed... especially if those don't improve (as fast).
> reach out to other communities and individuals and make them feel welcome.
That doesn't seem to be a winning strategy in current US politics. And the shared consensus seems to be eroding fast. I understand there are a lot of additional problems (like the shitty two party voting system) feeding into that, even strengthening each other. But finding a shared consensus seems absolutely necessary when living with other people in the same city/country/planet at a time were we can dramatically effect each others lives.
There are lots of different parties between different constituencies that are incentivized to sow discord between them. I'm not sure any olive branches that are offered are even seen by the other side given all the blades flying about.
Yet, is it possible that this isn't remotely new? Is it possible that digital communities enable people to find communities where they are not pushed out, instead of being coerced into ones where they are? And that perhaps many people have had the experience not of isolating themselves in dangerous and damaging ways, but of being isolated by the people who are supposed to be their community?
You're absolute right about the danger. It's just possible that there might be some room for subtlety here.
I believe that our tendency to view unpopular beliefs a stain upon a person's immutable character is a more fundamental (as in, earlier in the causal chain) cause of the damage to society you describe.
What makes it "our" society? I've never felt like a part of it.
Until that, the current virtual "communities" seem like a poor substitute for actual communities, long-term. Yes, you get to meet like-minded people (or more precisely, one aspect of the personalities of some like-minded people), however what you can actually do with them is tightly restricted to the online sphere. No common activities, no parties, no activism outside the internet, no dating. No differing viewpoints. No even knowing who you are talking with.
This seems like a poor substitute to (non-coerced) physical communities.
Like most things, I suspect it may be best regarded as a tradeoff. Is presenting as your idealized in a restricted environment more or less harmful to society than being unable to present as anything that vaguely resembles yourself in a less restricted environment?
There might not one answer that's right for everyone.
People who think like you do, who will never challenge you about anything important, or expose you to uncomfortable ideas or opinions, or cause you to question your assumptions about the world.
This seems to be true of most squishies, no matter how they connect.
Communities built around what they love are usually good, but what if what you love is terrible?
We have the law to regulate what is acceptable or unacceptable - almost all laws are there to regulate person-to-person interactions. If what you love requires murdering someone, we already call that out. If what you love involves playing "I Will Survive" with a kazoo, we don't call you out unless you have a very loud kazoo and people are trying to sleep.
Laws and social pressure are also a moderating force. Forcing 2 people that are very opposed to have a forced interaction about the things they are opposed on probably results in quite a few bar fights - more often than not though they leave.
If the lack of general empathy and over-demonization of the "other" is a problem, well, try being a person of color in the 50s or before. If anything interactions have gotten better, except for those who need to have everyone look and act like them in order to function.
Perhaps this was true in the days prior to the internet, but it certainly isn’t the case now. In fact, social pressures in the online sphere can be the opposite of a moderating force. In the analysis of the online culture wars, many authors have pointed out how the alt right bursting into the mainstream was in many ways a response to the societal pressure to conform to ever increasing (and at times, absurd) rules of a radical “PC culture”.
As a disclaimer, this isn’t to justify the alt right movement or to condemn political correctness wholesale. But the point is that societal pressure is not moderating anything. On the contrary, the internet has allowed people to simply retreat from the parts of society that previously may have pressured them into moderation, and instead to enclose themselves in the parts of society that not only accept their radical culture, but encourage it.
> If the lack of general empathy and over-demonization of the "other" is a problem, well, try being a person of color in the 50s or before.
And yet the rights of racial minorities still made massive strides in absence of the internet. Many of the commenters here have made arguments that along the lines of “a gay person would never have found acceptance without the geographical boundary breaking communities of the internet”, and frankly, I’m not sure that is true. The changing attitudes towards LGBT persons isn’t any more radical than many of the other social revolutions that have taken place without the internet.
It's possible that this kind of conformity might be best treated as something other than a universally positive force.
I don't see anything you've stated as mutually exclusive to the previous comment.
I point out what I perceive as dismissive because I think there are important aspects of human character that 'tyrannical' circumstances help to shape, enabling us to learn patience and tolerance of opposing views.
It's how we ultimately achieve error correction in culture and progress as a society, and it's not clear to me that an option for people to utterly extinguish all of that from one's environment is an upgrade.
I should rephrase: this is the first experience I've had of what is commonly described as "community". I hope that clarifies matters. I am not describing a community encountered as an artifact. I am describing the experience of being a member of a community. I hope this helps! Do let me know if I can help clarify more.
The comment to which I was responding took a very narrow view of what defines a community. The definition offered is one that would have been obvious to an illiterate serf a thousand years ago - people nearby they have no choice but to cooperate with for basic survival. For the most part, you had two choices: membership or death. And membership meant conforming.
Some might consider such a choice coercive. Such a person might even consider the circumstances that require that choice tyrannical.
I have offered a much more expansive one, where a person can be a member of multiple communities non-exclusively in a way that allows them to find communities that suit them. This formulation, unfortunately, can be seen as dismissive of the value of the communities of the past.
This is a very understandable viewpoint. After all, the expansive definition would seem to do away with the basic tenants of the narrow one. Yet, it's perhaps possible that this view could become even more correct than it already is! There's absolutely value in what even the narrowest of definitions would consider a community. They teach the value of belonging, of collaboration, and of many hands making light work. It just might be worth considering that there could be other lessons to be learned in this world that might not be fully captured there.
After all, humans are not TCP/IP. Capital-T Truth is not always easy to come by. There are still people in this world who consider (for example) failing to say the right ritual words at the right ritual time every day to be a grievous error in need of correction.
In a world where the obvious truths of the past are today's errors to be progressed beyond, we are presented with the wonderful opportunity to let endless forms of community bloom most beautiful. That we might learn from this glorious array what can be progressed beyond and how.
Though I understand if some would prefer not to.
Thank you very much, from the bottom of my heart, for the opportunity to engage.
It seems as though we are illuminating more nuance of the varied interaction and outcome of communal constructs.
I find what you've elaborated to be true and insightful, and reminds me that our perspective can always miss significant factors that may determine our outlook to be optimistic or pessimistic.
I wonder if what the aforementioned comment suggested is still unresolved; would some or all of us lose incentive and/or mechanisms that temper and shape our proclivity to compromise and coexist despite still unaltered and conflicting values and behaviors?
If it's true that the range and resolution of possible human values and behavior has grown considerably, with new nuance blooming all the time, it would seem to follow that there are new lines along which to fracture as well. Though not necessarily in a unique way never overcome before.
Would some of us lose the pressure to conform? Yes. And I think this is all to the better.
Ultimately, I think that conformity is what this entire conversation is all about. I do not value conformity and I reject the notion that forcing people to conform is a societal gain.
Apologies, but I don't agree that's nearly sufficient enough an "ontology", in the philosophical sense if you will, of community. You are involved in a community the moment you hear someone screaming out for help nearby; you are involved in a community when you're one of those scmucks stuck communicating to work in a packed trainer in the morning, you're involved in a community when you respond to the presence of minorities or certain of other races in a manner which may make them uncomfortable (100% not alleging a thing btw, most certainly not the point right now); you clearly join a community when you join the military, but you have, for better or for worse, shockingly few rights and freedoms therein.
My point is that, for human beings, we are by definition, as social animals, involved in a community some way, some how, because we inherently respond to one another's presence, even when that response is indifference (perhaps in the face of someone screaming out for help nearby). This is almost, for myself, the entire lesson of watching Mister Rogers (if you're an America, I don't know if you are).
Choosing a community for yourself, therefore, shouldn't be a reprieve, relief, or, worse case, a retreat from those other communities you're involved in, like your neighborhood or family. We all may have run into that person who appeared to us to be way too chatty and friendly in some public space that we were constrained to, say, the train; they're just answering to their involvement in a different way.
Have you stopped to consider the unintended consequences of this? Mainly, that you become so comfortable with lack of adversity and diversity (of ideas, etc.) that when the time comes to leave the bubble you're unprepared. You don't have the tools and mindset to adjust to those who are unlike you.
Yes. It's nice to find others similar to you. But just the same, there's also value in being an island and still being capable of interacting with strangers.
It's a terrifying thing. You've described the experience many have upon moving out of a small town in the Midwest. A good friend is having the same experience now when she looks to move away from the Bay Area.
I.e. echo chamber.
Not everyone is happy, plenty of people were and are misfits to particular bubbles they were born into.
There are communities where you pick the people who are associated with, and communities where you don't get to do that (or do it as much).
The internet gives you huge control over picking communities that think/have interests exactly like yours (and that's exactly what the parent was mentioning to like about the internet communities).
In real life communities that are not e.g. a chess club, but more like neighborhood, school, etc, you are forced to live with, and deal with, all kinds of people, not just the one you chose to. At best, you can move to a different location, but you still don't have the control to pinpoint and seggregate interests the internet gives you.
However, is it perhaps possible that I may have explicitly considered this kind of purely physical analog community? Maybe that I could have even been thinking explicitly about such examples when commenting that all kinds of communities are echo chambers?
One of the common characteristics of communities is that they enforce norms on the people who are their members. Physical neighborhoods and cities and schools are not different in this way. They are echo chambers too, generally reinforcing a distilled version of regional thinking, and the main lesson they teach tends to be how to bite your tongue.
The big difference between these analog communities and most digital ones is that in the case of the latter, a person can generally search for communities with amenable norms.
You're completely right! Communities of interest are very different from non-optional analog communities. It's just worth considering that despite this major difference, it may not significantly affect their echo chamber nature.
I love my echo chamber, thank you very much! :)
But I get what you are saying and agree, but also with OG comment as well.
I think we want same things, more genuine connection with people who are meaningful to us.
The "thing that is happening" is a sort of etherealization of property. One underlying cause is that the bits of "property" themselves are digital/ethereal. Books, songs, films... They are no longer physical, and the economic norms around them are changing to reflect that. In conjunction, I think the cultural impact of consuming more digital goods (and probably a million other things) is that people are used to this type of economy. They want the same for their car, bike, etc.
I would call uber a step passed renting, or an extreme form renting. Leasing has already been the norm for a while, along with financing that is indistinguishable from leasing.
The "handful of corporations" part is... more of a consequence, I think. Etherealization/digitization is proving to be very centralization (or winner-take-most) friendly. There are a bunch of drivers to this though. One big reason is centralization of wealth. Big piles of money need big investments to go into. Uber could raise money on better terms than an "uber-for-aukland," adjusting for scale. $1 of profit/revenue/DAU is simply worth less than 1/100th of $100 in profit, on the "speculative investment" market.
I agree on your main points. There is a danger of becoming more of a "rentier" economy. If this trend continues (projecting trends is always speculative) we could end up with more property/wealth in corporate hands, and private individuals will only have liabilities and consumption.
The big elephant in this room is the same elephant that stomped through pyramid rooms 5,000 years ago: real estate, or "land" as it was once known. This is the big ticket item, and represents most of the wealth ordinary people own if they own anything. Cars, CDs and such just don't add up to much value, not anymore.
Up until this point in history having cash was all you needed to complete a transaction. Now you have to maintain your status as a “good” consumer, under the threat that you will be defacto excluded from a part of society by an algorithm. At which time you lose access to the platform as well as all your previous purchases.
There are also companies who are commoditising digital reputation. So a single, private, company will be able to effectively turn you into a pariah.
Amen. What grind my gears even more is when governments adopt that novspeak and promote the uberization of entire sectors under the guise of "sharing resources".
It's not necessarily bad, but it is a major change to share something among thousands of people or millions of people vs. just among family and friends.
Saying that the people sharing are a "community" makes it sound wonderful, but it's actually a large group of people that may have interests very different from yours. Decisions need to be made and it's hard to get consensus among a lot of people, so you are basically talking about a government of some kind, along with all the conflicts that creates.
Private ownership is not particularly convenient, but it has a very interesting relationship with freedom that we should not cast away lightly.
Renting is an accurate descriptor of Netflix or Kindle (and Google Play movies actually does have "rent" on the label of the button when you want to rent a movie). And I can see what you mean from the perspective of the guest or rider, but not from the perspective of the host or driver.
I would argue that you're still renting from Uber and AirBnB, who are just outsourcing their labor and properties to others. Companies like this - I'm looking at you, Facebook - like to claim that they're only impartial platforms, but the reality is that they gain an enormous amount of power over both sides; stealthily, because they hide behind that image.
They're just the early middlemen of budding industries that, in an optimistic future, will not even need middlemen.
Only problem is that this/these sort of project(s) would entail an enormous amount of energy and effort to develop. And then you'd also need to ensure you have sufficient marketing clout so it doesn't just lay dormant. And then in the end it's a completely decentralized system. The idea of a creator sitting around skimming money off every transaction is not really part of this picture.
So it's not really the most enticing of projects to take on. Big investment, minimal personal reward. On the other hand, I think it will happen - eventually. We just need another Tim Berners-Lee type individual. Except preferably one that happens to be a brilliant engineer, salesperson, and billionaire.
They are not “sharing” anything in the sense that people normally understand the word. Money is exchanged for services, as normal. The only thing they do differently is evade regulations and taxes.
Channel control is.
Thought experiment:
There are two channels. One airs very compelling content (the king), but is low quality. The other has tepid content, but is excellent quality.
Which do you use?
Over time, I have asked this of a ton of people and have A/B tested it a few times in my home. Originally about legacy, broadcast media and choices I did not understand.
Compelling is the majority answer people give. And yes, that varies, but not so much as to make the discussion moot.
Yet, what we see is majority tepid, regardless of production and delivery quality. Secondly, peak quality is rare. Choice comes before that. Broadcast wants multiple streams more than fewer, better ones. Almost every time.
Channel control is king. Competition gets balanced to avoid mass tune outs.
Anyone doing all compelling, goid quality, few to no ADS will win big, costing others a lot.
Watch Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and the legacy media sorting all that out right now.
That's control over channel.
IMO it's still terrible if there is effectively only one product option. A democratic decision is just as bad as a shareholder one if it's choosing to favor a majority group over the minority (2 wolves and 1 sheep voting for dinner choices).
>outsources the generation of actual value to others
If you don't think there is value in the network, feedback mechanisms, and simplicity of using Lyft/Uber/whatever, you have completely missed why they are popular. Cabs would still dominate and would have been as popular as Lyft and Uber are now if all of the value was generated by drivers with cars. I think you probably meant to say 'outsourcing the labor' to others, which is completely different and companies have been doing that for centuries.
Labor != Value. I can go dig ditches in a yard for 10 years and not create any value.
Yep, and for you to report them when they scam you on rides and lie about broken credit card machines. But alas, most cab companies don't have this so you turn to the apps that do provide it.
That, however, does not mean that their network affects are worth their externalities as any individual company could provide services in a city where you knew the price up front, but did not rely on their global network effects
In my opinion, the added value with Uber at an airport is knowing the price up front. That's not always possible with whatever driver is first in line at the taxi stand.
Well that really depends on a) whether someone (including you) wants or needs ditches (farming irrigation? undertaker? dog hiding bone?) and b) the amount of time required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. If someone really wants a ton of ditches, and you can dig faster and deeper than anyone else, is your labor more valuable? As programmers we should hope so.
I don't mean to sidetrack the conversation but let's not make sweeping statements of fact without thinking about them!
You just proved the point though. It's not about how much labor was expended. If we are irrigating and I spend 20 hours digging a ditch by hand and someone spends 10 minutes using heavy machinery, they both produced the same value. Labor is independent of value.
>If someone really wants a ton of ditches, and you can dig faster and deeper than anyone else, is your labor more valuable?
Only if time and depth are a factor. It's the result that has value to the purchaser, not the labor. If said company could hire someone for half the price that does it in twice the time while still meeting the company's deadline, your labor is definitely not more valuable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
A bunch of people independently operating their cars to give rides with no common means to find them, schedule them, and pay them makes them almost completely useless. The network is the only thing making them useful to consumers.
It's like claiming Google is only valuable because it has websites to crawl.
No, this statement is entirely and purely false. The reason the network has value is because there are people on the network doing the work. If no one was doing the work, the network would be worthless.
Stop falling into the trap of believing that the people actually doing the labor are not contributing, or do not have value.
That is not what pathseeker said. You said (and pathseeker agreed) that the network is only valuable because there are people in it to do the labor. Pathseeker also said that having people willing and able to do the work is only valuable with a network to organize them and connect them to the people who need work done. You're both right. The people and the network are both contributing, and they both have value. Neither would be valuable on its own.
but often the network gets a disproportionaly large share of the reward (i.e., the extraction of value is higher on the network side vs the labour side). This is the same as the capital vs labour argument - one without the other isn't going to produce value, but the capital side is able to extract a higher value than the labour side.
Saying capital is relatively scarce compared to labor is flat out false. Look at the last 10 years or so. Venture Captial has been flush just about anywhere you look.
Capital is not money, but rather durable goods which contribute to more efficient production. It is the networks which are the capital here. Money can be used to buy capital, but only if someone goes to the trouble of designing that capital first. There is plenty of available labor looking for productive work to do, just as there are plenty of VCs searching for ventures likely enough to succeed to justify the investment. It is a lot easier to find people able to do whatever work is required than it is to find the right capital (networks) to organize them and enabled them to do the right work productively.
Both capital and labor are needed. The networks receive a greater portion of the reward because they are more scarce than labor as well as contributing more to overall productivity.
Add: I also feel this is why new home sales is such an important metric to judge the momentum of the US economy, lots of new home sales means lots of new home-wares. You buy or build a house you also buy a refrigerator, microwave, carpet, furniture etc. Mostly on credit. If we truly become a communal society the cycle is broken, the same people who said "no new house and no new car, I'll just save my cash" now earn less 5 years later because there are many fewer things sold and the interconnected supply chain stalls.
Not every industry has to survive forever. Can the telegraph industry survive the ~0% of sales it had before? Cars just aren't that useful in densely populated areas. The US will have to move away from personal vehicle transport and to mass transport/walking/cycling.
But on a corporate level oligopoly would be better. A few corporations dominating an entire market segment.
An example is Microsoft with Netscape. Microsoft was sued with anti-trust laws not because IE or Windows owned the entire market, but because Windows gave Microsoft a privileged place in the web-browser market that they abused.
Besides, a for profit service can create a community just as well as a communal repartition of it. It adds another risk to the community, of the service provider going bad, but it's not some overwhelming factor that makes all other irrelevant. Like it or not, you are sharing stuff when you rent them, the resource pooling is present (more or less present, depending on the renting modality), people are coming together (or not, depending on how it's shared), and there is social development just like with a communal resource.
The problem of Uber|etc and Netflix|etc is much more on how they do the renting than on they actually renting things.
There is some related problem you didn't point, in that once people start pooling some resource they didn't use fully, they should become more wealthy. We are not seeing this, so is it that the pooling isn't efficient or is it because people are being forced into pooling them by poverty? Either way, it's a problem.
If ever these corporations cause trouble, our government (well, maybe not the US government, but most sensible governments) will step in to remedy the situation. We've done so with privacy laws, we've done it with non-compete laws, we're going to do it with other companies as well.
Europe has been doing a great job of picking up our slack lately, but there's only so much they can do. Most of these companies are based in America, and most of the world's market is in Asia. There's a ceiling on how much the EU can fine companies before it's easier to just stop operating there. I'm sure those numbers have been crunched and that they're walking that line.
> I'm sure those numbers have been crunched and that they're walking that line.
A large company is not going to leave a market because it doesn't want to comply with regulation, esp. one the size of the US, the EU, or China.
They would if it became unprofitable, between the fines and the costs of compliance. Google was recently fined $5 billion; that's a significant chunk of their annual revenue, of which Europe is probably a minority. Add onto that the cost of updating for GDPR, and the EU is pushing about as hard as they can afford to.
I'm not saying this is a reason for Europe not to take a strong position. I'm just saying their leverage is finite, and less than that of the U.S. government.
The substitution of individual ownership for a communal one in which individuals retain a stake - a real community, or at a larger scale, a democracy - is not inherently bad. The problem with our recent trend is that we aren't getting communal ownership in return; we're getting nothing but convenience.
Silicon Valley has morphed and commercialized the term "sharing". You aren't "sharing" when you use Uber or AirBnB; you aren't pooling resources when you use Netflix or Amazon Books. You're renting. You're renting from a centralized company which outsources the generation of actual value to others, and pays them as little as possible. You aren't shifting your dependence from yourself to a community, but from yourself to a company that wants nothing more than to make money.