
Do platforms work? - kawera
https://aeon.co/essays/workers-of-the-world-unite-on-distributed-digital-platforms
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deusofnull
There was an interesting point made on a podcast yesterday (Struggle Session
EP 48 w/ Felix Biederman, i believe) todo with growing up online in the 00's
and the social experience of being online and being a teenager. Many of us
here can likely relate to feeling a bit out of place in our primary edu and
the experience of going online to "find your people". Whoever you were
comfortable "hanging out with" online, RPG people, emo kids, poets, FPS
gamers, programmers, whoever - you could find them online.

Thats definitely still true today, but 10-15 years ago we didnt have this
convergence of platforms so much. Instead all these communities existed on
sites of their own with closer control of their space. The problem today is
that everyone is thrown into one bucket, and everyone in that bucket is
looking at one another and obsessing over current events (poorly) and using
their real names. Platforms are like monoculture farming, and the more
decentralized internet of the recent past was more like smaller gardens tended
by loving gardeners. Sure, the new internet is more productive, but we can't
say its the same thing as the diverse, small garden.

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blackbrokkoli
What irritates me is that the article suggest that the concept of "value
generated outside of firm" surfaced in the internet of modern times - I think
it's much older and also not excluding classic cooperation structure. For
example:

Second hand shops, DIY car shops, allotment garden owner association

~~~
evrydayhustling
Agree, but these were typically limited to "peripheral" transactions, where it
made more sense for someone external to invest in infrastructure because each
customer uses it rarely.

Main difference that IT provides is that it is now more practical to outsource
core, everyday transactions that your life/business depend on, because
somebody else can do the matchmaking and bookkeeping.

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Dowwie
"In the future, one can imagine an interconnected ecosystem of collectivist
groups that provide services and produce goods. Where once there was a
corporation, instead we find a network of cells that have expunged hierarchies
and collaborate for the common good – ride-sharing services linked up to peer-
to-peer lending and medical and health providers. "

The author must be living on another planet. He's describing the present as if
it were the future. The arguments used to oppose the present are to
decentralize and disrupt the economic powers of today, as if some other kind
of system is possible. These writers suffer from short-sightedness in their
vision in that the solution they propose becomes that which is already here
today.

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amelius
Platforms = your market is now regulated by a company.

~~~
anoncoward111
Which, _yikes_

Ironically enough, local governments used to be the platform of the past.
Local businesses and houses would pay taxes so that roads and police would be
maintained. Lives would be lived and business would be done.

Now the town just wants to overtax and overregulate certain things (speed
cameras), just like how Amazon has a policy of usually siding with the buyer
unless the stars allign

~~~
dv_dt
I guess I don't know about your town, but if you attended a local city
meetings where I live, you'd see the many things that get handled by the city.

~~~
anoncoward111
I definitely acknowledge a bias and a blindspot on my part.

In my suburban town, the taxes mostly go towards teacher and police salaries.
Not much go towards plowing, or etc.

I'm only here because my job is here. If I was able to work remotely, I would
move to a patch of desert in Arizona where property taxes are like $200 a
year, not $10,000 haha.

It's mostly a case of me not requiring these services. The only government
service I've ever willingly used is unemployment insurance, which, I'd rather
just not pay income tax instead like they do in New Hampshire.

~~~
news_to_me
I'm surprised to hear that you don't think you benefit from spending on
education and police. Would you care to elaborate on those viewpoints?

From my perspective, it seems obvious that education is one of the best
investments you can make in society, whether or not you have children. After
all, it won't be long until those kids are running for office, managing
corporations, etc etc. So it affects us all.

~~~
anoncoward111
I would dare to say that good education at an affordable price would exist in
a society that doesn't use tax money to fund it. It definitely depends on
population density though.

There are towns and counties in the US that have absolutely no services
whatsoever, and no crime occurs there. This is because they are not densely
populated at all. Sure there are no jobs and nothing fun to do at night, but
they are quiet and peaceful, and property taxes are quite literally $200 a
year or less. Think of the desert of Arizona or New Mexico.

Then you have your mid-tier towns and counties that have taxes of maybe $1,000
- $3,000 a year, theres some crime, some jobs, overall not a bad place to live
for the price still. Think of South Carolina, Vermont, etc.

And then you have your ridiculously overpriced, dense suburbs and cities. Long
Island and New Jersey come to mind, where taxes on nearly any kind of house
are $10,000 and up. It's not necessarily easy to find a good job to pay the
mortgage, and you're paying those taxes whether you have kids in school or
not.

I'll take South Carolina or Arizona, please. My gf and I just simply don't
want kids and aren't afraid to live without services.

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zeveb
> Thanks to software, the internet and artificial intelligence, the expenses
> that Coase identified can now be reduced just as well with tools from
> outside the company as they can from within it. Finding freelance workers
> via online marketplaces can be less costly, less risky and quicker than
> recruiting full-time employees.

I wonder to what extent that's inherent, and to what extent it's accidental
due to regulation making employees more expensive than they ought to be. Is
what's happening to regular employment now akin to what happened to the
household-service industry in the mid-20th century? Then, payroll taxes &
regulatory compliance made it less & less efficient for individuals to hire
their own service staff (at full- or part-time) than previously, and as a
result relatively few folks have hired help nowadays.

It'd be pretty unfortunate if _all_ industries, not just household service,
were so impacted.

