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A comment on Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol. Parent comment

Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by amelius on Thursday February 19, 2015 @10:48AM (#9074616)
Here's an idea: there should be a maximum number N of employees a company can have. This enforces companies to think about the greater good, because if you're in a company that is split because of size, you might end up in a different company. Also, a maximum on the number of employees stimulates the "modularity" of the market: large conglomerates with internal markets will not be possible anymore.

I'm not sure of all the repercussions, but perhaps we can start with N at a large value, and slowly (over several decades) decrease it, and see what happens.

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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by jackmaney on Thursday February 19, 2015 @12:14PM (#9075229)
An interesting idea, but it would likely result in the creation of a crap ton of (what in effect would be) umbrella companies.

"Google? No, I technically work for Search Ad Services by Google."

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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by amelius on Thursday February 19, 2015 @12:37PM (#9075416)
But think about it... Suddenly every company can have Search Ad Services as good as Google's.

Also, if you don't like what company X is doing, you just need to find N qualified people, and you can start your own X.

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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by jackmaney on Thursday February 19, 2015 @12:43PM (#9075466)
That's assuming that Search Ad Services by Google will have--or will be allowed to have--clients other than Google. And that, of course, is the entire point: to split a company up into what are technically smaller companies that, in effect, are just part of the head company.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by amelius on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:59PM (#9076077)
Of course a company cannot be selective about its customers in a way that is anti competitive.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by jackmaney on Thursday February 19, 2015 @04:39PM (#9077268)
Ummm...yes. Yes, they can.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by rmc on Thursday February 19, 2015 @11:46AM (#9075003)
Technology companies may be able to run with ~100 people. But how are you going to run a large hospital? The NHS in the UK employs more than a million people.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by amelius on Thursday February 19, 2015 @12:40PM (#9075443)
Every department could be run by a separate company. This also ensures quality at the department level.

These companies could then be hired by the hospital itself.

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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by pjc50 on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:00PM (#9075627)
You were that guy promoting the "NHS internal market", weren't you? This is basically what happened: individual hospitals run by trusts, services contracted in. GPs responsible for allocating budgets. It hasn't made much of a difference beyond increasing the number of administrative staff.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by amelius on Thursday February 19, 2015 @02:05PM (#9076125)
Health care is working far from properly in the case of normal capitalism, so actually it is a bad example.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by pjc50 on Thursday February 19, 2015 @12:58PM (#9075594)
Coase, Ronald H. (1937). "The Nature of the Firm". Economica 4 (16): 386–405

http://www.sonoma.edu/users/e/eyler/426/coase1.pdf

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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by _pmf_ on Thursday February 19, 2015 @12:03PM (#9075146)
This does not matter at all, because if the separate companies have the same owner structure (which they will have), the segregation will be just on paper.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by TazeTSchnitzel on Thursday February 19, 2015 @12:10PM (#9075202)
Right. See, for example, how the fact that some of the more stringent aspects of French labour law only apply to companies with 50+ employees leads to lots of 49-employee French companies.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by sosborn on Thursday February 19, 2015 @11:12AM (#9074775)
How would you even start to define a term like "the greater good" in a way that a law like this could event begin to make sense?
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by O____________O on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:18PM (#9075756)
He indicated that the law would limit a company to N employees. The stated goal was to benefit the greater good, but the metric was simply a number.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by pdonis on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:32PM (#9075854)
And how do you decide what N is?
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by O____________O on Thursday February 19, 2015 @03:59PM (#9077001)
Not my problem. I'm only pointing out that the parent comment asked a question that implied a misunderstanding of GP.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by pdonis on Thursday February 19, 2015 @05:45PM (#9077667)
I don't think the parent to your comment misunderstood the GP. I think he was making a valid point: that in order to pick the "right" value of N, you have to know what value of N will maximize the greater good. Unless you can do that, the proposed law does not make sense; and saying "I'm not trying to specify what the greater good is, I'm just picking a number N" does not change that.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by O____________O on Friday February 20, 2015 @03:05PM (#9082614)
in order to pick the "right" value of N, you have to know what value of N will maximize the greater good.

What? No. The comment said nothing whatsoever about 'N'. GP's comment was exactly this, and nothing more:

How would you even start to define a term like "the greater good" in a way that a law like this could event begin to make sense?

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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by pdonis on Friday February 20, 2015 @09:50PM (#9084468)
> The comment said nothing whatsoever about 'N'.

Not explicitly, no. I drew an inference about what the GP commenter meant (or at least an obvious implication of what I think he meant). He's welcome to correct me if my inference was wrong.

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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by yackob03 on Thursday February 19, 2015 @11:14AM (#9074784)
I think the obvious repercussion is that business will do everything possible to avoid this threshold, whatever it may be, up to and including cannibalizing their margins. N=500, we have 499 people, do we hire one more or find a way to automate that new need or other jobs, even if it costs more than a human would?
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by pdonis on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:29PM (#9075828)
Does the term "economies of scale" mean anything to you?
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by amelius on Thursday February 19, 2015 @02:18PM (#9076238)
Even large programs can be structured such that they have small modules. The same can apply to companies.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by pdonis on Thursday February 19, 2015 @05:52PM (#9077709)
"Can be" in some cases, yes. But in order for the proposed restriction on company size to make sense, it would have to be possible in every case. That's a much stronger claim, and one I find extremely improbable.
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by amelius on Friday February 20, 2015 @07:14AM (#9080083)
Well, we already know that the current form of capitalism isn't perfect either. So I don't think there is a need to prove anything for every possible case. Also, we can make exceptions when we get there (even though I don't believe they need to be made).
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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by pdonis on Saturday February 21, 2015 @01:32AM (#9084902)
> we already know that the current form of capitalism isn't perfect either.

Sure, but the question is whether any proposed change will be likely to make things better, or worse.

> I don't think there is a need to prove anything for every possible case.

Maybe not, but it doesn't look to me like you've even considered what fraction of cases would lead to a net benefit under your rule vs. the current rules.

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Re:Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol by happyscrappy on Thursday February 19, 2015 @11:16AM (#9074797)
A cure isn't much good if it is worse than the disease.
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