I make a decent living providing people with solutions to some of the problems described in this article (censorship and fragmentation) and I'm not ashamed to say I am driven purely by profit.
> You know where those evil profits ultimately come from? People paying to have their needs satisfied.
Satisfying someone's needs doesn't justify anything. Not all needs are meant to be satisfied - especially if they conflict with the needs of others, whether directly or by generating externalities.
I'm terrified of others prescribing what's "needed" because someone else has decided what what's "wanted" isn't the best for them.
That's no freedom at all.
Having my "needs" defined separately from my "wants" denies me my freedom. But that's different from you say, deciding to confiscate my things without due process.
I'm equally terrified of others convincing you that what they have to offer is the best for you, with minor tweaks to "cover your needs"; yet that's the basis of profit-based marketing.
The problem with that of course, is that a lot of people can make that argument. And regardless of who's making the argument, be they weak or strong, they all rely on the premise that the person needs convincing of something, because to imagine that they might come to a conclusion that's not your own /by themselves/ is a terrifying thought.
I'm sorry, but I really can't condone the notion that some messages should be feared in that way, and that someone else knows what's best because they presume I do not.
When we mention "satisfying people's needs", those with more money get more satisfaction. That's how markets work. Like advertisers (corporations paying other corporations to spread propaganda), nation-states (which must control their populaces pretty much by definition), etc.
What cases are you talking about? If a consumer pays for something, they want it. What is the evil of supplying a consumer with what they want? If they don't want it they don't have to buy it. If they don't like it they don't have to use it. Ultimately, the decision is up to the consumer for what is the for them.
Secondly, you have to take a look at the aggregate effects. So for instance I may need a new, shittier way to spam web with ads, and there's a company who'll happily satisfy my needs. By having this transaction, I start earning more, and now my competitors see the strategy and all decide to adopt it. The end result is that web is more spammed, my advantage disappers, and the new solution probably costs more than the old one, but now no one can go back. A classic coordination problem[0].
Finally, as 'lostlogin points out downthread, what you want doesn't always equal to what you need.
[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/, a day does not go by without me linking to it...
These are not the only players in the game like you believe. Those who advertise more effectively on the web have more of an advantage over those who advertise via other media and those who don't advertise at all. And, as ads are more spammy and in-your-face, the advertised products get bought more whether all competitors are spamming or only some. Advertised products are bought more than they would be if the ads were mild or there were no ads at all.
PS: Thanks for the blog link it looks very interesting, I'll read it later.
I'd still love a good dissenting take on it. The one linked near the bottom is awful.
[1] http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html
[EDIT] Now includes the link!
I don't see how there is a need to do this with the internet in the way the "Internet Dream" describes it.
I don't think it's sensible to say that customers "wanted" VW cars with "defeat devices". In that case, it's not even clear how much of the vendor company knew what was in the product.
My point was to criticise the "Internet Dream" utopian fairy tale advocated by commenter TEMPORAL--where a user gets everything but pays nothing--and to explain that the internet's commercialisation is perfectly OK.
Another problem, idealists often ignore the practical realities of a society when dreaming of their idealist visions for the future. Could the internet have turned into a purely free and perfect forum for communication? In an ideal world yes, but not in our flawed world where there are a host of competing contrasting ideas.
To the authors point. Technology is moving too fast for laws, governments and political systems to cope with. The political and legal constructs we use today are not radically different from 200 or 300 years ago. I don't know if there has ever been a time in human history where the rate of technological innovation and change has been moving at such a speed that the legal and political systems cannot stay synced with the change and have no chance of catching up due to the increasing velocity.
Oh it's not shady in the sense that it has agency and decides to screw everything up. But it's very powerful and increasingly misaligned with the interest of humans. Being driven by demand does not map well to the shared wishes and morals of humanity, only if because of coordination problems.
I agree with your other points. And I didn't mean to point out that if Internet stayed non-profit, we'd have a perfect communication platform by now. For instance I think that if it became powerful, it'd still have problems with power and influence being a similar incentive to money. I only wanted to highlight the source of the problems we now have, which are those demand-satisfying, profit-driven actions. And that to make the Internet a better place, we would need to refuse doing things that seem optimal from business point of view but are detrimental to the Internet itself.
A pessimist in me says: this isn't likely to happen, because coordination is hard. So tragedy of commons here, no way to make a bottom-up group opposition there; we're screwed by coordination problems.
Oh wait... :P
On a more serious note, though, I think this is just another problem to be solved. Long-term, I am an absolute optimist: everything will get better, everywhere. Short-term, I admit there are some speed bumps :)
Just s/ocean/any big lake/
Yeah, that's why I keep my pessimist locked up in a cage underground, and only let it out to get some air every now and then. :). I still want to believe we'll get the United Federation of Planets :).
A great quote I read somewhere:
In marketing, there are those who satisfy needs and those who create wants
If I tell you that you have a need to purchase an eleven foot swimming pool for you back yard, and if you dont have a back yard you now have a need for a back yard, how long will it take for you to believe you have a need for it? How many of your peers would it take to have the same, and for them to tell you that this need has to be satisfied.
What does that mediation upon "needs" mean?
We know about Maslows triangle of actual needs, comfort, security food. But what about all these other "needs" - people do pay to have these somewhat manufactured needs satisfied. This is how a profit driven world works.
It needs happy docile obedient workers, that are "not ashamed to be driven by profit" so do their ills with a clear conscience.
"I'm just working here"
Industrial utilization of mercury is incredibly useful, adequate remediation and recovery expensive, and venting mercury-laden industrial waste into the atmosphere so easy and innocuous-looking, combined to land us in a modern situation any 16-18th century fisherman would find utterly absurd and fantastical. Lots and lots of people paid over many decades and centuries to have their needs satisfied with the help of mercury-laced compounds and mercury itself, to dump (and continue to dump to this day) their cumulative externality upon us, despite extremely early knowledge about cumulative effects, so that we go about our day-to-day in a real, live sci-fi world where some fish have so much bioaccumulated mercury that we have to ration our consumption of them.
There is an enormous amount of economic activity in the world today that works solely from finding and monetizing externalities. I expect this only gets worse in the future.
[1] http://www.researchgate.net/publication/272563841_Mercury_in...